Organizing civil society

While most of the initiatives described above can be viewed as lying somewhere along a continuum between public- and private-sector provisioning, it would be

LANDAND SERVICESFOR THEURBAN POOR 89 very misleading – though not uncommon – to treat private profi t-seeking enterprise and government as the only two organizational forms that can work to provide urban-dwellers with land and services. A wide range of civil society organizations are also involved, some rooted within the low-income areas themselves (grassroots organizations), others from outside. Recent decades have seen the explosive growth of professional and semi-professional civil society organizations and non- governmental organizations (NGOs).

Civil society organizations, land and housing

In many cases, the more professional civil society organizations work within existing government programmes to enhance their effectiveness. Hence, in the Philippines, a group of NGOs is working with communities that are accessing the loans of the Community Mortgage Programme. These NGOs act as professional support agencies, working together with local government to aid community organizations and assist in the quality of physical improvements. The Thai parastatal agency, the Community Organizations Development Institute, which supports a nationwide upgrading programme, also works with and assists many NGOs, as well as grassroots organizations.

Most other initiatives can be grouped into three types: those that are primarily defensive and which work mainly against evictions; those that seek to organize people to work within the market through housing cooperatives and other market mechanisms; and those that seek state support for agendas defi ned by the land- or service-deprived communities.

Some NGOs provide advice on legal and campaigning strategies to reduce the likelihood of eviction and to help groups defend themselves in such cases. These NGOs may also work to change national and international law in order to reduce the likelihood of eviction and increase the possibility of compensation (or the amount paid). The Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) provides an international network for local groups and the NGOs that support them.

Housing cooperatives have not been widely used by the poor, because they tend to follow formal requirements and hence be relatively expensive. But they can be a solution for those with slightly higher incomes who cannot afford private housing.

Cooperative strategies were used in Zimbabwe and have been expanding (albeit at a slow rate) in countries such as Kenya. However, the numbers remain very small, and it is likely that cooperatives will be overtaken by individualized market-based routes as the latter develop and provide basic units more cheaply.

A particularly signifi cant initiative to assist the urban poor in fi nding government support for people’s own development programmes is provided by the 14 grassroots organizations and networks of low-income, homeless and shack-dwellers that are affi liates of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI). These are located primarily in southern and east Africa, and Asia, with one further member in west Africa and another in Brazil. All these support women in low-income settlements to organize themselves through savings schemes. These schemes draw members together

90 THE NEWGLOBALFRONTIER

through daily savings activities and regular lending. Savings groups discuss local priorities, which include tenure security and access to basic services, and how they might be achieved. Different settlement-level savings schemes affi liate across cities to be able to identify existing resources (available land and subsidy programmes) and negotiate with politicians, political parties and civil servants. As a result of this work, long-term tenure has been secured for about 150,000 families over the last 15 years, and housing improvements have taken place for at least half these families (D’Cruz and Satterthwaite, 2005) (see Box 4.1 for more details).

Civil society actions are not restricted to NGOs, and an alternative strategy, less used by formal NGOs and more favoured by social movements and grassroots organizations, is that of land invasions. FEGIP (Federação de Inquilinos e Posseiros do Estado de Goiás), a federation of tenants and land occupiers in the state of Goiania, Brazil, is a particularly notable example, with about 200,000 people having been assisted to invade public land and secure tenure (having previously been tenants) (Barbosa et al, 1997). In many settings, complex relationships have developed between popular land invasion, private land development and political power. Hence, while invasions might appear to be organized by civil society, in practice this may not be the case. Land invasions are less widely used now than in the past, in part because only less-well-located land is open to being invaded.

Civil society organizations and acquiring basic urban services

The residents of under-serviced neighbourhoods recognize their need for basic services such as water, sanitation, drainage (in some areas), waste collection and schools. They can try to secure access to such services through markets, from public agencies or utilities, or through their own work. Small-scale entrepreneurs often emerge to provide services in the absence of the state. There is no profi t in providing public goods that are non-excludable (for example drainage channels), however, so these goods and services are not supplied by private entrepreneurs unless residents organize themselves and create a collective demand, or a public agency contracts them to provide the service. Even where small-scale private solutions do emerge, they may need to connect to the piped networks and hence suffer further problems due to inadequate public investments. Small-scale water vendors often simply collect water from the nearest public point and transport it to low-income areas.

Waste collectors, it is hoped, dump the waste at public sites.

Many civil society initiatives involve neighbourhood associations seeking to improve public services in their areas. These associations lobby, pressure and coerce local councillors and politicians to provide them with the services they require.

However, they often end up accepting the generally inadequate provision and simply lobby for further improvements at the next election.

Faced with this wasteful and health-damaging situation, a range of professional civil society organizations have sought to intervene to improve access to services.

Their contributions include:

LANDAND SERVICESFOR THEURBAN POOR 91

• assistance to the informal private sector (loans and technical advice);

• campaigns to improve public services (often associated with anti-privatization);

and

• support to neighbourhood groups wanting to install their own community- managed services.

The most signifi cant programme (in terms of scale and, arguably, the radical nature of their approach) is that of the Orangi Pilot Project in Pakistan, which developed a model of lane sanitation in which local residents met all the costs of the infrastructure within the neighbourhood, with technical assistance being provided by the project staff. After 20 years of experimentation and replication, the model is now being rolled out in 27 towns and cities across the country and is being adopted within the national sanitation policy (Hasan, 2006a and 2006b). In terms of social organization, lanes establish committees, which are then networked into area associations, which in turn work with state agencies to ensure adequate provision of sewer mains into which they can connect.

The 14 federations of the urban poor (see Box 4.1) working within SDI are frequently drawn into addressing neighbourhood-level services such as water and sanitation. Specifi c plans differ, depending on the availability of state subsidies and the strictness with which building and land subdivision regulations are maintained. In some countries, there are state subsidies available for infrastructure improvements, and the strong local organizations, combined with national-level federation activities, have enabled SDI affi liates to secure access to such subsidies.

In other contexts, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the local savings groups have to fi nance neighbourhood infrastructure themselves, using soft loans and their own labour to reduce costs to a minimum (Mitlin, 2003).

Communal or public provision of water – through public taps or water kiosks – has long been seen as a ‘solution’ for poorer groups. This method of supply works better than communal provision for sanitation, as households can store water in their homes and avoid queues or the need to fetch water at night. Communal or public provision for sanitation is never ideal, but, in many places, it is the best compromise between better provision, what can be afforded and what can be managed locally. It is cheaper than household provision and often much easier to provide in existing high-density settlements (Burra et al, 2003).

In Thailand, the Danish International Development Agency (Danida)- fi nanced Environmental Community Activities Fund worked within the offi ce of the Thai Government’s Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) to fi nance local community improvements in infrastructure and services (along with other neighbourhood improvements such as building renovation).

In this case, improvements were primarily grant-fi nanced and were designed to strengthen local and city networks, which were able to use the grants as catalysts for a broader programme of upgrading (Boonyabancha, 1999).

92 THE NEWGLOBALFRONTIER

B

OX

4.1 F

EDERATIONS OF THE URBAN POOR

There is a long history of federations formed by groups from within the urban poor that seek political change and, where political circumstances permit, negotiate resources and government programmes that benefi t their members. But over the last two decades, a new kind of federation has emerged, formed by savings groups set up by the inhabitants of ‘slums’. These federations are not lobbying government for

‘solutions’ but are actively engaged in developing solutions themselves and are offering governments partnerships to implement these at scale. They are unusual in the central role that women play in all of them, including offering women leadership positions. They are also unique in the way that the different national federations learn from and support each other. These federations have developed a model for addressing urban poverty that they share with each other and assist each other in implementing – supported by the small umbrella organization Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), of which they are all members.

The catalyst for this new kind of federation was the National Slum Dwellers’

Federation in India. The head of this federation, Jockin Arputham, was a community leader who, from the early 1960s, had fought to protect the ‘slum’ where he lived, and other ‘slums’, from being bulldozed (Arputham, 2006). In the early 1980s, Arputham and other slum leaders in India recognized the need to go beyond this fi ght to protect their settlements. They also understood the state’s incapacity to actually deliver alternatives that met their needs. So they began to develop their own solutions, to demonstrate to government the kinds of housing and basic service programmes that worked for slum-dwellers and to show their own capacity to work with governments in implementing these at scale. This change coincided with the emergence of a federation of savings groups formed by women pavement-dwellers in Mumbai, Mahila Milan, who were supported by a recently formed, local NGO, SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres). These three organizations formed an alliance that, since 1985, has been demonstrating to governments through concrete projects – for instance for new housing, for community mapping and for public toilets – how to address the needs of their members.

The intervention model that this alliance developed spread to many other urban centres in India through a growing programme of community-to-community exchanges;

exchanges also developed between nations as new slum/shack-dwellers’ federations formed and sought to learn from each other. This programme was formalized and expanded by the creation of SDI in 1996.

Addressing urban poverty requires strong local grassroots organizations able to negotiate for resources, design appropriate development solutions, implement those solutions in conjunction with the local authorities and strengthen accountable representative organizations through this process. Strengthening local organizations is critical as it enables the local groups to maintain and develop their capacities, allowing them to deepen the participatory democratic process. Successive rounds of negotiations and implementation enable the people-centred development process to grow.

To simplify, the intervention model includes the following steps:

• Build local grassroots organizations around daily savings. These organizations are based on savers, who collect funds from their members and provide loans, develop the capacity to handle fi nance, and create the foundation for collective action.

LANDAND SERVICESFOR THEURBAN POOR 93

• Prioritize women and develop an understanding of the need for women’s involvement.

Daily savings help establish processes that are pro-women and pro-poor (because men and the not-so-poor, in general, are not keen on the regularity or even tedium of daily saving). The central role of women can help to ensure that the process is need-oriented and that the organization can establish a pragmatic, collective focus that is powerful but non-violent.

• Understand needs through detailed household surveys (enumerations) and local mapping. This settlement-wide process provides the information base for groups to consolidate their work and plan for improvements (Patel et al, 2002; Weru, 2004).

• Develop a mass base across each settlement (enumeration and lending activities help to draw groups together).

• Foster an understanding of local capacities. Savings, financial contributions, activities such as land searches (to identify sites that can be used for new housing) and incremental improvements help give residents a sense of their own ability and reduce dependency.

• Develop a consciousness of solidarity between groups of the urban poor and a commonality of interests. Community exchanges within each city and among cities help to establish the sense of solidarity. All urban poor groups suffer from isolation, but women savers are keen to collaborate and to learn from each other, so this is a relatively easy process.

• Encourage city and national federation leaders to become political negotiators.

Though not party-political, federation leaders learn to use electoral pressure and how to work with offi cial negotiations and through a mass presence on the ground.

L

OOKING TOTHE

F

UTURE

Historically, urban planning and land-use regulations have often contributed to the creation of large, informal settlements or slums, whose residents are typically deprived of environmental services. There is now international agreement that it is important both to avoid the creation of new slums and to upgrade or transform existing ones. To meet these challenges, however, it is important that governments and international agencies stop regarding slums as a symptom of over-urbanization and stop using land-use policies as a means of curbing urban growth. Instead, governments will need to:

1 work constructively and routinely with existing slum-dwellers to solve problems locally;

2 create the basis for land and housing markets that reallocate resources effi ciently and equitably; and

3 develop physically and fi nancially realistic strategies for accommodating future urban growth.

While, as described in previous sections, there is no one recipe for success, many of the most successful efforts to improve conditions in deprived urban areas build on the efforts of the residents themselves. Key principles include local ownership,

94 THE NEWGLOBALFRONTIER

incremental improvement and more effective community-level organization.

Unfortunately, although successes have been suffi ciently widespread to justify optimism about what can be done, they are not suffi ciently common to justify much optimism about what will be done. Looking to the future, it is critical to improve the political basis for negotiation between organizations of the urban poor and local governments. This will need the support of both national governments and international agencies. It will also need the support of NGOs that are willing to help organizations of the urban poor to represent their own interests to local and national governments, rather than claiming to represent those interests themselves.

But, perhaps most important, it will require organizations of the urban poor to develop and spread more effective strategies, as has been done by the federations of the urban poor described in Box 4.1.

Looking to the future, it will be a challenge for many urban and national authorities to ensure that suffi cient land is made available for new housing (and in doing so provide legal alternatives to ‘informal settlements’ that lower-income households can afford), that land markets are functioning effi ciently and fairly, and that the growing demand for services can be met. This will require careful planning, locally, citywide and nationally. At fi rst glance, this would seem to be a very different challenge from that of upgrading or transforming existing slums.

After all, future urban residents cannot negotiate directly for their stake in urban development in the way that existing groups can – at least if they are allowed to do so.

But even looking to the future, it is important to develop better relations between deprived residents and their governments in the present. Good relationships need to be developed and institutionalized over time and are far too rare in the present.

Moreover, while adequate supplies and markets for land, housing and services are critical, they are not in themselves suffi cient. Housing and land-use regulations that the urban poor cannot afford to meet; infrastructure and utility charges which they cannot or will not pay; developments that require large-scale relocations – these can quickly drive low-income settlements into illegality or informality. They can also lead to stand-offs, where residents refuse to move and governments refuse to support their stay. Eventually, they can be used to justify evictions. Planning for the future does not just mean working out how future needs will be met, but also providing a sound foundation for resolving future disputes, at least in part by improving current practices.

N

OTE

1 UN-Habitat (2003a) uses the term ‘slum’ to refer to neighbourhoods, or, in some cases, even individual homes, that lack access to safe water, access to sanitation, secure tenure, durability of housing and/or suffi cient living space.

LANDAND SERVICESFOR THEURBAN POOR 95

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