City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

City-Level Decoupling: Urban resource flows and the governance of infrastructure transitions

6.4.3. Responses and outcomes of change

The intermediary worked with the community through 'learning by doing' over a three-year timeframe to reshape the waste stream. This involved working with 15,000 households enrolled into the project to collect and re-use organic waste. In other cases, the transition to a new infrastructure system involved an established intermediary with a commitment to existing infrastructure developing a new style of working to create new socio-technical systems. In the case of the BRT in Lagos, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority played an important role in partnership with the Lagos state government. Critical to this was an initial feasibility study and the involvement of key overseas partners: workers and employers of bus rapid transit schemes in Latin America. Subsequent funding was provided by the World Bank, Lagos state and the private sector. Stakeholder engagement was critical in building political and community support for the scheme. The Mariannhill landfill project involved Durban Solid Waste and the local municipality who sought to change the way they developed landfill sites. The main aim was to prevent contamination and to restore the site while reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the capture of methane and the sale of electricity and carbon credits. Working with Enviros, a French development bank, and the South African government, they redesigned the way in which the landfill would operate to provide power, reduce water consumption and protect indigenous vegetation. They also worked with community interests on employment, skills development and education programmes, and the development of a community centre. One conclusion is that interventions that focus on a particular infrastructure always require an intermediary of some sort, in particular to reduce the social risks of a costly long-term capital investment. However, in under-funded environments, intermediaries play a crucial role in translating social capital into system viability and financial capital.

The understanding of the consequences of these schemes is highly variable, based on the effectiveness and efficiency of the processes and how these were monitored and evaluated. In the Accra example, the benefits are not well understood but are estimated to include over 1,000 farmers involved in the production and recycling of water because they believe that the initiative lessens demand for water, reduces chemical usage, and reduces sewer use and contaminated water downstream. State reluctance to institutionalize these activities has made it harder to quantify the consequences. Waste reduction is well understood in Kampala through the use of an action research method. University evaluation measured the weight, feed yield value, economic benefits and nutrient value. Although motivated by the ideal of ‘zero waste', in practice this initiative resulted in levels of waste collected that were 30 to 40 tons per month, with reduced costs of 36% and reduced waste volumes of 40%. The BRT development in Lagos took only 15 months to complete and was delivered at a much lower cost than premium BRT projects. Passenger numbers and improvements in CO 2 emissions, journey and waiting times are all well understood. The major limitation is that the BRT cannot cope with peaks of demand. The performance of the Mariannhill landfill site is audited bi-annually, and its gas-to- electricity production is quantified each year. The closed-loop approach avoids environmental contamination by toxic leachate, and the initiative generates power, creates jobs, protects indigenous biodiversity, and saves the municipality the costs of new plants for landscaping public spaces.

6.4.4. Lessons learned

Four key conclusions arise from the case studies on urban networked infrastructures:

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