{"id":11,"date":"2017-06-07T11:47:54","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T11:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2017-06-13T11:39:19","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T11:39:19","slug":"background","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/background\/","title":{"rendered":"Background"},"content":{"rendered":"

Academics and policy makers have consistently argued for the need to develop strong local institutions to address the everyday struggles of poor citizens. The assumption is that strong local institutions, such as constituency-based grassroots organisations, can intersect with state, civil society and private efforts to make development more sensitive to their needs. As such, collective action<\/strong> and co-production<\/strong> are viewed as essential building blocks of the institutional arrangements needed to sustainably expand access to basic services for the poor.<\/span><\/p>\n

In urban areas this rationale is clear: public service delivery is usually ineffective in low-income settlements, and consequently, collective action – the self-help mode of addressing basic concerns by low-income people – is common. Co-production, in contrast, is concerned with the provision of public services through regular, long-term relationships between state agencies and citizen groups, with both making substantial resource contributions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Building on state capacities and local collective action is therefore increasingly seen as a means of improving service delivery in urban areas. Combining collective action\/co-production is thus an attractive institutional mechanism for governing both people and ecosystems, and an appropriate technology for knowledge production and developing grassroots-based expertise.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Complementarities between co-production and collective action, however, have rarely been analysed in the context of the urban poor\u2019s access to ecosystem services, although studies exist on issues such as water supply and wastewater collection and urban agriculture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three important gaps in knowledge are striking. First<\/strong>, is the lack of attention to the disservices that catch the urban poor in vicious cycles of ill health and poverty. Second<\/strong>, despite existing research on urban political ecology in developing metropolitan cities, this has yet to be explored in Bangladesh or Tanzania. Thirdly<\/strong>, institutions have become an important part of natural sciences like water resources development, but overwhelmingly, there has been little uptake of this in the fast-growing cities of developing countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

This research will explore co-production and collective action to fill these gaps, focusing on services derived, and disservices resulting, from two important ecosystems: urban green and water structures. Access to safe and unpolluted drinking water, drainage, and flood prevention are water ecosystem services essential to the urban poor. Similarly, urban green structures (from a tree in a busy street, to an open playing field or a nature reserve) offer the fundamental services of shelter, fuel, food, nutrition, protection from extreme weather, and pollution retention to the urban poor.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Informal settlements, however, usually lack access to these services, located predominantly on risky lands including floodplains, ravines, and steep slopes, and\/or in close proximity to damaged or toxic sites including sewer canals, industrial establishments and landfills. Inadequate sanitation, garbage disposal and drainage facilities are routine. The few toilets that exist are not connected to the sewer, and aqua-privy systems and line drains block regularly. Settlements are physically separated from city-wide infrastructure such as roads, drains and storm-water management and subsequently, suffer from routine flooding and become ideal receptors of diffused pollution from the catchment\/ drainage area.<\/span><\/p>\n

Examining both<\/strong> ecosystem services and disservices and their institutional dimensions will be central, therefore, to this research.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Academics and policy makers have consistently argued for the need to develop strong local institutions to address the everyday struggles of poor citizens. The assumption is that strong local institutions, such as constituency-based grassroots organisations, can intersect with state, civil … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":714,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/714"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/ecopoor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}