The City of Dar es Salaam striving to resolve environmental problems

The Stimulus Paper by Godfrey Kamukala is an excellent exposé on the kind of issues, challenges and dilemmas Tanzania and her urban centres are facing. For the moment, let me focus my comments on the first of the issues he has raised, namely air pollution. This problem is intimately bound up with the many and ever-increasing number of vehicles that are introduced and plying the urban road network everyday—approximately ¾ of which are second-hand (even third-hand) imported ‘used’ cars. Not only are these polluting the air but also they are flooding an already congested urban road system and thereby seriously limiting the efficiency and carrying capacity of the roads and streets available. The region of Dar es Salaam currently has an estimated 100 or more car sale-depots and showrooms, each holding not less than an average of fifty cars waiting to enter the city roads anytime. The question here is: Given this situation, is there any hope of stemming or even controlling air pollution soon? On the other hand, it has now become fashion for the ‘urban rich’ to own three or four cars in their household yard—even when the users in the household are just a couple and even when such three or four cars cannot all be new, smoke-free cars.

A possible starting point towards arresting the fast-growing acquisitive impulse for multiple car owning would have been either (i) a bold deterrent government policy and law; (ii) a municipal bye-law regulating owning and driving of multiple cars; (iii) a government or municipal regulation on the currently excessive car importation by car dealers in an almost already ‘car-saturated’ urban environment; or (iv) a combination of all these strategies. Yet the question here might be: Who in the central government or within the municipal councils would be transparent and willing enough to deter or regulate this impulse? Because, such a step is possible only when those given the responsibility to control, regulate or act are not victim to the trap and are therefore upright, strong and authoritative enough to enforce the rules.

My hunch is that, even with an otherwise well-intended and innovative ‘Bus Road Transit (BRT)’ project that has been embarked upon, the solution will be of limited long-term effects if these impulses in society are allowed to prevail and no public policy is adopted and implemented in earnest. Not even with the more costly flyover scheme that is being contemplated. What do you think?

In the meanwhile, I look forward to downloading and reading the Vancouver 2020: A Bright Green Future report referred to by Peter Kearns, which, I believe, will have some creative ideas and lessons useful for our other cities, especially in the developing countries such as Tanzania. I am sure our municipal authorities (in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza, Mbeya and others) stand to benefit from the report.

Mr. Kamukala’s stimulus paper has commendably focussed on five critical issues—air pollution, solid waste generation and disposal, water pollution, sand mining, and environmental management. While I had a previous comment on air pollution insofar as this was connected to a number of problems including the traffic jams, an unregulated used-car importation, unlimited number of vehicles per user, etc, all which seem to impinge on the carbon emissions, traffic density and probably also on the rate of motor accidents. Urban regions are also faced by solid waste generation and disposal, water pollution, sand mining, as well as general environmental management, which can be said to be even more unique to urban environments, as Kamukala has indicated.

These challenges are not totally separated from some of the initial points mentioned earlier in connection with the emergence and expansion of urban regions, namely rural-urban mobility, unemployment, poverty, economic disparity, poor housing, poor urban transportation, and invasion of public ‘open spaces’ (Ishumi & Mwaikokesya, “The City of Dar es Salaam: A ‘Haven of Peace’ in Search of Ideas and Initiatives for Renewal and Change”, January 2011). These social-and-environmental problems are already a full plate for the municipal councils and authorities in Tanzania, especially in Dar es Salaam.

In a subsequent response to comments on that initial stimulus paper on Dar es Salaam, two modest propositions were made as part of a response to the growing urban problems in Dar, namely:

(1)   The creation by the City Council of a multidisciplinary think-tank of planners, ecologist-environmentalists, sociologists/anthropologists, economists and technologists — who, as a team of specialists, would dedicate themselves to the details of their discipline’s concerns for corrective and innovative ideas for change and advancement in the urban aspect of their assigned city/municipal area of specialization – just as had reportedly been done for cities like Lusaka, Kitwe, Ndola, Luanshya, Mongu and Kabwe (Broken Hill), or even Harare in the past; and

(2)   More particularly, creation of a cadre of urban social anthropologists within the employ of cities (or municipal councils), whose task would be studying and documenting issues and events within the city, preparing anthropological analyses of urban tendencies, events or crises for disciplined discussion and inputs into planning meetings. The suggestion here is to re-create and revitalize the job and role of professional anthropologists, whose studied social cases within the urban population would have that needed knowledge of urban dynamics necessary to informed planning decisions.

In fact, No. (2) above is just a subset of (1), only that this second matter is critically important when construed as an everyday feeder instrument of information to the rest on the everyday observations of the urban phenomena—ranging as they may from watching a mere group of unemployed youths seated in some corner or trooping up and down a particular street either looking for work or waiting to strike at a laden passer-by; to watching a neighbourhood area being turned into a shanty housing spot by individuals putting up unplanned grass-and-wattle or cardboard huts with no building permits and no semblance of an architectural clearance for context with land-use planning. The social anthropologist’s (or the urban sociologist’s) timely and pre-emptive report would surely save the municipality’s day and the town’s future from untimely conflicts with usurpers, environmental mass littering, unwarranted urban skirmishes, urban insecurity and overstretching the already limited municipal budget. What would others think of such a professional cadre of anthropological urban investigators-cum-planning intelligence?

I have had a chance of reading Vancouver 2020: A Bright Green Future, thanks to the hint by Peter Kearns. This is Vancouver’s own self-determined “action plan for becoming the world’s greenest city by 2020” and beyond. It makes marvellous reading, with lots of creative ideas and implementation plans “for the green economy, energy-efficient buildings, clean transportation, urban forest management, and so forth …through wide consultation with the community” (p.5) on each of the ten long-term goals and their success indicator measures. Indeed, the report provides useful lessons to would-be other cities, such as Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and other urban centres elsewhere, especially in the developing world. Where are we in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza, Mbeya and elsewhere in Tanzania? Let’s take courage and aspire to higher levels of creative and anticipatory thinking. Perhaps, for Tanzanian cities, of more urgent interest might be Vancouver 2020’s Goals No. 3 (Promoting carbon-neutral building designs and construction), 4 (Preference for walking, cycling and public transit options over individualised urban car driving), 5 (Reduction of solid waste per capita going to landfill or incinerator), 8 (Raising standards of clean and safe drinking water) and 9 (Promotion of cleanest possible urban air and laying of air quality guidelines), at least to begin with. But, for all intents and purposes, actions towards these goals would have to be accompanied by visible public education/learning initiatives in various forms, such as published campaign leaflets, radio and televised talk series, public notices and related audio, video and/or documented literature.

Environmental concerns are a major issue for Dar es Salaam, and it would be good to see what measures have been taken elsewhere in other (similar) cities.  Transport pollution is a huge problem, as the blog says, but I do worry about the proposal to implement a new integrated transport system by 2014.  I know that it is pressing, but the timeline is simply too fine, and I would worry that the there will end up being a cock-up because of the haste that actually makes things worse (if that can be imagined!).

The Green Growth Leaders blog contains an item that asserts that since 2009 "the wheel of history has turned and it seems that cities and business are now the ones looking after the planet" In the case of cities, initiatives taken by Copenhagen, Stockholm, Hamburg, Nantes exemplify that can be achieved in an enlightened city with benefits to citizens.. If the wheel has turned in this direction, the question is now what can governments do?

Thank you Abel for your very pertinent question and suggestion for action. My blog was picking up a comment by the Green Gth Leaders that it was cities and busuness (such as Copenhagen, Stockholm, Hamburg) which were taking the lead, rather than governments, in action to save the planet. This observation is of course very interesting to people such as ourselves interested in the learning city approach.

You are right in pointing to the gaps between leading northern cities such as these and the situation in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. The growth of urbanisation in these areas (with higher CO2 emissions) makes this an urgent issue. It may be thst the Rio+20 UNEP conference to be held in Rio next year as a 20 year follow up on the 1992 UN Conference on Sustainable development will provide good information on the issues in various parts of the world and some proposals for action. At this stage the UNEP has released a useful overview report on changes in the environment since the 1992 Rio Conference (Keeping Track of our Changing Environment) I found this an interesting read.

I agree with your suggestion for regional studies. How these might be undertaken, and by whom, is an open question. Can PIE contribute anything? I see the PIE contribution as exploring the interfaces between community and lifelong learning and environment strategies. It is surely no coincidence that the leading Green Cities are in countries with well developed lifelong learning policies and with a history in building a learning culture. If PIE is to make a contribution iin this way, it will be necessary to expand PIE membership so that we have a wider range of experience in exploring connections between learning, community building, and environment action. I would like to see more African, Asian etc cities participating in PIE to give us a platform to probe these critical issues. Do you agree this should be our first step? In the meantime, we should also monitor carefully what happens at Rio+20.

So how does historical change occur. From an agrarian socity to an industrial society? To a post-industrial society geared to a sustainable environment and economy?