Urban environmental sustainability : implementing local agenda 21 in Manchester

This pape r examines how Local Agenda 21 is being developed in the United Kingdom and how it envolves many aspects o f Physical Geography. The Local Agenda 21 process in the City o f Manchester is used as a special case study.


Introduction
Sustainable development as a concept affecting the thinking of the governments and peoples of the world really dates from the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.Th inking about environment cities at the international levei comes from the same period, especially through the Project 11 (Urban Ecology) of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme.Initiatives sue h as the studies ofurban metabolism and ecology in Hong Kong, Lae (Papua New Guinea) and Rome, brought home the dependence of cities on other environments and quantifiedjust how cities modify the natural circulations of air, water and materiais .These impacts h ave been recently characterised by William REES (1992) as the ecological footprints o f cities.An in di vi dual city relies on a collection of scattered support areas and creates a demand for changes in land-use that in volve a quanti ty o f land f ar exceeding that occupied by the city itself.The total area of land required to sustain an urban region (its ecological footprint) is typically at least an order of magnitude greater than that contained withinmunicipal boundaries ofthe associated built-up are .The extra-urban landform modification (the geomorphological footprint) includes ali the quarries, sand and gravei pits and mines supplying urban raw materiais, together with ali landfill, land reclamation and other waste disposal sites and the soil erosion in volves in urban food próduction.Under Canadian living patterns (REES, 1992), the per c apita land requirements for urban people are: territorium 4.1997 for food production -for timber and fossil fuel 1.9 ha 3.5 ha (includes forest to absorb CO,) -for raw material and waste 0.1 ha The ecological footprints of cities include the geological transformations, in terms o f rock remova!and additions to the sedimentary record.The greatest single feat of denudation prompted by the needs of international trading cities was probably the excavation ofthe Panama Canal where 153M m 3 ofmainly hard rock were removed.The Manchester Ship Canal involved the excavation of 40.9 M m 3 of mainly unconsolidated material (SHERLOCK, 1931).
The UnitedNationsset upthe WorldCommission on Environment and Development in 1983 and its report Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) called on the General Assembly to establish a UN Programme of Action on Sustainable Development.This led to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), known also as the Earth Summit or Rio 92.The major outcomes of the Earth Summit were the Clirnate Change Convention, the Biodiversity Convention, the statement on Forest Principies, the 27 principies for sustainability in the Rio Declaration (or Earth Charter) and Agenda 21.Although these important documents were signed, the outcomes fell short o f many people' s expectations or were weakened by compromise.The failure to make many agreements reflects the many economic and political questions underlying any transition to sustainable development (WHITNEY, 1994).This same trend of conflicting political, economic and social interests affects to work towards making cities more sustainable at the local leve!.This paper examines how Local Agenda 21 is being developed in the UK and how it in volves many aspects o f physical geography.The Local Agenda 21 process in the City of Manches ter is used as a special case study.

Physical Geography and Sustainability
Achieving sustainability requires changes in the way natural environmental flows are modified to meet the needs of people in cities. Cities have dual energy, water and materiais circulation systems.The clima te o f cities is modified by the physical character ofthe city and by the heat created by artificial energy consumption.Urban areas modify runoff to rivers, but also create artificial water supply and waste water disposal systems.Cities bring in huge quantities of mineral and biological materiais to support their 6 activities, and expellarge quantities of waste, often creating artificiallandforms in the way waste dumps become large hills, such as the notorious dumps around lstanbul in Turkey and near La Corufía, Spain.Well designed "land raise" mounds are to be found around Greater Manchester.
In these circumstances, urbanisation can be seen as creating a modified climate, hydrological cycle, geomorphic features and ecological environment.Pushed to the extreme, such modifications create environmental instability, for example when urban runoff creates downstream flooding or a land raise waste mound collapses and slides disastrously into neighbouring settlements.Sustainability implies reducing the scale of these transformations of the physiographic environment.Sustainability, in European countries, for most people, in volves consuming less: reducing the magnitudes of energy, water andmaterials used and thus ofthe quantities o f waste and contaminants generated.lt also involves re-using materiais and land: particularly regenerating the "brown lands", the derelict and abandoned industrial and mining land.
Studies of urban climate, air pollution, urban drainage and ri ver pollution, urban geomorphology and ground stability and urban biogeography and soil formation all contribute to the scientific knowledge needed to develop strategies for more sustainable cities.The use of trees to modify the urban climate, absorb some locally generated greenhouse gases and reduce no i se in volves a whole series o f environmental investigations of the type carried out by physical geographers.Modification ofurban drainage by having porous pavements for roads and car parks, and by creating grassed waterways to cape with local runoff applies hydrology and fluvial geomorphology to urban sustainability.
Physical geographers, like others scientists, have to be prepared to develop rigorous predicti v e techniques than can be used in forecasting the outcomes of different strategies for a more sustainable future.The ability to model and predict requires good field monitoring and computational skills, neither o f which can be neglected in training future generations of physical geographers.
However it is not enough simply to do the good science.The outcomes of investigations have to be applied and incorporated in to the planning and local agenda 21 processes.The significance and praticai value of the science has to be communicated to decision makers and ali groups, or stakeholders involved in Local Agenda 21.Some physical geographers will need to become advocates for the policies that their science suggests are necessary for the sustainability of cities. Science, its application, and action for good policies are ali needed.

Local Agenda 21
Chapter In Britain, finding ways oftranslating sustainability in to landuse and development decisions both in plan formulation and development control is seen as a major challenge for local planners.While in principie planning can be used to further sustainability objectives, in practice it is not always ele ar how the development process can be used to promote sustainability.The Department ofEnvironment has issued planning guidance notes which exhort the adoption of, but do not always adequately explain how to achieve greater sustainability (WHITNEY, 1994 ).More seriously, while the Department of Environment urges planners to seek sustainability, the Department ofTransport and o f Trade and Industry pursue policies which expand road traffic and industrial impacts on the environment.

Local Authority Promotion of Local Agenda 21 in Britain
Many local authorities in Britain are attempting to find ways of planning for sustainability across many sectors and in their own activities.Lancashire, for example, has conducted it own environmental audit.Various interest groups or associations, including Friends o f the Earth, the Association ofMetropolitan Authorities and the local Government Management Board have set out and promoted good practice in promoting sustainability.In many ways, local authorities, stripped o f many oftheir previous powers and responsibilities by the national government, have seen Local Agenda 21 as an opportunity to demonstrate their relevance in an issue of national and global significance which is also intimately connected to the wishes and well being oftheir local communities.N ot surprisingly, therefore, the varied approaches by individual local authorities have produced the most innovative pilot schemes and initiatives to implement and manage sustainable development (WHITNEY, 1994).
Much local experience has been brought together in the publications from Global Forum 1994 and trough the work o f the B T En vironment City Programme and ofEnvirons in Leicester.In November 1990, the Kirkless Metropolitan District Council, which looks after an area o f 250 Km 2 with 375 000 inhabitants in West Y orkshire, adopted an environmental strategy with the following priorities: -Energy: installation of a combined heat and power plant, working with energy-saving groups, monitoring energy consumption and setting up waste minimisation and recycling schemes.
-Transport: encouragement of less car use by staff, road safety schemes, improved and integrated public transport.
-Health : research in to link between environment and health, pollution monitoring and local action supporting the WHO Health for Ali Initiative.
-Raising Environmental Awareness: public information and education wíth raised awareness of the changes needed for a more sustainable society.
In addition, the Kirkless Council has an ecological strategy and countryside management schemes with dírect concerns for environmental management, especially the use o f trees and managing open between urban areas.However, the real chalienge, to Kirkless and other councils, is the actual ímplementation of strategies: "Sustained local authority commitment, the ability to work corporately, build alliances and undertakings with externa!interests including the business community, the allocation of sufficient resources, the taking of controversial decisions -these and other factors will be crucial in "thinking globally and acting locally" (WHITNEY, 1994 p. 80).
Other local authorities have adopted different types of strategy : the basic differences lying in the degree to which a council directs or facilitates the creation o f a Local Agenda 21 Statement o r Strategy.In many instances the Council and its officers take the lead, doing ali the investigation and producing the document for discussion the community .
Elsewhere the Council gets the Communíty to do the thinking and create the Statement.In both ways of operating, the type of statement which emerges depends on the people involved and their perception of the city and íts problems.

The Leicester Environment City Experience
Leicester, a city of280 000 people in the Midlands ofEngland, approached sustainability targets through the Leicester Environment Cíty Trust which has a Board ofDirectors comprised o f senior representatives 8 from key organisations in the public, private, academic and voluntary sectors with (numerically) equal representation from each.This trust was effective in achieving partnerships between the city and other organisations and its independence gave greater freedom of action.
Specialist working groups were established to deal with: -Built environment -Energy -Economy and work -Focid and Agriculture -Natural Environment -Transport -Social Environment -Waste and Pollution Typically, each group comprised 8 to 20 members and initially met monthly.Thís involved a total of o ver 150 people attending working groups discussions.Much of the work of consulting the community and ensuring continuing public commitment has been led by Environs, an environmental business funded by the City Council, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Leicestershire County Council.Environs is now a major initiator and facilitator of local environmental and sustainability programmes throughout Europe with contacts further afield.

The Leeds Environment City Experience
Leeds City Council set up a series ofEnvironment City Sustainability Working Groups anda steering forum bringing togetherrepresentatives oftheCouncil, of business groups and of voluntary organisations.It has established the Leeds Environmental Business Forum consisting of over 140 companies with responsibility for initiatives including: -advice on environmental audit -environmental reviews -production of good practice guides The Leeds Environmental Action Forum links 120 voluntary and community based organisations and individuais.Its main activity is networking and keeping the groups in touch.Specialist working groups were set up on the basis of need.If there was a specific task to be dane, a group could be established.

Local Agenda 21 in Manchester
Manches ter city Council' s principies for action towards Local Agenda 21 acknowledge: -That sustainability is about the balance between environmental, economic, social and community concerns.
-That the Council's work towards sustainability should be related to its broad policies and aspirations for the City, some, such as re-populating the inner city being directly in accord with sustainability goals, but some of which may fit less well with Local Agenda 21 ideais.
-That the Council should be seen to be doing things itself, demonstrating to the outside world that it is taking sustainability seriously.It felt that it could not offer the Jeadership to the rest of the community in the Local Agenda 21 process without behaving more sustainable itself.
-That the absence of a State of the Environment report, or its equivalent, should not be seen as a barrier to action, but that the need for baseline infonnation would have to be addresses in the Local Agenda 21 process.The Forum meets every two months and its Management Group meets in the other months.lt is highly participatory, with everyone participating in discussion and many other people being involved in the working/action groups, which have drafted the parts of the statement concerned with the following themes: -Health and a safer city -Greening, Land-use and Open Space -Transport -Energy -Economy and Work -Education and Consultation -Waste and Pollution The action groups have each produced draft statements to go into the Local Agenda 21 statement for the city.Many public consultation and a large territorium 4.1997 programme of interaction with young people have brought in rnany ide as and suggestions for the way in which Local Agenda 21 should proceed in Manches ter.The draft statement was being edited in October 1996 for release to the citizens of Manchester for discussion and comment in January 1997.
The statement sets out principies and ideas for action, but as a documento f only 40 pages, it will not be able to synthesise either the science ofthe detailed practical action necessary ifManchester isto beco me more sustainable.Nor does it set out the ways in which the city's major employers, the City Council itself, the hospitais and the Universities, together with a few major businesses, are going to have to blend their own environmental policies with those of the Local Agenda 21 statement.M uch o f the necessary work is already being done by organisations like Groundwork, the Manchester Wildlife Trust, the City Council itself and by school and comrnunity groups.Local Agenda 21 is thus contributing to the beginning o f a co-ordination, public information and involvement programme which will prepare and encourage Manchesterto be more sustainable.However, that goal will only be achieved if people and organisations change their behaviour.The biggest hurdle at the end of 1996 remains making people aware ofwhat sustainability is and what Local Agenda 21 seeks to do.

Conclusions
• Local Agenda 21 provides rnany opportunities for building the environrnental understanding gained from physical geography into local sustainability strategies.
• The complex environmental interactions, familiar to physical geographers, often cut across the strategies proposed by different working groups in the local agenda 21 process.
• The consultation process in local agenda 21 is a major listening and learning process in which "scientific knowledge" plays only a small part.
• Consultation can provi de a platform for special interestgroups with narrow viewpoints, but if successful ensures that the broad view of community needs and aspirations is understood by ali.
• Making the Local Agenda 21 process independent of the Local Authority can improve the participation of all sectors of the community.
• Local Agenda 21 is above ali about participation and must in volve effective communication of ideas.
• Urban sustainability must address the magnitude of the urban footprint on other ecosystems: new urban energy, hydrological and materiais cycles and flows are needed.
28 o f Agenda 21, entitled "Local authorities in support o f agenda 21" calls on local authorities to develop action plans for sustainable development at the local levei.Paragraph 28.1 reads: