URBAN POVERTY ALLEVIATION THROUGH ENVIRONMENTAL UPGRADING IN RIO DE JANEIRO: FAVELA BAIRRO R7343 DRAFT RESEARCH REPORT by Jorge Fiori Liz Riley Ronaldo Ramirez March 2000 Development Planning Unit University College London 9 Endsleigh Gardens London WC1H 0ED Tel: +44 (0)20 7338 7581 Fax: +44 (0)20 7387 4541 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu ““The UK Department for International Development (DFID) supports policies, programmes and projects to promote international development. DFID provided funds for this study as part of that objective but the views and opinions expressed are those of the authors alone.”” CONTENTS 1 Page Section 1 Introduction 3 Section 2 The Research 6 2.1 Objectives 2.2 Methodology Section 3 Poverty: Concepts and Approaches 8 3.1 Poverty at the turn of the 21st century 3.2 Defining and explaining poverty 3.3 Urban poverty 3.4 A new policy approach to urban poverty Section 4 Housing Policy and Poverty Alleviation 21 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Conventional policies and poverty 4.3 Non-conventional policies and poverty alleviation 4.4 Towards a new generation of housing policies for poverty alleviation Section 5 Recent Examples of Housing and Poverty Alleviation 32 Initiatives 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The Johannesburg Inner City Renewal Programme 5.3 ENDA and the Pikine City Programme in Dakar 5.4 The Integrated Poverty Alleviation Strategy in Santo André 5.5 Integrated and Participatory Neighbourhood Improvement in Mesa Los Hornos, Mexico City 5.6 The Strategic Plan for Poverty Alleviation in Hyderabad 5.7 The Examples and their Approach to Poverty Alleviation Section 6 Rio de Janeiro: the Housing and Poverty context 49 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Pre-1979: poverty and housing policy in Rio de Janeiro 5.3 Post-1979: poverty and housing policy in Rio de Janeiro Section 7 Favela Bairro: the programme 59 6.1 The programme 2 6.2 The Objectives 6.3 Development and Implementation 6.4 Impact Evaluation 6.5 The Institutional context Section 8 Favela Bairro projects: some examples 83 7.1 Fernão Cardim 7.2 Formiga 7.3 The Mangeira Complex Section 9 Favela Bairro: the research findings 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Heterogeneity and sensitivity to the vulnerable 9.3 Multisectorality at project, policy and institutional levels 9.4 Participation, partnership and devolution 9.5 Municipalisation 9.6 City scale Section 10 Conclusions and recommendations 10.1 Conclusions 10.2 Recommendations for policy makers 10.3 Recommendations for researchers Bibliography Appendix List of Interviewees SECTION 1 3 INTRODUCTION This report is the outcome of a research project entitled ‘‘Urban Poverty Alleviation through Environmental Upgrading in Rio de Janeiro: Favela Bairro’’, funded by the ESCOR Unit of the UK Government’’s Department for International Development (DFID). The research was undertaken by the Development Planning Unit (DPU) of University College London, with the assistance of the Núcleo de Assessoria, Planejamento e Pesquisa (NAPP) in Rio de Janeiro. The project, which started in April 1999, spanned a period of eleven months, with three of those spent in Rio conducting the fieldwork. The main product of the research is this report and its aim is to inform policy makers, multi- and bi-lateral agencies, academics, NGOs and other interested parties of the conceptual foundations of the Favela Bairro squatter settlement upgrading programme in Rio de Janeiro, and of how the concepts that underpin the programme are being put into operation. This report does not seek to evaluate either the performance or impact of Favela Bairro, but instead seeks to explore and explain the objectives and operations of the programme, especially in relation to poverty alleviation. The research is built upon the premise that a new generation of housing policies for poverty alleviation is currently emerging and that this generation is characterised by a combination of five components. These are: the acknowledgement of the heterogeneity of the poor and sensitivity to the vulnerable; multisectoriality at project, policy and institutional levels; participation, partnership and devolution; municipalisation; and city scale. It is the analysis of these components and relationships between them that serves as the theoretical and conceptual framework of this report, with the basic hypothesis being that policies aimed at sustainable and wide scale poverty alleviation must possess certain key characteristics and be implemented in the context of institutional reform that generates robust mechanisms for power sharing, decentralisation and democratisation. The theoretical framework recognises that the specific characteristics of the key policy components will vary over time and place, reflecting the importance of social, economic and political contexts, and it stresses the complexities of developing and implementing this policy approach given the political sensitivity of the components and the complex inter-relationship or synergies between them. It is through these synergies that each policy component serves to reinforce the others and thus constitute a new approach, but they also ensure that implementation of the approach is complex and conflictive. It is this framework which was used to ground the data collection and analysis of the case of Favela Bairro. Favela Bairro (Squatter Settlement - Neighbourhood) is a large-scale comprehensive upgrading programme for medium-sized squatter settlements in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It has the financial backing of the Inter-American Development Bank and was launched in 1994 by the Housing Department of the municipal government of Rio de Janeiro. The programme aims to upgrade all Rio’’s favelas of between 500 and 2,500 households by 2004, with its objectives being to reduce social exclusion and improve living conditions in the 4 squatter settlements. Medium-sized favelas make up nearly one-third of all favelas in Rio, but house around 60 per cent of the favela population of the city, and in addition the Housing Department operates sister upgrading programmes for both large and small favelas. The upgrading work undertaken by Favela Bairro not only includes sanitation systems and other basic infrastructure, but emphasises the importance of opening up and upgrading public spaces, including buildings for the operation of social projects such as nursery schools and income generation initiatives. Each upgrading project is designed by a team of architects, with the construction work undertaken by private firms and utility service providers. The implementation of the social projects brings the involvement of a variety of municipal government departments, as well as non-government organisations, while local residents participate through project consultation and approval, through information dissemination and through maintenance activities. The foundations for Favela Bairro were laid in the 1992 Master Plan of Rio de Janeiro and thus the programme constitutes an important municipal initiative to promote integrated city planning, multisectoral co-operation, the regularisation of city assets, and the social and physical integration of the informal with the formal city. Analysed within the theoretical and conceptual framework of the research, it is argued that Favela Bairro is illustrative of the new generation of housing policies for poverty alleviation, demonstrating to varying degrees the five components that are central to the approach. While the emergence of each of these policy components within the context of Rio and its municipal government is in itself revealing of the factors that can inhibit or encourage policy change, the case of Favela Bairro clearly reveals the complex difficulties that surround the implementation of the approach in its entirety. Analysis of Favela Bairro demonstrates that the linkages between each of the policy components can serve to reinforce or to hamper the emergence and impact of the approach as a whole, and it is on this basis that the report makes general policy recommendations as well as recommendations for each of the five constituent elements. The report firstly details the aims of the research project, the questions it sought to answer and the methodology followed. The concept of poverty is then explored by a review of relevant literature, and the components of a new policy approach to urban poverty alleviation are outlined to act as the conceptual and theoretical framework of the research. This framework is further developed in the following section with respect to housing policy, and the section also reviews how housing policy has changed over time with respect to urban poverty alleviation. Examples of recent housing and urban poverty alleviation initiatives in Latin America, Africa and Asia are then briefly described and analysed within the theoretical framework. A short historical review of housing policy developments in the context of Rio de Janeiro is then given, including information on poverty in the city. The remainder of the report then focuses upon the Favela Bairro upgrading programme, describing its origins, objectives and development, how the programme works in practice, and the methods and procedures being used by the municipal government to 5 monitor its progress and evaluate its impact. Following a brief presentation of three different favelas and their upgrading projects, the report then draws upon primary and secondary data to describe and analyse the conceptual and operational approach of Favela Bairro, with the analysis organised according to the five components of the research’’s theoretical and conceptual framework. Finally the report presents its conclusions and recommendations for policy makers and researchers. SECTION 2 THE RESEARCH 6 2.1 Objectives The aim of this research was to identify the characteristics and conceptual foundations of a new generation of low-income housing policy that the authors believe is now emerging, and taking the case of the Favela Bairro upgrading programme in Rio de Janeiro, assess the degree to which those characteristics and concepts are in evidence. The objectives of the research were thus to examine the extent to which Favela Bairro can be seen as an example of the new approach to poverty alleviation through housing policy and to identify the policy and practical challenges experienced by the municipal authorities and other actors in putting this approach into operation. In sum, the objectives of the research project were: 1. To enhance current knowledge and understanding of how poverty alleviation objectives are developed and operationalised in participatory, city-scale, multisectoral municipal upgrading programmes. 2. To evaluate the objectives and conceptual foundations of Favela Bairro and how these are being put into operation, bringing to the attention of policy makers and practitioners lessons arising from the research. The main issues to be addressed concern the formulation of the conceptual foundations and objectives of Favela Bairro and their implementation by the different actors in the programme. As such, the research questions asked: 1. How do different actors in the Favela Bairro programme understand the objectives of the programme and their relationship to poverty alleviation? 2. In what ways do the actors understand Favela Bairro to be multisectoral in character and why? 3. In what ways do the actors understand there to be community participation in Favela Bairro and why? 4. In what ways do the actors understand the scale of Favela Bairro to be important and why? 5. In what ways do the actors understand Favela Bairro to be characterised by partnerships and why? 6. How do programme managers assess the impact of Favela Bairro and know whether or not it is reaching the very poor and other excluded groups? 7. What are the policy lessons that can be derived from the research with implications for shelter-poverty initiatives in other developing countries? 2.2 Methodology The research was conducted in four phases, starting with a comparative literature review focusing upon shelter and poverty programmes in various developing countries, the mapping of relevant concepts, and the development of the research tools (interview topic guide and preliminary list of interviewees). In the field, the second phase of the research consisted of the collection of primary and secondary data on the Favela Bairro programme, poverty and housing policy in Rio de Janeiro. A total of 38 semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of representatives from government (municipal and state departments), non-government, and private (architects, construction 7 companies, consultancy firms) sectors, as well as with academics and with community groups (a complete list of interviewees is presented as an appendix to this report). For the latter focus groups were held with a range of residents1 from three selected favelas where Favela Bairro has been or is being implemented. The three settlements (Fernão Cardim, Formiga and the Mangeira complex) were chosen to represent different types of favela (the former being relatively small and on flat land, Formiga being of an average size and on very steep land, and the latter being a complex of four adjoining favelas on a hillside). In addition, Fernão Cardim is widely held to be a successful Favela Bairro project, while Formiga demonstrates some problems but steady progress and with full community backing, and the Mangeira favelas are known to have presented considerable difficulties for Favela Bairro, with long delays and problematic relations with local residents. The third phase of the research involved the transcription of the taped interviews and their analysis using the Framework approach. Framework is a method especially designed for use during applied policy research, and enables the definition of concepts, the mapping of the range and dynamics of particular phenomena, the categorisation of different attitudes and behaviours, and the finding of associations and explanations (see: Ritchie and Spencer, 1994). Once the analysis of secondary and primary material was complete, the project then entered the fourth and final stage of writing up and research output production. SECTION 3 POVERTY: CONCEPTS AND APPROACHES 1 Owing to the strength of the drugs trade in the favelas of Rio, the researchers were forced to depend upon the local residents’’ associations to gain access to the favelas and their residents. This situation imposed limitations on the number and range of residents who could be interviewed. 8 3.1 Poverty at the Turn of the 21st Century There is no doubt that over the last century poverty was reduced and that the overall conditions of the world’’s population at the end of the 20th century were considerably better than at the beginning. According to the UNDP’’s Human Development Report of 1997, in the past 50 years poverty has fallen more than in the previous 500. However, in spite of this progress, more than 25 per cent of the world population remain in severe poverty today. While data are notoriously imprecise, reflecting conceptual and methodological differences of approach, but they at least give an idea of the magnitude and of the evolution and trends of the problem. For example, currently, 1.3 billion people live in poverty with an income of less than US$ 1 per day in the South, equivalent to 32 per cent of its population. The largest numbers, 960 million people, are in South Asia, East Asia and South-East Asia and the Pacific. Africa has the largest proportion of poor people, with 220 million and in Latin America and the Caribbean the population below the poverty line reaches 110 million. In Eastern Europe and in the former USSR poverty has spread from a small part of the population to include some 120 million people, while in the advanced industrialised countries there were 100 million people below the poverty line by the middle of the 1990s (UNDP, 1997). All these figures provide just an overview, moreover, neither poverty reduction nor growth are straight linear processes. Analyses reveal short-term ups and downs according to variable economic and political conditions. The 1980s, for example, were a bad period for Latin America and the Caribbean, whereas the decade of the 1990s was also notorious as a period of poverty growth nearly everywhere. 3.2 Defining and Explaining Poverty 3.2.1 Defining poverty The current preoccupation with poverty has given rise to a considerable amount of research and literature, leading to an abundance of material discussing what poverty is, but less examining why poverty exists. The prevalent preoccupation thus seems to be with defining and understanding the nature and characteristics of poverty, relating its origin mostly to immediately evident causes. Within this trend it is possible to distinguish very different ways of understanding poverty and it is on these differences that debate has focused for some time, leading to important changes in concepts and classifications (see for example: Wratten, 1995; UNCHS, 1996; UNDP, 1997; Salama, 1998; Jones, 1999). Within this body of work it is possible to identify and examine the prevalent understandings of poverty that may be instrumental in defining ways for the eradication of urban poverty. Taking Wratten’’s contribution as starting point, the existing conceptual classifications can be simplified into three groups, each of which is very briefly examined here. 1. Quantitative definitions of poverty based on income and consumption Most countries and international agencies define poverty as a relationship between income and a minimum socially acceptable level of consumption. Minimum acceptable consumption implies that society 9 agrees that there are certain necessary goods and services to sustain human and social life, and that the inability of some of its members to obtain them regularly is the expression of a social ill. The income required to purchase those necessary goods defines a poverty line that separates the poor from the non-poor. It also provides a headcount index to establish the level of poverty of a specific country at a particular time. The establishment of poverty lines creates uncertainties given the different meanings of income, of consumption patterns and values in different countries, and as a result most countries define national poverty lines according to their circumstances. International agencies such as the World Bank, however, have promoted the use of standardised lines for specific regions, changing them from region to region. In addition, the relationship between income and consumption is also used to define and measure specific aspects of poverty, for example, absolute poverty, relative poverty, and ultra-poverty. It is these conventional definitions of poverty, frequently referred to in the literature as describing ‘‘income poverty’’, that until recently dominated the field. One of their merits is that they facilitate the quantification of poverty and therefore its variations can be traced along time and compared from place to place, making it the favourite instrument of economists and policy makers. Moreover, its greatest contribution is that it makes it possible to link macro situations (economic, social and political), with specific conditions of poverty, introducing therefore some explanatory potential. While acknowledging that conventional concepts and classifications of poverty have their merits, criticism of the income poverty approach has been substantive and mainly focused on its apparent uni-dimensionality at a time when there is a growing awareness of the complexities of poverty. The approach has, for example, been criticised for being culturally biased and for its emphasis on quantification. According to Chambers, ““What is measurable and measured then becomes what is real and what matters, standardising the diverse, and excluding the divergent and different”” (1995). The 1996 UNCHS report, An Urbanizing World, summarised what are considered to be the inadequacies of this approach as: the fact that it obscures the social and health dimensions of poverty; fails to allow for the very large variations in living costs within and between countries; fails to take into account intra-household differentials; fails to distinguish between different household sizes; is unable to account for non-monetary income sources; fails to understand the role of assets; is open to manipulation; and obscures the underlying causes of poverty (1996). 2. Definitions based on social indicators The search for social indicators reflects not only the dissatisfaction with the notion that income and consumption might embody the whole reality of poverty, but also an awareness of the complexity of this condition, its multiple dimensions and attributes, the interaction of its many factors, its