Benin, DEALS, Governance of Inclusive Green Growth in Cities
The proposed City Deal in Sèmè-Podji, “My Trash, My Treasure”, brought together diverse stakeholders to develop a sustainable and inclusive environmental management system in the Agblangandan arrondissement. The initiative aimed to improve residents’ quality of life and help address the challenges of rapid urbanisation, which were further exacerbated by recurring floods.
The programme also focused on the recycling and reuse of waste into value-added products, such as compost and biogas, in order to stimulate inclusive local economic development and sustainability.
Through the programme, a multi-departmental focal team was established and cooperation between public and private stakeholders was strengthened. Relevant by-laws were adopted and new cooperation agreements with private sector partners were concluded to support more sustainable and inclusive environmental management in the Agblangandan arrondissement.
Programme Objective:
The programme objective is to improve the quality of life of the residents given the inequality and urban poverty we identified in the cities targeted.
Overall expected outcome
The overall expected outcome is that performance of the urban government in the field of inclusiveness, safety, resilience and sustainability has improved which matches with the two following Sustainable Development Goals : make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SDG 11) and promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels (SDG 16).
The expected results of the project are
- Urban government capacity to govern sustainable development trajectories is characterised by an integrated, multi-level, multi-stakeholder and inclusive governance approach.
- The programme has contributed to learning and innovation to support the transition to sustainability at city level
Programme Design
The design of the DEALS programme is modelled on the concept of City Deals. These are agreements between Dutch cities, national government agencies and other stakeholders under the Dutch Urban Agenda that aim to strengthen the growth, innovation, and quality of life in Dutch cities. These all unite cities, central governments, businesses and civil society organisations in innovative arrangements to tackle new urban challenges, such as the energy transition, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and healthy urban living. Ideally the DEALS programme can contribute to the urban governance capacity to participate in similar multi-stakeholder partnerships.
Programme Outline
The programme starts with an inception phase (september 2017-february 2018) in which the following deliverables are expected for each of the cities:
- Identification of urban development challenges
- Identification of sustainability challenges and transition path
- Political Economy Analysis
- Inclusiveness Analysis focussed on gender and slums
- Organisational Capacity Analysis
- Baseline DEALS city;
- DEALS City ToCs
- DEALS City Annual Action Plan (CAAP)
- DEALS communication and visibility plan
- DEALS M&E&L plan
After the inception phase deliverables may vary per city and can consist of:
- TA for City Annual Action Plans which include integrated sustainable urban governance initiatives
- On demand support facility for City Annual Action Plans which include multi-level and multi-stakeholder cooperation initiatives (‘DEALS’)
- On demand Q&A facility for city-to-city learning
- Influencing urban policy
- Learning and innovation
- Flexible response mechanism
More information
In this podcast we interviewed Jeroen Diepenmaat, vice-Mayor of the city of Enschede. He visited the cities of Kumasi in Ghana and Sèmè-Podji in Benin, to advise on key urban development issues and our DEALS approach. In the podcast he reflected on how the fishery communities are key in a successful waste chain in Sèmè-Podji.