URBAN POVERTY ALLEVIATION THROUGH ENVIRONMENTAL

146 Pages·2014·5.43 MB·English

by  Scott Langston

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: [phone] Fax: [phone]
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