Submitted on July 15, 1998 to Public Administration and Development
The Implementation of Participacíon Popular in Bolivia: Decentralization of Public Services in Cochabamba
Amrita Daniere Assistant Professor Program in Planning, Department of Geography University of Toronto 100 St. George Street Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3 tel: (416) 978-3236 fax: (416) 978-6729 email:
[email protected] and Claudia Marcondes Director University of Toronto Urban International Center for Urban and Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto, Ontario tel: (416) 978-1345 fax:(416) 978-7162 email:
[email protected]
We would like to thank the University of Toronto International (UTUI) for providing the funding and opportunity to conduct this research as part of the Sustainable Urban Development in Bolivia Project (funded by CIDA). In particular, we would like to thank Christie Gombay and Richard Stren for lending their experience and intellectual insights to this research. We are also grateful to the many individuals in Bolivia who shared their knowledge and expertise with us including Johnny Antezana, Alfredo Cosio and the staff of the Direccíon de Planificacíon at the Municipality of Cochabamba. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of UTUI or any of the organizations consulted during the course of this research endeavor
Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................1 2. CONTEXT ..............................................................................................................................................................2
A. Latin America ..................................................................................................................................... 3 B. Bolivian Reforms................................................................................................................................ 5 C. The Ley de Participación Popular....................................................................................................... 7 3. COCHABAMBA ....................................................................................................................................................9 4. IMPLEMENTATION OF PARTICIPATORY PLANNING ...........................................................................11 5. CHALLENGES TO EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................................14
A. B. C. D.
Urban Development Strategies at the District Level ........................................................................ 14 Urban Development Strategies at the Municipal Level.................................................................... 16 Service Delivery in Peri-Urban Areas .............................................................................................. 17 Technical Capacity Planning............................................................................................................ 18
6. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION ................................................................................................19 REFERENCES ..........................................................................................................................................................22
1. Introduction In 1994, the Federal Government of Bolivia promulgated Ley 1551 commonly known as the Ley de Participación Popular. This law, in keeping with much of the national legislation passed during the administration of Sanchez de Lozada (1993-1997), represents an important attempt to democratize decisionmaking in one of Latin America’s most bureaucratically centralized and, unfortunately, corrupt countries.1 The essential objectives of Ley 1551 are to create more democratic and accountable local government and more cost-efficient service delivery at the municipal level. These laudable goals are to be achieved through the decentralization of financial resources and the devolution of new responsibilities to Bolivian municipalities. There are three key elements of Participación Popular which are of particular interest from a policy perspective. First, municipalities are to automatically receive 20% of all significant national taxes (known as co-participación) to be distributed on a per capita basis and used for public services. Second, the disbursement of these funds is contingent upon the acceptance of a locally designed municipal development plan by Central Government authorities and which is subject to the scrutiny of local watchdog committees. Finally, the policy reform has a great deal of popular support and has captured the imagination of a wide spectrum of Bolivia’s political and social actors. One reason for this high level of support is that under the new law, community organizations are key actors in the process of identifying and prioritizing public investments to be funded by co-participación and are assigned the role of proposing, controlling, and supervising local investment projects in the areas of education, health, basic sanitation, sports, local roads, and urban and rural development.2 This paper examines how the implementation of the Ley de Participación Popular is proceeding in Cochabamba, one of larger and more progressive cities in Bolivia, with the objective of identifying hurdles impeding implementation as well as illuminating successful aspects of the process. The region of Cochabamba (population 415,000) represents an excellent case study of the effectiveness of the Ley’s implementation in that it is relatively distant from the capital of La Paz, where most decisions regarding all municipalities have traditionally been made. In the next section of the paper, we discuss the context of the Ley de Participación Popular in terms of its place among a host of decentralization and democratization measures adopted recently in Latin America and Bolivia. In Section 3 we explore the city of Cochabamba 1
Bolivia was recently designated by Amnesty International (check) as the second most corrupt country in the world, preceded only by the country of Nigeria.
using basic descriptive statistics and document the current status of the city’s planning and prioritization process as a result of the initial implementation of Participación Popular. Section 4 presents some of the shortcomings of the process including the weaknesses of the institutions assigned to implement the greater democratization of the planning process. We then go on to suggest ways to help overcome some of the obstacles to more democratic and cost-effective service provision in the Cochabamba metropolitan region. The recommendations center on improving institutional relations between different levels of government and, continue to enhance the actual participation of local residents in plan development.
2. Context Decentralization is a global phenomenon which some areas of the world, particularly Latin America and Eastern Europe, are adopting with alacrity.3 Often, as noted by Dillinger, ”the decentralization now occurring is not a carefully designed sequence of reforms aimed at improving the efficiency of public service delivery; it appears to be a reluctant and disorderly series of concessions by central governments attempting to maintain political stability.”4 Nonetheless, rapid changes in legislation which change the de jure responsibilities and the financial resources of municipalities present an important opportunity to improve both accountability and the quality of service delivery. Most of the literature on decentralization and its potential to both enhance democracy and improve service delivery suggests that a key factor behind successful initiatives is the nature of intergovernmental relations, i.e., the “rules that govern the transactions between national government political leaders, local government leaders, staff and consumers.”5 According to Silverman (1992), for example, there is not simply one optimal set of rules but rather several best sets of intergovernmental arrangements that are generally quite complicated and allow both levels of government to have clear functional responsibilities as well as be responsive to their citizenry. Unfortunately, the data that researchers have on how to best reform the nature of intergovernmental relations is limited, at best, given that most of the good examples come from developed countries. Developed countries, themselves, have such different histories and also present a such wide range of alternative solutions to the division of responsibilities, financing arrangements and levels of responsiveness,
2
The Ley de Participación Popular refers to all community organizations as OTBs or organizaciones territoriales de base which includes specifically organized indigenous and rural communities as well as groups referred to as Juntas Vecinales (urban community organizations). 3 One of many, but a particularly useful discussion, is edited by McCarney, 1996. 4 Dillinger, 1994, p. 1. 5 Ibid., p.16.
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that their usefulness as guides to reform are limited.6 Developing countries, on the other hand, present primarily negative examples or are currently in the midst of reform. Although they represent excellent pilotstudies, most of these reform efforts are too recent to judge and analyze in terms of successful implementation. It does appear from the existing literature, however, that there are three main elements to focus on when trying to successfully reform the structure of urban service delivery in developing countries including: 1)clarifying the function responsibilities of different levels of government; 2) providing sources of revenue sufficient to pay for the responsibilities, and (3) constructing a system of accountability which allows for central government regulation as well as incentives for the public sector to respond to the local population.7 Furthermore, a significant problem, especially in case of Latin American countries, is that “minimum conditions for electoral choice making - civil liberties and at least quasicompetitive parties - do not apply to the selection of local candidates.”8 What this might imply for popular participation is that the extent and quality of popular participation in Bolivian cities, whether in local elections or in the selection of planning projects, is less focused on the issue and problems at hand and more involved in national scale political issues or ideology. A. Latin America In the last decade, Latin American countries have begun to transform themselves from strongly centralized political states into systems which allow for higher levels of popular participation and increased decentralization. Although there are at least several reasons for these trends, one that is often advanced is that the struggle against dictatorships has, in many nations, created a national consensus prioritizing democratization. Democratization has, in turn, allowed local government to gain political importance as the entity primarily responsible for the management of many urban problems as well as the most obvious bridge between state and society.9 As democracy has become more established in Latin American countries, there has been great interest in fostering local democracy and more effective public participation which has manifested itself in various levels of decentralization.10 Another set of reasons for increased emphasis on
6
Ostram et. al., 1992. Dillinger, 1994, p.22. 8 Campbell, 1992, p.7. 9 Borja, 1992. 10 A number of Latin American countries have experienced a succession of elected governments for almost twenty years such as in Ecuador where elected governments were established in 1978. Other countries, such as Chile, have much more recent experience, where democratic government was essentially introduced in 1989. Even one of the most centralized states of all, Mexico, has begun to decentralize some of the power and financial resources to local governments (Marcondes, 1996). 7
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decentralization has its roots in the potential increase in efficiency and cost-savings that might be gained from downloading various responsibilities from the central to local or municipal governments.11 A particularly interesting example of the trend toward decentralization is the country of Chile where measures to decentralize where initiated as early as the mid-1970s. The military regime governing Chile initiated a series of municipal reforms (including deconcentration and privatization of local functions and services) as part of their economic strategy. The decentralization process continued after the introduction of democracy and evolved into a key component of the governments program for democratic transition (19901993).12 As an example, democratic election of municipal lawmakers was instituted simultaneously with community participation mechanisms. Chileans municipalities consequently experience local autonomy and a revenue redistribution mechanism which provides them with financial resources. Ecuador, a country with a much longer history of democracy, has only just begun to initiate decentralization. Since 1988, the central government in Ecuador has established state reform, modernization, privatization and economic liberalization. Attempts to streamline the state bureaucracy and the number and size of public enterprises were introduced to reduce the effects of an economic crisis, which through the years has resulted in social and political conflict as well as shortages of social services. The current reform of central government administration and the gradual implementation of the decentralization program in Ecuador are important steps towards regional deconcentration of government activities and decentralization of service delivery responsibilities to municipal governments. At the same time, the decentralization program in the country aims at strengthening local government’s financial and administrative capacity to implement development programs and to broaden social responsibilities.13 Unfortunately, conflict has arisen around the downloading of functions and duties from the central to the local governments without a concomitant increase of financial, legal or technical resources. This is a very common pattern in decentralization reform efforts and, obviously, hampers the potential efforts of municipalities to improve performance.14 The government of Mexico has also taken several important steps toward decentralization including a constitutional reform in 1983 which redefined the relationship between municipal government and other levels of government.15 Perhaps the most significant achievement of this reform was the introduction of political pluralism at the local level which, in turn, encouraged different policies and styles in local
11
Peterson, 1997. Martner, 1993. 13 Carrion, 1996. 14 Bird, 1995. 15 Nickson, 1995. 12
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administration. Federal government reform also transferred both responsibilities and limited revenue raising authority from the center to local governments. Nonetheless, and as frequently reported in the media, political centralism persists to a great degree in Mexico. Municipalities remain severely dependent and subordinate to state and federal governments for financial resources as well as for the development and implementation of programs.16 Furthermore, civic participation is frequently suppressed through traditional processes of control which are still prevalent in the relationship between local government and civil society, although the control and more public input than was possible before. As these three examples suggest, there is no clear road map to ensure that decentralization results in better urban service delivery and a more participatory model of decision-making. In each case, there exist positives and negatives which continue to hamper the development of urban centers capable of providing responsive urban services. Researchers and policy makers are still trying to identify the key components to better decentralization reform but, what is clear, is that often there is a mismatch between either the functional responsibilities of local government and the financial resources available to it or a gap between responsibilities and the level of public participation. These mismatches are not necessarily apparent in the written laws themselves but appear in the process of implementation and speak to the three elements mentioned earlier, i.e., functional clarity at different levels, adequate resources to carry out those functions, and regulation and incentives to allow the process to be responsive and fair. B. Bolivian Reforms As in other Latin American countries, the wave of reforms initiated in Bolivia’s public sphere during the last five years have, on paper, embraced the fundamental propositions that decentralization of power and resources can strengthen democratic participation (and vice versa) and that decentralization can improve the quality and coverage of local public services. The combined effects of recent legislation has the potential to completely change the process of governance and provision of services and infrastructure in Bolivia. In addition to passing the Ley de Participación Popular in early 1995, the central government also provided for the direct election of mayors rather than relying on majority parties to select the new mayors following election results. Directly elected mayors are currently serving their first term in Bolivia’s cities. The impact of an even more recent law, the Law of Administrative Decentralization (Ley 1654), has also just begun to be felt in the urban policy/development landscape. This Law transformed the nine existing departmental prefecturas from low-key decentralized entities mainly responsible for internal security into mini-central governments by transferring most of the executive functions from central
16
Marcondes, 1996.
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ministries and national secretariats to the prefecturas.17 While it appears that process has begun with few major difficulties, obviously it is still too early to asses the effectiveness of this measure to decentralize government action particularly in terms of national urban development policy. Furthermore, there are important ambiguities regarding how the coordination between different levels of government will develop and what exactly the role of prefecturas will be vis-à-vis both small and large cities within their departmental boundaries. As an example, the national unit responsible for road building and maintenance has been virtually dissolved in response to Ley 1654 and has yet to be effectively replaced within any of the prefecturas. The intense period of restructuring is suppose to bring more stability to Bolivia’s political system in the future since one of the first measures taken by the new administration in 1990 was legislation to create a new administrative framework (Ley SAFCO). The central government, for example, created a specialized and elite civil service program to provide the central administration with highly qualified personnel. The legislation is also designed to prevent the complete turnover in central government staff which traditionally accompanies a change in administration every four years thereby destroying the development of a experienced cadre of bureaucrats. Unfortunately, several of the most important measures in the legislation have not been adequately regulated and implemented, such as the personnel administration issue, and there undoubtedly remain significant weaknesses in the quality of Bolivia’s public administration staffing, particularly in the third and fourth tiers of government (Rotoff, 1996). Almost any one of the legislative reforms take separately would imply a significant change in the distribution of resources and decision-making authority. Taken together, the reforms represent the most comprehensive and sweeping efforts to decentralize decision-making authority and encourage public participation of any country in Latin America. The laws, at least on paper, compare favorably to any of the reform measures implemented in Chile, Ecuador and Mexico and are being closely monitored by Latin American governments, as well as a number of donor agencies and countries, as to their effect on Bolivia’s economic development and democratization process.18 The potential of these reforms, particularly that of the Ley de Participación Popular, to improve the delivery of urban services and infrastructure through increased participation of the actual beneficiaries and local, as opposed to national, municipal planning is clearly unlimited. Actual experience, up to this point however, suggests that there are some significant obstacles to the effective decentralization of public service delivery.
17
Departments are the geographic units most closely corresponding to provinces (in Canada) or states (in the United States). 18 LA Times, 1997.
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C. The Ley de Participación Popular A unique aspect of Bolivia’s Ley de Participación Popular is the required involvement of local grass-roots organizations in decision-making processes. Through Participación Popular, 20% of national revenues is transferred to municipalities for the implementation of public services according to the needs identified by community organizations -- organizaciones territoriales de base (OTBs). The Ley de Participación Popular recognizes the OTBs (or Juntas Vecinales) as key actors in the process and assigns them the role of proposing, controlling, and supervising local investment projects in the areas of education, health, basic sanitation, local roads, and urban and rural development. We should note that in the two years since the Law’s passage, the central government agency charged with implementing the law, the Secretaría Nacional de Participación Popular (SNPP), has focused on assisting rural municipalities to initiate planning activities and has only very recently turned to urban development in Bolivia’s larger cities.19 The Ley also prescribes a process - Planificación Participativa Municipal (PPM) - which entails the coordination of activities related to the on-going identification of problems, demands, alternatives, and limitations in conjunction with the formulation of plans, programs, projects and budgets. According to the Ley, the needs identified through PPM are to be fulfilled with the resources of coparticipación. The PPM is to be coordinated by the municipalities following national guidelines published in the Guia General del Proceso de Planificación Participativa. The guide recommends that the municipalities undertake the following steps: (1) Preparation and Organization of the Process: including the listing of institutional and social actors to participate in the process as well as the development of workshops to increase understanding of the PPM process among participating actors; (2) Preparation of a Diagnosis: identifying the needs and priorities at the community (district) level with the development of matrices and a set of base maps for each community; (3) Preparation of the Plano de Desarrollo Municipal Sostenible (PDMS): including development strategies at the municipal level in consultation with interested institutions; (4) Development and Approval of the Plano Annual Operativo (PAO) which includes a plan for municipal yearly expenditures, based on the framework set by the PDMS; (5) Execution and Administration: including all necessary actions for the implementation of
19
SNPP was initially located in the Ministry of Human Development. Recent national elections have meant a name change (it is now simply called Participación Popular) and a relocation to the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Planning.
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the PPM such as holding workshops to identify institutional and social actors for the execution and administration of projects, coordination of inter-municipal support for the development of the projects, management of pre-project financing, and execution of projects among others. PPM, according to the SNPP, is designed to further medium and long-term development based on the principles of social equity, sustainability and integralidad. Sustainability is apparently used in a somewhat broad sense and includes rational use of natural resources as well as social equity and economic growth. Ideally, Planificación Participativa requires that the identification of demands and priorities at the district level is followed by the development of a Plan de Desarrollo Municipal Sostenible (PDMS). Neither the Guia nor the Ley itself provides any indication of what such plan should contain although the language of the Guia suggests that both environmental sustainability and the issue of gender/women be addressed specifically in the plans. The Ley de Participación Popular also recognizes groups called Juntas Vecinales (JV) in each district (one per district) to articulate the demands of community-based organizations in the planning process. The JVs are a district level neighborhood committee composed of elected representatives among all the OTBs legally recognized in that specific district. JVs are responsible for ensuring that the PPM addresses the interests and needs of the entire community and are suppose to identify, prioritize, supervise and assist with the execution of community-wide projects. Figure 1 outlines the key actors in the process using the municipality of Cochabamba as an example. Finally, the Ley decrees that Consejos de Vigilancia (CVs) (watch-dog agencies) be established at the municipal level to ensure that the resources are appropriately allocated and that funds are spent according to community needs. The CVs are a regulatory body composed of one elected representative from each JV (elected for a two year term) with responsibility for ensuring that: (i) the Plan Annual Operativo (PAO) reflects the priorities of the PDMS; (ii) coparticipación resources are allocated in accordance with the PAO and the PDM; (iii) coparticipación resources are equitably divided between urban and rural populations in the municipality; (iv) a maximum of 10 % of the funds are being used for administration; and (v) municipal government budgets and bills relating to the allocation and spending of coparticipación funds are available to the public. Members or representatives of both the JVs and the CVs are not paid for their services to the community nor do they receive any kind of financial support to cover the expenses associated with attending meetings, preparing reports, etc.
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3. Cochabamba20 The urban context in Bolivia is significant in that, as of 1992, almost 60 percent of the country’s population lived in urban areas, and more than half of the total urban population resided in three major metropolitan areas: La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. These urban areas are growing at rates far above the national average leading to increased pressure on already overstretched service delivery systems. The difficulties in providing improved services are compounded by the creation of large informal settlements. Rapid urban growth coupled with widespread poverty (51 percent of the households in urban areas live below the poverty line) have resulted in informal settlements which are very difficult to provide with services, such as water and sanitation, both because of their "illegality" and because of the nature of their settlement patterns.21 The municipality of Cochabamba (the capital of the Department of Cochabamba) is the third most populous urban settlement in Bolivia and is located approximately eight hours from La Paz (the national capital) in a fertile valley within the Andean foothills. The city represents a good case study for the purposes of this paper because the municipality has a reputation for progressive governance and operates quite independently, relatively speaking, from the central government. In addition, the population and economic base of the region is expanding rapidly partially in response to a thriving coca trade, the center of which is located relatively close to Cochabamba. Thus, city officials are faced with a growing population, rising demand for services, increasing environmental problems and rising incomes - a situation that is somewhat typical of urban centers in many areas of Latin America. The city's population of 480,000 is spread out over an area measuring approximately 25 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide. Urban sprawl, the result of an annual growth rate of 4.5 %, is occurring in a linear manner along the central road running the length of the bowl resulting in the increased consumption of agricultural land, forests and other protected areas. Land speculation is common in both the formal and informal real estate markets and has forced recent migrants and low income households to settle on the periphery. Low income dwellings along the periphery are simple wood or adobe structures with thatched roofs, and are usually located on large tree-covered plots. Poorly enforced regulations have contributed to further encroachment of protected areas by high-income households that are attracted to the grass-covered hills and the views that these areas provide of the city.
20
A large portion of the information in this section is based on material collected by Claudia Marcondes during interviews with individuals employed by the municipality of Cochabamba. Please see Marcondes (1997) for more information regarding these interviews. 21 Mapa de Pobreza, 1994, p. 15.
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As a result of urban sprawl, area densities decrease progressively from the city centre rendering infrastructure provision within outlying areas both costly and inefficient. A private sector enterprise, SEMAPA (Sociedad Municipal de Agua Potable y Acantarillio), is responsible for water and sanitation in Cochabamba, however, only 53 % of the households in Cochabamba have access to piped water.22 Sanitation services are also poor in Cochabamba in that self-built toilets are common throughout peri-urban areas where 40 % of households lack sanitation services. High income dwellings, also located along the periphery of the city, are fully serviced, however, because the costs of these services are paid by the individual households. Finally, traffic along many of the main roads leading from the city centre to outlying areas has increased by 300 % over the last 15 years and these roads are typically paved and in relatively good condition. On the other hand, dirt roads found within most peri-urban areas are in very poor condition and, as a result, are inaccessible in the rainy season. The Mapa de Pobreza, prepared by Bolivia's Ministry of Human Development using 1993 census data, estimates that 188,000 or more than a third of Cochabambinos are poor. In a country where 60% of the population lives below the poverty line, this is not unexpected. As suggested earlier, the majority of the poor in Cochabamba live in the peri-urban areas; areas which are growing at more than 7% a year. Table 1 presents data from the municipality of Cochabamba which suggest that, in terns of absolute numbers, the majority of poor households are located in the south and extreme northwest parts of the city (Districts 5, 6 and 8). Interestingly , District 6 was originally settled by rural migrants in the early 1970s during the development of the so-called segundo anillo (which encompasses Districts 2 through 6). Its proximity to the downtown core, as indicated in Figure 2 (a map of Cochabamba), eventually led to its transformation into an extremely densely settled district. The districts in the south and southeast (Districts 5 through 9) have the highest percentages of urban poor in the entire city. In terms of access to services, the areas which are least well supplied with piped water and sanitation are, not surprisingly, located in the extreme northwest and in the southern districts, i.e., Districts 2, 7 and 8. In these districts, 62.5%, 91.6% and 98.2% of the population has limited or no services. Housing conditions, including the quality of materials used for constructions, physical characteristics of the housing and provision of basic services, are also the least satisfactory in Districts 7 and 8. Clearly, the districts with the least access to services, such as Districts 2, 7 and 8 stand to gain the most in terms of absolute improvements should participatory planning and the resources from coparticipación be implemented equitably and effectively. 22
Household without piped connections collect water from less sanitary sources such as rivers and private or public wells (Mapa de Pobreza, 1994).
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4. Implementation of Participatory Planning While a substantial amount of progress has been made in the extension of public participation in choosing leaders and identifying projects, particularly in Bolivia’s rural areas, there remains a great deal of work to be done in the development of nation urban policies, particularly as they relate to the country’s larger cities. In the case of Cochabamba, however, quite a substantial bit of progress has been made primarily because more inclusionary practices were initiated even before the approval of the Ley de Participación Popular. In particular, an institutional setting for Participación Popular was in place early in Cochabamba because of the city's 1993 initiative (before the approval of the Law) to create 13 districts within the boundaries of the city (each district consists of approximately 30,000 - 40,000 inhabitants). The municipality also created 11 Casas Comunales to consolidate the presence of the local government in each one of the districts (one Casa Comunal has responsibility for 3 districts but, as a general rule, each district has its own Casa Comunal). The idea behind the creation of the Casas Comunales was to facilitate the input of the public into the decision-making process. The Casas are under the Direción de Gestión Urbana at the Oficialia Mayor de Desarrollo Territorial y Medio Ambiente and provide an interesting institutional arrangement in terms of their contribution to the implementation of the Ley. Casas Comunales are essentially decentralized administrative units typically located in, or close to, another municipal office such as a health clinic or a public market. They offer services to the public such as processing of building permits, licensing, certificates, information about municipal by-laws, etc. The Casas Comunales are more involved in the implementation of decisions and policies that have already been made by senior staff - at the level of the Oficialia - and have very little influence in the process. However, as the key contact office between the population and the Mayor’s office, they play an important role as a conduit of information, in establishing a cooperative relationship with community leaders and liaison with the communities regarding the public participation process. For example, the Casas Comunales developed the cartillas described below (p. 13) and coordinated the work involved with “prioritizing the demands” among the community groups in each district. In 1997, each Casa Comunal consisted of 7 or 8 staff members (typically including a lawyer, legal assistant, architect and administrative staff) who work directly with the public in their area around the development and implementation of community projects. In fact, the inclusion of Casas in the planning process has been deemed so successful that the municipality wants to implement an even more substantial political decentralization process which will transform the Casas Comunales into Sub-alcadias (or submayoralties) and involve the popular election of sub-alcades or vice-mayors. 11
In addition to access to a Casa Communal, urban residents of Cochabamba are consulted for planning purposes in a variety of public forums by different government agencies, including, the Direción de Planificación, the Direción de Gestión Urbana and the Direción de Servicios Urbanos (former Direción de Participación Popular). Due to continuity in municipal administration, a cooperative relationship exists between the senior management staff of these departments and is further encouraged through the development of weekly meetings for directors and heads of departments. In general, senior management staff is experienced and have been long working for the municipality. Since 1994, the focus of public workshops and seminars has centered around gathering input for the annual operating plans (the PAOs). The work conducted by the Direción de Gestión Urbana, relying on the Casas Comunales, included the development of cartillas (small brochures) to provide citizens with the information necessary to prioritize the investments of coparticipación resources. These include information about calculation of the amount of resources available from coparticipación for each district as well as cost of the different types of equipment/infrastructure work. Given that community organizations (OTBs) are expected to prioritize among competing community projects and investments while preparing the PAO, this type of information is vital to the implementation of the Ley. Unfortunately, few of the members of the OTBs have any experience in budgeting and prioritizing expenditures and an enormous amount of training is required before any given group can agree on a particular stream of investments. The outcomes of the Planificación Participativa Municipal, as of the summer of 1997, include a diagnosis of each of the 13 districts and a series of demands for projects in the spheres of road improvements, schools, parks, markets, bridges, stream cleaning, water and sewage. The total costs of actually completing these investments is $35 million US (which would require both $10 million US from the city’s share of coparticipación resources as well as approximately $25 million US from the resources of Cochabamba its, i.e., ingresos proprios). In addition to the lists of projects and priorities prepared for all 13 districts, Planos de Desarrollo Districtal include environmental and gender components which is consistent with what the Ley requires for the municipal-level plan. The development of these Planos was primarily directed by the technicians of the Direción de Planificación in cooperation with staff of the appropriate Casas Comunales and representatives of the Juntas Vecinales (JVs).23 Each one of the Planos Districtales required approximately 45 meetings and seminars devoted to discussions of the priorities and proposals. Ideally, the implementation of these plans
23
Surprisingly, given the emphasis given to environmental issues in the plans, it appears that staff members of the Departamento de Gestión Ambiental did not participate in the development of the three detailed district plans.
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will take place through the annual operating plans which, as noted earlier, include resources from coparticipación as well as ingresos proprios. The Planos Districtales are comprehensive documents providing a wealth of local level detail almost unknown in Bolivia up to this point. The documents summarize, for example, the origin of recent migrants, the number of housing units in the various neighborhoods, access to water and sanitation services across neighborhoods, the number and size of schools in the district, the educational level and occupation of all workers, the types of industries and businesses to be found in the district, etc. While much of this data is available from the 1991 census, the matching of detailed information to services for a specific area within a city is quite unusual data to have for a Bolivian city and is obviously of great use for the development of urban plans. The Planos go on to describe the kinds of problems or difficulties faced by the district and to propose the series of investment decisions, selected through public participation, designed to deal with some of the problems. In particular, the main product or output of the plans are to delineate the investments that the plan proposes into four areas of investment, i.e., land/environmental, social development, economic development, and institutional development. In the District Plan developed by District 7, for example, approximately 79 percent of the investments in the next three years are to be spent on land use/environmental types of investments such as improved road maintenance, land regularization, etc. In addition, the plan includes a series of recommendations for zoning, traffic circulation, etc. which are suppose to protect the environment, improve quality of life and add to the economic efficiency of the district. Taken together, the Planos represent a very informative document regarding the districts in question although, of course, the have yet to be implemented and are subject to the criticism, as are all municipal plans, that not enough public consultation went into their formulation. At present, there are a total of 114 JV s in Cochabamba. In general, based on a series of interviews and discussions with their leadership, these community organizations seem to be strong and count on support from the municipality through the Casas Comunales. The watchdog committee (the CV) currently has 20 members (including 2 women). There has been a concerted effort in Bolivia to try and include women in the participatory planning process primarily fueled by the willingness of international donor organizations to fund training and capacity building programs for women. As an example, a recent Canadian Aid project provided support for a project designed specifically to strengthen the capacity of women in Cochabamba to participate in Participación Popular. The consulting company in charge of the project conducted 20 workshops and seminars designed specifically for 80 women representatives in
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Cochabamba’s JVs with particular emphasis on the role of gender as well as, of course, providing information on how to plan for the future of their neighborhoods and communities.
5. Challenges to Effective Implementation Cochabamba’s initial three years of experience with Participación Popular is quite positive in that the municipality has experimented with methods of inclusion which capture the essence of participatory planning. While Cochabamba’s initiatives in this area are an important positive example for other Bolivian (and Latin American) municipalities, there are several ways in which implementation could be improved. While it is true, for example, that very substantial planos districtales were prepared for 3 of Cochabamba’s districts were prepared in a manner consistent with the Ley, the municipality still needs to develop district plans for the remaining 10 districts to develop a complete plan for the municipality (as specified by the Ley). Furthermore, although the first 3 plans incorporate long-term objectives and development strategies at the district level, the extent to which they are articulated within a broader urban development strategy at the municipal level remains uncertain and is not addressed by any of the current documentation available. Finally, the amount of resources from coparticipación transferred to the municipality are far less than the amount needed to fulfill the priority demands articulated by the JVs in all 13 districts of Cochabamba. A. Urban Development Strategies at the District Level Municipal experience with the implementation of the Ley de Participación Popular in Cochabamba has definitely gone beyond the initial identification of needs and priorities within each district and the inclusion of such demands (as much as possible) into the annual operational plans. The Planos Districtales developed for 3 districts describe the needs and priorities of these specific geographic areas in detail as well as promote sustainable development within those districts. However, while the perspective at the district level includes socio-economic, environmental and gender components, several problems remain unresolved. As an example, the district plans do not clarify the role of specific districts in cases where several districts share responsibility over one area (such as Cochabamba’s fragile Lagoon area). Action to protect, manage and develop areas around the Lagoon requires intervention at the municipal level (rather than at district level) but how this will be handled or how decisions will be made in such cases is not addressed in either the district plans or existing municipal documents. Furthermore, district plans still need to be developed for the remaining 10 districts. This is a priority for the municipal government who would like to complete this task as quickly as possible to facilitate the transfer of funds from the central government. As alluded to earlier, training and capacity building process is extremely time consuming and many of workshops, seminars and community meetings to 14
educate participants about the process are necessary before a group of citizens can actually agree to a set of investments and a specific plan. There is a clear lack of capacity at the level of the community organizations in that their representatives (dirigentes) tend to lack experience in directing meetings, organizing discussion and reaching a consensus. These are skills which dirigentes and other members of the OTBs need to develop over time as they become accustom to participating in group discussions where strategic issues and investments are the focus of the meeting. Often, the participatory process becomes bogged down in problems which have little to do with identifying needs and prioritization of investments. As an example, structural problems with the Ley itself are often the focus of major discussions with community groups rather than actual planning decisions and practice. A common area of concern is that the allocation of coparticipación resources is to be based on population levels from the 1991 census. However, since 1991, the peri-urban growth rate in Cochabamba has been 7 percent which has distributional implications on the amount of resources the districts should receive. Community groups have spent many hours discussing their objections to using the 1991 numbers and their refusal to accept a “reduction” of the amount of resources they are receive. Another challenge to implementation of Participación Popular is the general politicization of the OTBs. As noted earlier, the implementation process depends on the volunteer efforts of representatives from both the Juntas Vecinales and the Consejos de Vigilancia as the Ley does not provide dirigentes with any type of financial support to cover the cost of their activities on behalf of the planning process. This obviously has important implications for the way the work is conducted in that dirigentes, many of whom are not wealthy, feel justified in accepting the financial “aid” of institutions with vested interests in the outcomes of the planning process. A recent study by CEDURE (1997) of the JVs in Bolivia indicates that political parties, for example, that JVs are using their influence to promote certain politicians. The same study reveals that, due to their regulatory functions, the CVs are even more susceptible to political pressures and that political parties are attempt to assure that overall control of CVs’ actions do not rest in hands of opposition parties by purchasing the loyalty of several CV members at a time. The politicization of the community groups is clearly a very difficult issue. It may be one of the reasons behind the recent rejection of all the plans by the City Council. Apparently, the Municipal Council felt that the plans were too long, traditional and not realistic and have urged that the next versions of the plans be strategic plans which bridge the gap between the demands of the communities and what it is possible to achieve given the estimated resources flowing to the municipality from coparticipación. A clear
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loser in the process so far are the communities which should be actually receiving investments at this point and yet have little to show for all of their volunteer efforts. B. Urban Development Strategies at the Municipal Level At the moment, district plans are designed without reference to a master plan or document which rationalizes or brings together the various visions of the future express within each district. A framework to overcome the fragmentation between district level issues and broader municipal-wide issues, however, does exist in Cochabamba. The Estrategias de Desarrollo Urbano for the entire municipality were developed in 1995 with public participation and the existence of this set of strategies should facilitate the articulation of consistent short-term demands and strategies for sustainable development at the district level. Unfortunately, even though the Estrategias include a wide range of strategies to promote urban development in Cochabamba (including socio-economic, land use and environment considerations), they do not contain specific guidelines around which to orient urban growth. A Master Plan and associated studies and recommendations are necessary to determine, for example, an appropriate strategy for earmarking industrial lands or providing services to peri-urban neighborhoods. Furthermore, the district plans do not recognize another important aspects of urban development in Cochabamba which is the process of metropolization which is currently taking place in the region surrounding the city of Cochabamba. Cochabamba, the city, is becoming linked, through the rapid pace of urbanization, to surrounding small towns all of which will be affected by the infrastructure investments the city makes in the next few years. This process of metropolization requires the development of a Regional Development Plan or strategy which acknowledges the problems and opportunities posed by the rapid expansion of the urban area within the entire valley. The most recent Master Plan for the urban area of Cochabamba dates from 1981 and has never been implemented due to the lack of appropriate implementation tools. While additional regional plans exist in the areas of transportation and roads, parks and green spaces and storm water management, the municipality as a whole has yet to formulate a Plan de Desarrollo Municipal Sostenible (PDMS) as prescribed by the Ley. This further contributes to the fragmentation between district level issues and broader issues related to the municipal problematique. There is no way to ensure that the district plans and municipal/regional visions of urban development coincide and no way to decide which vision should dominate in instances of conflict or disagreement. The lack of consistency between district-level and municipal plans as a whole is most evident in the environmental sphere. Cochabamba, in particular, suffers from severe problems of water shortage and 16
contamination because of the lack of fresh water sources beyond that of the single river which flows through the valley. All three Planos Districtales include local environmental considerations, however, issues such as general water and air pollution require an integrated and systemic approach to be implemented at the regional level. The Departamento de Gestión Ambiental at the Oficialia Mayor de Desarrollo Territorial has just been created (1996) but has already developed a Plan Maestro de Gestión Ambiental Municipal. The Plan contains a set of proposals to be implemented between 1997-2001 to improve environmental management in the city (including proposals to strengthen municipal capacity to do so). The same Departamento also prepared an assessment of the environmental management situation in the city which provides an indication of current state of water quality, deforestation, desertification, solid waste and air quality within the region. The city, however, has yet to actually to adopt any "corrective" measures let alone develop "preventative" approaches which hinge on long-term sustainable development planning implemented throughout the districts. The importance of a regional or a least municipal perspective in this area is paramount and needs to be implemented and enforced quickly. C. Service Delivery in Peri-Urban Areas Improvements in service delivery in peri-urban areas are still a challenge in most parts of Bolivia and, in Cochabamba, it is too early in the process to tell if participatory planning as implemented by the municipality is having an impact on the most marginalized members of the community. As noted earlier, while some districts in Cochabamba are well served in terms of infrastructure and social services, the needs of other districts are unfulfilled and require a tremendous amount of resource investment. The municipality not only needs resources to fulfill these demands but also requires resources to implement regular services in a decentralized fashion through the Casas Comunales. Some of the Casas Comunales operate in very poor working conditions and lack space to provide even a minimum level of service. In these districts, the current needs and demands identified at the local level require many more resources than those transferred and, given the limited amount of ingresos proprios the municipality has available to top up the requested investments, the local government is in the position of not having the financial capacity to fulfill even the current demands of the poorest districts. Given the shortfall in resources, alternative forms of service provision, such as joint ventures with NGOs and community groups, need to be explored aggressively although these too will require some resources in that the municipal government will need to regulate and oversee any type of service provision. While the peri-urban communities in Cochabamba are relatively are well organized and seem to have a cooperative relationship with the municipality mainly through the Casas Comunales, the extent to which 17
these services can be efficiently and affordably delivery through community participation still remains uncertain. Cochabamba’s problem in this regard is quite a common one in that all three of the municipalities surveyed as part of a larger study (Cochabamba, La Paz and Santa Cruz) have developed lists of demands for capital works projects in excess of the amount of resources available through coparticipación. Some municipalities are attempting to solve this problem by drawing on resources of the municipal budget (or ingresos proprios), however, municipalities are currently required (by the Ley Organica de Municipios) to limit their administrative costs to 15% of the municipal budget. Thus, the three municipalities surveyed are also going through administrative reforms aiming at reducing the number of employees and the expenditures with equipment. La Paz, for example, is implementing serious downsizing measures and privatization of municipal services to reduce its administrative costs from 25% to 15% of the municipal budget. The use of already scarce ingresos proprios does not seem to alleviate the problem of lack of resources to cover the amount of demands. As a result, municipalities are constantly seeking for additional funding from other sources such as other levels of government, the Fundo de Inversion Social (FIS), or international organizations. D. Technical Capacity Planning The Direción de Planificación is the municipal unit responsible for the PAOs and for municipal planning in Cochabamba. There are 160 staff members in its various units (project department, roads and transportation, storm water, urban planning and information systems) while the urban planning department itself consists of 8 planners. A high level of communication and cooperation appears to exist among the units in charge of planning and other planning related areas such as roads and transportation, storm water and information systems although cooperation with the new environment department has not yet been developed. The past 3 years of implementation of participatory planning as well as administrative continuity has resulted in relatively experienced municipal staff. The department does not seem to lack expertise to develop the Planos de Desarrollo Districtal and the staff are even prepared to deal with gender issues. However, there is clearly a problem with the current number of planners at work in Cochabamba. Additional staff will be needed (and training will be required) for the development of a Plano de Desarrollo Municipal Sostenible as well as the remaining 10 Planos Districtales. The Departamento de Gestión Ambiental at Oficialia Mayor de Desarrollo Territorial has 7 employees including a lawyer, a biologist, and agronomist, forestry engineer, a solid waste engineer and 18
administrative staff. It responsibilities include environmental regulation, environmental quality, environmental education and desarrollo territorial y cualidad ambiental. Currently, they are engaged primarily in public education programs (to reduce noise pollution, in cooperation with the Casas Comunales) and in the creation of municipal parks. There is no evidence of the existence of environmental planning capacity in the Departamento and the lack of communication and coordination between planning and environmental affairs is somewhat troubling given the emphasis placed on environmentally sustainable urban developed by the Ley. Currently, the municipality lacks information systems to monitor the state of environmental quality in the City which is necessary to develop planning processes that integrate environmental considerations.
6. Recommendations and Conclusion The problems we have identified in terms of implementation suggest that, like many of their Latin American neighbors and the myriad of nations embarking on the road to decentralization of urban governance, As was suggested in the literature, the cause of many of the problems or obstacles to implementation have to do with the relations between different levels of government and the nature of public participation in a state where formal input into the decision-making process by the citizenry has only begun to be encouraged. As such, Bolivia has a number of adjustments to make in their current reform efforts. The lack of knowledge on the part of JV or CV representatives regarding how to participate effectively in group meetings designed to reach decisions is a problem that might have been expected. Cochabamba’s mayor’s office is probably in a position to educate the representatives and eventually improve the quality of the decision-making process as well as the level of public participation in this sphere. Assuming that adequate resources to train and run workshops in negotiation, conflict resolution and priority assessments, the process of public input may well become valued and well implemented. strategic training consensus, longer term vision, tradeoffs. One option for the municipality, and one which they are already exploring, is to hire a private consultant to assist with capacity building and plan development at this stage in the expectation that a private firm may be more efficient, and less biased, than municipal staff. The effectiveness of consultants at organizing participation, however, is at yet poorly documented. It may make more sense to hire a consultant to work with one particular district, monitor the results of that process and then decide if private sector assistance for the remaining 9 districts is warranted or not. While training and capacity building suggest concrete actions or procedures on the part of stakeholders, the politicization of the Juntos Vecinales as well as the City Council’s refusal to accept the 19
remarkably comprehensive and well presented district plans suggests that some problems may be more difficult to solve. Public participation and democratic behavior at the municipal level appears to be hampered by more traditional political behavior of party politics. This was probably not anticipated by the framers of the original legislation and it does add strong support to the evidence that members of the various committees need to be recompensed for their time and travel expenses. While the corrupt nature of politics and business in Bolivia, will not be eliminated by paying representantes, it will make it somewhat less likely that they will accept bribes in exchange for voting or choosing a particular priority investment. As it stands now, the system does not provide strong enough incentives to ensure that local or community leaders are answerable to their neighborhoods, particularly since representantes are volunteering their time. The failure of the Municipal Council to accept the district plans as a stepping stone on the path to the development of a sustainable urban development plan for the city of Cochabamba as a whole also points to a lack of good governmental relations between the district level and the municipal level. The lack of clear communication between the local and municipal levels is mirrored in the lack of beneficial relationships between the municipal and central government. As an example, the Ley provides no guidance as to the form and content of an acceptable Plan de Desarrollo Municipal Sostenible (PDMS) which is required by the Ley if the municipality hopes to receive its share of coparticipación resources. The lack of clarity and communication on this issue makes it very difficult for the municipality to develop a PDMS and leaves any Plan they do devise subject to rejection or criticism by central government offices as being incomplete or inappropriate. Thus, while on paper, the Ley seems detailed and clear, it unfortunately, at least in terms of one of the ultimate products, does little to enhance intergovernmental relations. Another major difficulty in the case of Cochabamba is the issue of resolving the disparate district plans within one larger strategic plan for the entire metropolitan area. Cochabamba used somewhat exploratory techniques of bringing the government slightly closer to the people with the innovation of Casa Comunales. In some sense, the municipality probably recognized that this type of action was necessary if participation at the local level was to actually occur. It is much easier to participate, particularly regarding neighborhood issues, within a smaller district than within a large city framework. The need to break down municipal planning into smaller chunks which then need to be combined and rationalized among themselves is a problem that is sure to occur in all of the larger Bolivian cities. Unfortunately, the Ley does not distinguish between the process and implementation of the law within large urban municipalities, mixed urban and rural areas and entirely rural municipalities. As such, larger cities are embroiled in an extremely complicated and time-consuming process while small rural areas are able to plan and implement projects much more easily; fewer people usually implies fewer meetings, confrontations, planning issues, etc. 20
The larger cities in Bolivia are not compensated in any way for the additional costs imposed on by the Ley (beyond the same percentage per capita resources distributed through coparticipación) and are not given any additional fundraising or taxing powers to help defray the costs of implementing the law. In essence, the Ley treats all municipalities equally which means that the outcomes across municipal planning areas are inevitably unequal. The literature suggests that larger and more populous urban areas may be able to provide some services, such as education or health, more efficiently than the central or state (departmental level) government whereas rural areas are often better off relying on higher-level governments for these services. Given the differences between municipalities, both in terms of the costs incurred as a result of planning in a participatory fashion and the comparative advantages of larger urban areas for supplying some services, the Ley should discriminated between municipalities of different types. Perhaps larger cities should be required to deliver more services (appropriate to the population size) and be given additional resources or taxing powers to cover both the additional services and the more participatory and complicated procedures involved in planning for larger regions as opposed to less populated one. The issue of resources is clearly of enormous importance particularly, if Cochabamba is typical of other cities, in larger municipalities. The lack of transparent and reliable local sources of revenue imply that large cities will only be able to implement a fraction of the public improvements and projects identified as important by community organizations. As populist planning becomes the norm, the local citizenry should also be asked to pay for many of those investments from which they are the exclusive beneficiaries. Cities like Cochabamba, as the seek to improve service delivery, need to be able to raise more ingresos proprios as appropriate. The OTBs could then not only identify and prioritize projects but also suggest the level of funding which should be raised locally in order to satisfy a longer list of demands than can be accomplished through relying almost entirely on coparticipación. Finally, research which examines the relationship between the Bolivian state and its local governments in the future needs to focus more closes on the kind of political-economic system it exemplifies more explicitly. In other words, the motivations and incentives of bureaucrats and politicians which are embedded in the structure need to be better understood to be able to actually implement a series of decentralization reforms as important as those passed in Bolivia. The concrete lack of progress in terms of construction and use of projects funded by coparticipación resources in the largest Bolivian cities attest to the difficulties in this area and are worth of further study and reconsideration as to the best way to motivate more responsive and more efficient service delivery among the urban poor.
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References Bird, Richard M. 1995. Financing Local Services: Patterns, Problems and Possibilities. Major Report 31, Centre for Urban and Community Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto. Borja, Jordi. 1992. “Past, Present and Future of Local Government in Latin America.” In Richard M. Morse and Jorge E. Hardoy (eds.), Rethinking the Latin American City. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp.131-143. Campbell, T. 1992. Decentralization to Local Government in Latin American Countries: National Strategies and Local Response in Planning, Spending and Management. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Carrión, Diego. 1996. “Ecuador.” In Patricia L. McCarney (ed.), The Changing Nature of Local Government in Developing Countries. Toronto:Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, pp.253-282. CEDURE. 1997. “Estudio sobre Juntas Vecinales y Comités de Vigilancia en Bolivia (draft)” prepared for the University of Toronto International, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto. Dillinger, William. 1994. “Decentralization and its Implications for Urban Service Delivery.” Urban Management and Municipal Finance 16, Urban Management Programme. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Laserna, Roberto, Jorge Cortés, Alejandra Ramírez, Roberto Valdivieso, Wilfredo Hurtado, José Luis Casazola. 1995. Sostenibilidad y Desarrollo Humano: La Calidad de Vida en Cochabamba. Coleccion: CERES de Ciencias Sociales, No. 2. Cochabamba: Editorial Los Amigos del Libro. Los Angeles Times. 1997. “For Democracy, the Next Revolution is Devolution.” Robin Wright. February 19, 1997. A-1. Marcondes, Claudia. 1996. “Latin America: Introduction.” In Patricia L. McCarney (ed.), The Changing Nature of Local Government in Developing Countries. Toronto:Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, pp.223-226. Marcondes, Claudia. 1997. “Baseline Study: Planning Capacity in Municipalities and Peri-Urban Areas.” prepared for the Sustainable Urban Development in Bolivia Project, University of Toronto Urban International, Center for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto. Martner, Gonzalo. 1993. Descentralizacion y modernizacion del estado en la transicion. Santiago: LOM. McCarney, Patricia L (ed.). 1996. Cities and Governance: New Directions in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Toronto: Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto. Ministry of Human Development, Republic of Bolivia. 1994. Mapa de Pobreza: Una Guia para la Accion Social (2a Edicion). La Paz.
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Municipalidad de Cochabamba, Direccion de Planificacion. 1995. Estrategias de Desarrollo Urbano Cochabamba. Nickson, R. Andrew. 1995. Local Government in Latin America. Boulder: L. Rienner Publishers, 1995. Ostrom, E., Schroeder, L., and Wynne, S. 1992. Institutional Incentives and Sustainable Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Peterson, George E. 1997. Decentralization in Latin America: Learning through Experience. World Bank Latin American and Caribbean Studies Viewpoints. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Rotoff, Basil M. 1996. Bolivia Project Report. CESO International Services. Toronto, ON. Silverman, J. 1992. Public Sector Decentralization: Economic Policy and Sector Investment Programs. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.
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