GOOD URBAN GOVERNANCE

Good Urban Governance

Good Urban Governance

Introduction

The growing awareness of global environmental changes is bringing new concerns to politicians, planners, managers, and civil society in general. This trend is a direct result of the observation of nature's decreasing capacity to renew the natural resources' stocks in the same proportion they are consumed.

If in the past ecosystems were capable to heal the scars caused by human aggressions, today this does not occur so easily. Climate changes, the ozone layer depletion, alterations in the water reserves, land degradation, and loss of biodiversity, among others, are accurate indications of changes, all of them with unpredictable consequences, bringing significant risks for the maintenance of life in the planet.

Environmental issues are complex because they involve different dimensions of a same object - the environment. Handling single environmental problems, even though may prevent or reduce harmful and undesirable effects, often fail to address secondary variables that impact the results of management itself. Debates on climate change are to consider its inherent causes and effects - desertification and soil degradation, fresh water supply and biodiversity loss, depletion of the ozone layer and the addressing issues of human health or the perverse effects of poverty. If not systemic, then it is a blurred narrow view of nature, just as looking at a tree without considering the forest. In other words, a better understanding of the major environmental issues requires a broad vision, which can only be achieved by using a more comprehensive model that can capture the complexity of the problems that impact the environment.

The challenge to solve environmental problems is too frequently perceived only as a matter of new technologies appropriation and more effective economic results. However, new trends have recently started to add social organizations to the list of priorities (Bessa et al., 2007, p. 1).

In fact, since the last quarter of the twentieth century, environmental issues have reached the status of a global problem, mobilizing different social actors, the media and governments of all regions. The multiplicity of actors involved in this challenging process is by itself a problem to be administered. There are multiple needs that are of interest to the process: different ways of reality interpretation, along with knowledge and skills required to the full understanding of the problem's solution. Considering the complexity of such problems, traditional analysis and decision-making framework do not seem enough to address an answer. The intricacy itself indicates the need of a redesign aiming at efficiency and effectiveness.

Regarding theoretical management models, bureaucracy has not shown to be sufficient to explain the complex relationship between multiple social actors, and so, in guiding actions towards the solution of social problems. Also, the way the state faces environmental issues has been generating different types of management and institutional coordination problems. As a result, the essence of the conflicts born from distinct social strata interests and institutional dysfunctions is leading to state action misconduct.

Generally, the traditional paths taken to solve these problems seem not to consider the relationship between state and ...