The Pacific Regional Support Programme. : Strengthening Pacific Urban Agenda Implementation

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The overall objectives of this proposal  are to: (i)  provide regional ToT and development of suitable toolkits so as to support the foundations for country up-scaling and regional replication of CDS, SUS and other proven good urbanization practices and processes, (ii) manage lessons learned and knowledge acquired so as to strengthen implementation of the Pacific Urban Agenda (as contained in the Pacific Plan) national obligations and commitments, (iii) facilitate and institutionalize urban policy dialogue into regional and national planning so as to establish consensus with stakeholders on urbanisation priorities, strengthen partnerships, and up scale resource mobilization to achieve better urban outcomes, and (iv) strengthen monitoring by the SPC of the urban commitments made under the Pacific Plan activities (namely, the PUA). The latter will include an assessment of options to establish a Pacific Regional Urban Observatory. The proposal will support the requests of the 3 PICs and others to concurrently develop and implement their CDSs and SUSs by providing regional (i) institutional strengthening, (ii) knowledge management and (iii) support to strengthen urban policy and project development. It is hoped such processes will lead to (iv) improved monitoring of urban performance by PICs including integration of city and national responses to addressing urban issues vis a vis the PUA and the Pacific Plan. 

Key outcomes resulting from the above will be strengthened national capacity to undertake up scaling of under serviced settlements, an increased number of PICs wanting to undertake CDS and SUS, more national policy makers, planners and training partners interested in addressing urbanisation issues, and development of a formal mechanism to capture, share and disseminate knowledge learned. Commitments under the PUA should also be pursued and monitored. More effective human capacities and strengthened national and regional institutional structures should result in the better management of the impacts of urbanization in a sustainable manner and the improved performance of urban areas. By monitoring and sharing lessons and knowledge acquired, the CA Regional Support component will add further value to the effectiveness of the CDS and SUS processes being undertaken in the 3 selected PICs, including national, city and community levels.

Under this CA Regional Support proposal, the suite of institutional capacity building activities that will share global toolkits for national customization and the possible development towards the end of proposal implementation of a “Pacific Regional CDS and SUS toolkit” along with the results emerging from national experiences such as good practice and lessons learned, which will feed into the development of a Pacific Urban Knowledge Management framework. This will emphasize dialogue and dissemination of urban information and knowledge gained.  An agreed and accepted regional institutional policy dialogue framework will add value to both regional and national urban monitoring arrangements as well as implementation of national initiatives such as the CDS and SUS. Regional and national realignment will demonstrate the importance of urbanisation and the need for timely urban management responses, including far stronger institutional arrangements such as the possible development, for example, of a Pacific “Regional Urban Observatory” as well as regional urban management tools. This would form part of a network of National and sub-Regional Urban Observatories planned by UCLG.  The benefits of a Pacific Regional Urban Observatory would be the sharing of information, the provision of technical assistance (for example, urban data processing support, examples of data use by community organizations, and methods of data analysis), monitoring of regional agreed urban tools such as Pacific Urbanisation Development Goals, the institutionalization of knowledge exchange, the standardization of indicators and the development of Pacific regional dialogue on indicator use. The scope of this CA Regional Support proposal also places a strong emphasis on strengthening capacity to document and analyze knowledge acquired. This includes knowledge creation, sharing and dissemination to promote and support the preparation and implementation of local, town, city and national led CDS and SUS, building on lessons learned from Samoa, Fiji and PNG to other PICs. Given that a knowledge platform has been established in the Geography Department of the University of the South pacific (but is no longer being updated), the CLGF are discussing establishing a Local Government Resource Centre (with website for urban issues), and UNESCAP has approved funding to support knowledge management activities under its project “capacity-building of SIDS to incorporate the Mauritius Strategy into NSD strategies”, this regional support proposal will review where and how best knowledge management frameworks should best be anchored and support development of an urban component to give visibility and disseminate PUA compliance through best practices, initially on behalf of PIPA as it receives strengthening support under Component 5, with intended sharing of the urban component to a PIPA website as this develops. PIPA has planning (and lands, surveying, environmentalist professional) membership representation from PIC local and central government, and has been receiving modest resource support from AusAID through the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA). PIPA provides a network of Pacific planning professionals, often geographically isolated, where they seek to share and obtain information on current urban development activities and experiences such as squatters, customary land mobilization and informal settlements.  Members of PIPA are interested in addressing urban solutions which are seen to be working in pilot projects around the Pacific, expanding the number of stakeholders involved (especially development partners), building skills and filling capacity shortages (such as in mediation and negotiation), and strengthening the planning process to which solutions such as CDS and SUS must be developed and molded.

A key outcome of developing an urban knowledge management framework will be strengthening of country CA project implementation and monitoring and through such monitoring, collation of the documentation of the implementation of the 3 country CA proposals. Lessons learned would be synthesized and through such analysis, UNESCAP will coordinate development of the Pacific knowledge management framework located in its Pacific Office (EPO), Suva, Fiji, which has been a major supporter of the PUA and its implementation within the region. A Knowledge Management officer would be supported by this proposal, UN-HABITAT and EPO to maintain the collection of documents, an online portal that is linked to other pertinent websites and disseminate information to ensure accessibility to this information.

The knowledge management framework would be focused initially on a website portal with access to documentation, as well as PIPA coordinated regional workshops for the sharing of lessons, knowledge acquired and implications. This would assist in the process of fulfillment of country responsibilities under the PUA and Pacific Plan whilst providing access to assistance on developing urban work plans, urban indicators, squatter upgrading, mainstreaming CDS and SUS into NSDPs, access to toolkits and the like.  In this context, members of PIPA would become the core capacity building arm for practicing urban planners, managers and decision makers in the Pacific region. PIPA as the regional focal point would ensure that the CDS and SUS principles and practices as adapted to the Pacific are disseminated and up scaled nationally to members. Working with development partners, the knowledge management framework would assist to underpin sustainable urbanization policy dialogue in the region, such dialogue feeding back into regional policies and plans such as the Pacific Plan, as monitored by the SPC.

This proposal's scope includes assisting SPC to undertake high level policy dialogue with PICs so as to institutionalize the PUA, CDS and SUS processes into national urban policy frameworks.  A Pacific Ministerial Conference on the ‘State of Urbanisation in the Pacific' would be one way to achieve this, to be held towards the end of this Regional Support proposal's implementation, when the good practices and lessons learned would be synthesized and visible.  As SPC is already working with PICs in developing three yearly Joint Country Strategies (JCS), it has already started to mainstream the PUA, CDS and SUS concepts into these processes. This proposal will therefore also support SPC to strengthen the monitoring of PUA implementation and supporting initiatives. The objective is to enable SPC to become more effective in its regional reporting and monitoring role of ensuring commitments under the Pacific Plan (namely, the PUA) are progressed as well as mainstreaming other urban initiatives. To assist SPC in its monitoring role, the possible development of a Pacific Regional Urban Observatory including development of a set of Pacific urbanisation Development Goals will be explored. This will providing longer term ‘backstopping' support to SPC as it takes on this new PUA monitoring and assistance role.  The latter are vital to ensuring sustainability of efforts at the regional level, given the role of PIFS as the lead regional agency.

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