气候变化领域集成服务门户

South American cities generate enough wealth to deal with their most important environmental problems, i.e. water, sanitation, solid waste. However, institutional failure has prevented cities from fulfilling this potential. Ecuadorian municipalities suffer from poor fiscal management and weak administrative systems, patronage-based politics and infrastructure finance, and the centralisation of resources and power in the central government. In this context, Urban Environmental Quality Management (Urban-EQM) must have four components: (1) setting environmental priorities by measuring, assessing and prioritising environmental risks and developing action plans; (2) improving service provision by implementing economic reforms that support competition, autonomy, appropriate pricing and effective regulation; (3) increasing accountability through socio-political reforms that focus on decentralisation, participation, targeting the poor and social marketing; (4) financing that moves service provision towards market principles and away from patronage. Urban-EQM depends on political reform; it is a political as much as a technical process.