Introduction:
Urban Environmental Problems
In
Europe, more than two-thirds of the total population live in urban areas.
Situated within natural ecosystems, cities affect and are affected by natural
cycles. They import water, energy and materials which are transformed into
goods and services and ultimately returned to the environment in the form of
emissions and waste. The high concentration of people make cities major
contributors to local, regional and global environmental change. The pressures
on urban environments come from air pollution, noise, traffic disturbance and
land use. Noise levels in the urban environment have increased steadily with
increased traffic activity and the use of machinery (for industry or private
purposes). Urban areas are also responsible for producing pressures such as
waste, waste water and air pollution.
Developments
in the four target sectors of transport, tourism, energy and industry, and
action in the priority themes of air, noise, water and waste have a significant
impact on the quality of the urban environment. However the Fifth Environmental
Action Programme has not set specific targets for the urban environment because
of its cross-cutting nature.
Of
particular importance are the activities to develop co-operation between cities
in the promotion of local Agenda 21 plans. The European Commission is
facilitating the local Agenda 21 process by assisting local authorities in
developing policy tools and instruments and through awareness raising.
The
Commission launched the Sustainable Cities project in 1993, as a follow-up to
the discussion that flowed from the 1990 Green Paper on the urban environment.
The main aims of the project are to:
- promote
new ideas on sustainability in European urban settings,
- foster
a wide exchange of experience,
- disseminate
good practices on sustainability at the urban level, and
- formulate
recommendations aimed at influencing policy at the EU, Member State, and
regional and local level.
The
project essentially consists of:
- policy
reports and recommendations for EU institutions, Member States local
authorities and other involved parties (e.g. business) prepared by the Urban
Environment Expert Group established by the Council in 1991 following the
publication of the Commission's Green Paper;
- networking
activities that are run by the Sustainable Cities campaign launched in May 1994
at the end of a major conference on sustainable urban development held in
Aalborg, Denmark. These are based on a charter adopted in 1995 by some 90 local
authorities in Europe. In line with chapter 28 of Agenda 21 on the role of
Local Authorities, the charter calls for increased inter-local authority
co-operation and commits its signatories to drawing up long-term action plans
for sustainable development with those involved at the local level by 1996.
Development
of indicators for the policy field
Urban
Environmental Problems
is "work in progress," since the data situation is particularly difficult.
Energy consumption, presented in the following section, is an insufficient
substitute for the manifold pressures caused by, and imposed on, the urban
population. The fact that the Scientific Advisory Group decided to put energy
consumption on top of their core list is in itself an indicator of the
difficulty of reaching a consensus on how to describe the specific urban
aspects of environmental pressures. In the absence of a consensus on more
precise measures, energy consumption is vaguely linked to quite a number of
problems, and thus perhaps not the worst summary indicator.
