By Stephan Ertner and Michael Alvarez
At the Global Greens Congress the Heinrich Böll Foundation discussed ways of achieving a sustainable development of cities.
Sao Paulo, the world’s third-biggest city, was the venue for the second world congress of green parties and political movements that began on May 1, 2008. 800 delegates from more than 80 different countries of all continents had come to the Brazilian megacity for four days to discuss joint strategies focusing on how to combat climate change.
The inspirational opening ceremony was preceded by two discussion panels of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation that marked the unofficial start of the Global Greens Conference. The foundation’s first panel dealt with the sustainable development of cities while at the second panel representatives of green parties from different regions of the world were asked to define how they conceive themselves between governmental responsibility and oppositional roles.
The future is in the cities
A sea of high-rises stretches out to the horizon: As far as the eye can see, there are concrete highways on top of other concrete highways in the deep canyons between residential and office towers, some of them outdated and some of them modern, with six million cars, buses and trucks wending their way downtown every day. Six million vehicles, and their number keeps increasing by another 400 each day and by 146,000 per year. The juggernaut city covers a surface of approximately 1,500 square kilometers. There are 21 million inhabitants concentrated in this conurbation that is the heart of the Brazilian economy. The economic power of this metropolis attracts thousands of job seekers every year from the poorer regions of the country, especially from the north-east. This is even more critical given the fact that the city can hardly fulfill their dreams of a better life. About one third of the population lives in poverty. At the same time, Sao Paulo is a city of great wealth. The richest “Paulistas” have begun to swap their armored limousines for helicopters in order to escape the urban traffic snarl-up. With more than 200 landing sites in the city, Sao Paulo is second only to New York in terms of number of helicopters.
There is hardly any city that is about as perfect an example for the rapid urbanization of the world as Sao Paulo. Today, for the first time in history, more than half of the earth’s population is living in urban areas. While they cover only a tiny part of the earth’s surface, it is in the cities that the greater part of the planet's resources are consumed and where most of the global carbon dioxide emissions are produced. It is in the cities that ecological and social problems appear more blatantly than anywhere else. This has not affected their attractiveness, however. They are not only economic centers and job machines but also places of culture, urban tolerance, the belief in progress and democracy.
The key to sustainable development is to be found here, in the urban agglomerations: This was made clear in the course of the panel organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Alfredo Sirkis emphasized in his greeting address that it is especially the ever-growing megacities of the southern hemisphere that offer vast potentials but also enormous challenges for sustainable urban development. The former City Commissioner for Environmental Affairs and Urban Development in Rio de Janeiro underscored the crucial role that the Greens can and must play in this process. Various starting points for green city policy were pointed out by Ralf Fücks in his opening speech.
The good news is that cities are not only the cause of environmental destruction on the global and local levels but that it is also from here that possible approaches to solve the problems may originate. Cities have always been laboratories of social innovation, developing remedies for the faults that they had themselves created. The fact that this is particularly true for megacities was concisely summarized by the Italian-Brazilian architect Jorge Wilheim in his contribution “The Spirit of Sao Paulo” when he said: “Chaos is just a special form of order”. The carriers of the city’s particular spirit are the inhabitants: Sao Paulo is a city of migrants. This was the case in the 20th century when immigrants from all over the world came here so that the metropolis grew at phenomenal rates but this also applies to our times, Sao Paulo being the destination for mainly Brazilian migrants. Roughly fifty percent of today's inhabitants were not born in the city. In Wilheim’s view, this accounts for the particular culture of the city: The leading motive in the biographies and family stories of many Paulistas is their readiness to take risks in order to achieve a better life. This has resulted in an optimistic and pragmatic spirit that has become typical of the Brazilians and that can and must be used, as Wilheim said, for a sustainable development of the cities.
Daniel Biau of the UN-HABITAT organization pointed out in his contribution that a strong dose of optimism is needed. Cities are particularly affected by the consequences of climate change. This is being proven by inundations, devastating floods, water shortage and spreading diseases. Biau gave an outline of the most important strategies to combat climate change. These strategies include a policy to curb the steady spatial expansion of the cities. Further requirement include cleaner energy generation and a more efficient use of energy.
Even today, these so-called mitigation strategies are not sufficient any more, as the climate change has already become a palpable reality. Beyond this, according to Biau, we must also deal with the question of how we will protect the cities against the consequences of climate change. The necessary strategies of adaptation range from building dams as a protection against rising water levels acutely threatening many coastal cities to gradually relocating entire areas of settlement to safer regions.
Based on the panel, the Global Greens Conference adopted a Declaration for Sustainable Development.
Greens go global: Differences and similarities
At the second panel of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, participants from Sweden, Belgium, Chile, Australia, Kenya and Germany discussed the self-conception of green parties and political movements. What do Greens all over the world have in common? Are there any shared programmatic goals? How do green parties position themselves between the poles of governmental responsibility and oppositional roles? Considering the wide variety of parties represented at the Global Greens Congress, these questions can not be answered in a once-and-for-all way. For all the differences, however, there is a common foundation of values and motives largely shared by the various green parties. The programmatic orientation and political strategies differ strongly, however, depending on the political culture and the different options and stages of development of the green movements in the individual countries. The panel had a particular focus on the consequences occurring when a party moves from the opposition benches to governmental responsibility. This is a question that has become relevant mainly for the Greens in Europe so far but there are other countries such as Brazil, for example, where Greens also have acquired experience in both national and regional governments.