When the topic of international collaboration around innovation is mentioned, waste management is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Yet from an environmental and local government management perspective, developing solutions to the always-vexing issue of waste reduction and disposal looms high on the agenda for challenges that often can benefit from innovative approaches. Numerous cities around the world have pioneered creative approaches to eliminating waste, increasing recycling, and reducing their carbon footprint while improving their environment. Given the great diversity of these cities and their contexts, the question arises as to whether there are effective ways by which successful models can be replicated elsewhere. This is not altogether different from the same question that cities and countries looking to create new innovation clusters consider. Likewise, lessons learned from successful initiatives may not be limited to cleaning up local environments, but could offer potential templates for other ways local-level stakeholders can share innovative policies and practices—as well as new avenues for international collaboration.
One example of this approach is the Kitakyushu Initiative for a Clean Environment. This initiative had its origins in the experiences of the industrial city of Kitakyushu, Japan, which over decades successfully reduced its severe levels of environmental and air pollution. City leaders were eager to share the lessons learned from Kitakyushu’s experience with other cities in Japan and Asia struggling with similar challenges. This led eventually to the launch of the Kitakyushu Initiative as a program under the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in 2000. The main objectives of the initiative, which grew to eventually incorporate 170 cities across 18 countries by the time of its conclusion in 2010, were to improve urban environments and people’s health through integrated approaches to environmental management at the local level.
A comprehensive listing of accomplishments of the Kitakyushu Initiative is included in the final report issued by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), a Japanese non-governmental organization that served as secretariat for the global network of cities participating in the program. Often highlighted as an important success of the initiative is the waste management program launched by Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, which reduced waste generation by more than 20 percent over a four-year period—including by more than 51 percent in 2007 and 58 percent in 2008. This was achieved through a comprehensive set of actions, including the establishment of 13 new composting facilities and distribution of 19,000 compost baskets for household use. Key to the success of this initiative, according to IGES, was the commitment and leadership of women’s organizations and other community NGOs, which supervised compost basket distribution and organized a waste reduction and cleanup campaign in partnership with businesses and media. Surabaya’s accomplishments and model were shared with other cities through training workshops, which led to similar initiatives in other cities in Indonesia and elsewhere. IGES identified Surabaya’s model as highly applicable to other cities because of the mobilization of local resources and stakeholders in implementing these activities, as well as the profitability of compost production that resulted from the initiative.
A core component of the Kitakyushu Initiative was the goal sharing of best practices among cities across the Asia-Pacific region. As noted in the final report,
“Trends of climate change, devolution and “Green Growth”-oriented sustainable development paradigms all point to the increasingly substantial role held by cities in environmental management, translating to a rising demand for capacity building of local government officers. To respond to these demands, inter-mediators in the form of intercity networks, or others, are likely to be instrumental as they provide cities with opportunities to learn directly from each other, and also through the provision of convenient and readily accessible case studies on best and good practices.”
Drawing from the experiences of the initiative, IGES’s analysis reflected that unlike NGOs, most cities do not have mandates, incentives, or sufficient financial resources to cooperate with other cities in these activities. What proved productive were workshops and training sessions that brought together stakeholders from other cities to discuss achievements and share best practices, which eventually generated documented spillover effects and best practices. Included among recommendations for inter-city networks IGES identified as a result of initiative were:
- the need for designing projects based on demand and coordinated with other organizations to supplement network functions;
- identifying targeted groups of local governments and their needs and gaps;
- assisting replication of best practices; and
- encouraging local governments to set their own environmental goals and targets.
The final report of the Kitakyushu Initiative deserves a read in its entirety for an in-depth exploration of ways in which successful waste management and environmental clean-up activities in one city were replicated in others. A concluding remark in the report reflects on “the fact that there are many untapped local-level good environmental practices which have yet to be picked up and promoted, should not be overlooked.” What best practices and successful models are out there at the local level in the United States that may not be well-known, yet have this great potential whether domestically or at a global level? How do lessons learned in the U.S. local-level experience compare with those that came to the fore in analysis of the Kitakyushu Initiative, along with other such initiatives elsewhere? Bridging these networks and collective experiences could offer untapped potential for innovative and surprising solutions.
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