Institutions for Urban Poor's Access to Ecosystem Services: A Comparison of Green and Water Structures in Bangladesh and Tanzania

Bangladesh and Tanzania are two rapidly urbanising least-developed countries facing the prospect of poverty becoming an 'urban problem' well before 2050. Their growing urban populations living in low-income settlements rely for many fundamental services on two important ecosystems: urban green and water structures. These provide shelter, fuel, food, protection from extreme weather, access to safe drinking water, drainage, and flood and pollution prevention; however, they are also the source of 'disservices', such as harmful bacteria, which can lead to chronic ill-health.

In these low-income countries where state authority is weak, co-production (providing public services through collaboration between state agencies and citizen groups) and community collective action can together serve as building blocks for institutional effectiveness. Co-production requires consensus, which collective action can provide: their combination is thus a potentially rewarding - though little researched - approach to ensuring better access to ecosystem services for the urban poor.

Our research intends to identify policy-relevant design principles and operational practices for the institutional arrangements needed to produce ecosystem services which promote sustainable improvements in the wellbeing of the urban poor. We focus on services derived, and disservices resulting, from urban green and water structures in low-income settlements in Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). The similarities between these two cities will enable findings to be generalised, while their contrasts will allow us to develop a robust conceptual framework and test emerging hypotheses.

This project addresses three main questions:
1) What access and exposure do the urban poor have to green and water ecosystem services and risks?
2) What institutional arrangements structure that access at different scales?
3) Do co-production and collective action improve the urban poor's access to ecosystem services and create a basis for developing effective institutions?

We bring three main theoretical considerations to the study: urban ecosystems; the political ecology of urban change; and institutional diversity. The research is structured into four interconnected work packages: WP1 - Assessment of ecosystem services and disservices; WP2 - Mediating institutional structures; WP3 - Progressive institutional arrangements; and WP4 - Comparative analysis and impact dissemination.

Qualitative and quantitative data will feed into a comparative analysis and synthesis of findings which will provide rigorous new evidence on the institutional challenges facing associations of poor urban people, state and non-state agencies, and the knowledge community in their efforts to sustain and improve ecosystem processes and maintain and expand urban poor people's access to fundamental services across the city space. This knowledge will assist policy making and programme design by agencies in Bangladesh, Tanzania and beyond, and the urban poverty-ecosystem link will be introduced into the global policy arena at a time when post-MDGs negotiations are gathering pace. Project deliverables will include a book, top-level academic papers, policy and press briefings, dissemination seminars in Dhaka, Dar es Salaam, Manchester and London, international conference presentations, and active engagement with informal policy processes.

This research builds on two successful major projects, ClimUrb and CLUVA, placing it in a strong position to deliver policy-relevant evidence to targeted audiences. It adopts a multi-disciplinary, multi-context approach, bringing together a team of leading Bangladeshi, Tanzanian and UK researchers, and it will train and engage 20 promising young Bangladeshi and Tanzanian researchers. Through the implementation of a carefully developed impact strategy, the project will ensure that its benefits reach both academic and development beneficiaries.

The ultimate beneficiaries of our research are poor urban residents in Bangladesh and Tanzania. This includes the current poor urban population and the tens of millions who will move to urban areas in the next few decades. We will co-produce knowledge about how their wellbeing strategies are linked to accessing services from urban green and water ecosystems, and the ways in which policies and institutions support or hinder such strategies.

We intend this to open up the political space for the ideas and preferences of the urban poor, encouraging them to form, participate in and consolidate collective action. Our involvement with grassroots organisations such as Nagar Daridra Basteebashir Unnayan Sangstha (NDBUS) in Dhaka and Shack/Slum Dwellers International in Dar es Salaam will be an important component of our impact strategy. The process of co-producing knowledge through interactions between scientists and community-based experts will create a 'dialectic platform' for poor people's expertise to inform the knowledge community. This will put research into use not least by empowering our community-based experts as agents for change.

We are also targeting the professions in Bangladesh and Tanzania. Through our activities with trainee researchers at partner universities and the involvement of think-tank and NGO case workers/municipal community officers, civil servants and members of civil society, we will raise awareness among professionals of the need to optimise poor people's access to ecosystem services, minimise potential disservices and engage with urban residents.

We will also target policy-making elites at three levels:
- At the local level we will engage with municipal civil servants and politicians during our research and invite their participation in local workshops and policy dialogues.
- Nationally, we will engage at ministerial and advisory levels through our final dissemination conferences, media coverage, and communication of academic and policy findings.
- Internationally, the dissemination of our findings through a book, high-level papers, conference presentations, BBC World Service broadcasts, press articles, website and social media will seek to influence the country strategies of international agencies in Bangladesh and Tanzania and in turn help shape the debate on sustainability and urban poverty.

In order to ensure the practical relevance of our proposed project, and to commence engagement with key policymakers, we have already undertaken the following activities with key beneficiaries:
- participatory data collection and analysis methods in both cities;
- feedback sessions at our case study sites;
- city dialogues with academics and policy makers, civil society organisations and representatives of low-income communities;
- and two half-day meetings with Bangladeshi researchers (Dhaka, February 2013) and African researchers (Manchester, March 2013).

We were able to do these activities thanks to our two existing (and successful) major projects - ClimUrb and CLUVA. ESPA will build directly on these research partnerships and policy uptake relationships. Our proposal is thus already strongly influenced by key beneficiary groups and target audiences. In addition, we will promote South-South collaboration through Bangladesh-Tanzania visits of experts with specialised knowledge.
Finally, we will train 20 promising young Bangladeshi and Tanzanian researchers in our project methodology and engage them to undertake data collection. We will support them on academic writing (directly and through our post-docs) and on working as part of a multidisciplinary team. We will extend our capacity-strengthening support to the organisations providing in-kind support to us.
We have allocated just over 10% project costs to fund impact related activities.