Background

The project supports five secondary urban centres of the Marrakech Tensift al Haouz Region to develop and implement Local Agendas 21 (LA21). In the future, the project will expend its support to other secondary urban centres of the Region. Local teams are located in Municipal Councils and the Regional Coordination is located in the Regional Inspectorate of the Ministry of Physical Planning. The project aims at mobilizing local, regional and national partners to jointly address key urban environmental problems and to stimulate local development based on under-exploited local potentials to contribute to urban poverty alleviation. The project will benefit the population of the secondary urban centres, especially the urban poor, who have limited access to natural resources and basic urban services and are the most vulnerable to environmental hazards, including severe droughts.

Activities
The project is currently supporting the preparation of Urban Environmental Profiles, which will provide an overview of the relation between urban development and the environment and analyse existing mechanisms for managing the urban environment. These profiles will offer a common information base for all actors involved in the project. They will also serve as a basis to identify priority urban environmental issues which will be discussed during City Consultations to be held at the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005. These Consultations, which will bring together key local and regional actors and will lead to the creation of intersectoral working groups around selected priority issues. These working groups will prepare issue-specific strategies and action plans and will initiate their implementation through small-scale demonstration projects.

Results

• Regional and local teams have been set-up and agreements have been signed with local authorities which will benefit from project support.
• Local actors have been sensitized to the Local Agenda 21 approach and political support from regional and local authorities has been mobilized.
• Urban environmental profiles are being prepared drawing information from a very large number of local and regional actors.