Urban Governance Support

Funded by: UNDP; US $724,300

Background

The project is anchored in the Millennium Development Goals of Good Governance, Halving Poverty and Hunger and Ensuring Environmental Sustainability, which amongst others provide the reference points for the development targets set in the Future – Regaining Sri Lanka.

Following the adoption in 1999 of its National Programme for Sustainable Human Settlements, the government of Sri Lanka initiated a number of pro poor urban capacity development projects as part of its commitment to implement the Habitat Agenda. These included the Sustainable Colombo Core Area Project (1999-2001) and the Sustainable Sri Lanka Cities Project (2001-2003), both supported by the UNDP. The success of these projects has created firm foundations for broadening of support for participatory urban governance to local authorities in Sri Lanka and the means and the modalities have been developed, tested and put in place

Objectives

The objective of this project is to provide the foundations and “core-resources” for a multi-donor assisted “National Programme of Support to Strengthen Urban Governance” by deepening and up scaling these experiences, and strengthening their upstream policy impact. The project will also expand the participatory urban governance support to other cities especially those in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The “Core” set of activities supported by the Project will include participatory governance, poverty reduction and sustainable environment management synthesized from those applied and proven through the SCP-SL (Phases One and Two) supported by UNDP and the Urban Poverty Reduction Project (UPRP).

Partners :

Government : Government of Sri Lanka; Provincial Councils
Local Authorities : 18 Selected Municipal Councils and Urban Local Authorities
Civil Society : Sevanatha and MaRGG (Management Resources for Good Governance)
Institutions : Sri Lanka Institute of Local Governance, Centre for Urban and Regional Planning
International Organizations : UNDP, UN-Habitat