Can action research create participatory spaces for the resolution of environmental problems? How can governments and residents work together to provide environmental services? How does the political context impede or promote these efforts? This book attempts to answer these questions, drawing on challenges and lessons from the Moreno Focus Cities project.
The Moreno Focus Cities project, initiated in 2006, aimed to build a local platform for stakeholder collaboration on environmental issues in Moreno, Argentina.
Moreno is poor compared to the rest of the metropolitan region Buenos Aires. Its residents are directly affected by environmental problems.They face difficulties in securing access to drinking water and sanitation; waste is not picked up on a regular basis; the rain runoff and sewage system is inadequate; and some areas are frequently affected by floods.
The action plan for the project involved a series of pilot initiatives targeting these problems.
While locally specific, the book also offers insight for all projects that seek to build environmental citizenship.
Download the PDF of the book (in Spanish and English)
The Focus City Research Initiative (FCRI) is a series of eight action research projects funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada. In the “Focus Cities” approach, multistakeholder city teams worked in partnership over four years, to research and test innovative solutions to alleviate poverty. The participating researchers worked in the following cities: Lima (Peru), Cochabamba (Bolivia), Moreno (Argentina), La Soukra (Tunisia), Dakar (Senegal), Kampala (Uganda), Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Jakarta (Indonesia).