DISP 147

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2001

Pedro Jacobi

The Metropolitan Region of So Paulo

Problems, Potentials and Conflicts

So Paulo is no longer a fast growing metropolitan region, but with its huge population the city is affected by a series of problems linked to social inequality, lack of adequate public policies and omission of public authorities to cope with the basic issues linked to the existence of a certain degree of urban sustainability. The metropolitan region is undergoing severe changes at the demographic and employment level. The housing deficit is an enormous challenge that is not being overcome, thus representing a very serious burden. As to air quality, the initiatives are still very limited, and the car shift that exists in the city of So Paulo is mainly directed to reduce traffic, and not as a policy of public health. The most challenging issue is the articulation of policies between levels of government that enable the building of a metropolitan program for urban sustainability thus representing the possibility of increased cooperation to overcome the degradation of the regions environment associated to the socioeconomic problems that affect its development and the living conditions of a large part of the population.

1 Introduction
The article deals with the impact of local dynamics such as the aggravation to daily life caused by urbanization and air pollution, pollution of water sources, the delay in implementing public works to solve sewage problems and the complexity of implementing restrictions on the use of private cars. The discussion is centered on the complexity of environmental management processes and the implementation of conventional and nonconventional policies and programs to prevent environmental degradation and reduce the impact of unequal access to services by households. The impact of floods and negative climatic changes caused by urbanization

raises questions about possible methods of alleviating their effect on households and the potential of policies more oriented towards citizen involvement in debates about environmental risks. These issues represent a very complex challenge to be overcome, which brings into focus the institutional engineering that is being implemented to combat these problems and the government initiatives designed to prevent the environmental degradation at the heart of urban environmental problems affecting the everyday life of So Paulos citizens. It also includes data obtained from a recently concluded research project on perceptions and attitudes of households on environmental problems, developing an analysis on issues concerning the lack of information amongst the population on the issue of environmental risks. So Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR) is comprised of 39 municipalities in an area of 8,051 km2, and an urbanized area of 1,747 km2. Moreover, with a current population of more than 16.5 million in 2001, it constitutes one of the three largest urban agglomerations in the world. In fact, one in every ten Brazilians lives in the SPMR. Within the SPMR, the city of So Paulo occupies 1,577 km2 and has a population of more than 10 million. The rate of population growth in the last decade is around 1.4 % per year. The dynamics of urbanization by means of expanding suburban areas produced a segregated and highly degraded urban environment, with serious effects on the inhabitants quality of life. Spaces unsuitable for healthy dwellings were used, such as hillsides, meadows, and water-source protection areas. Moreover, this occupation often consisted of poor dwellings within areas devoid of adequate urban services. So Paulo is the wealthiest city in Brazil, and its metropolitan area accounts for 18% of the countrys GDP, 31% of industrial production, and 25% of the industrial labor force. So Paulos GNP is around USD 102,8 billion, and the per capita GNP is estimated at USD 6,400, representing twice the national average. Today, the metropolitan region is undergoing very significant economic changes.

The industrial metropolis is gradually becoming a tertiary one, reaching more than 75% in 1998. As to employment conditions, the SPMR has been experiencing serious unemployment for several years, reaching around 18 % of its labor force. The rate of illiteracy is around 7 %, and 50 % have incomplete primary schooling, 8% have incomplete secondary schooling, while 15% hold university degrees. The average amount of schooling achieved is 7.5 years, which indicates the enormous challenges with respect to educating the public. The city, as well as the metropolitan area, is characterized by great inequalities in income distribution, since the richest 10 % of the population earns 30 % of the total income, and the poorest 50 % earn only one quarter of the total income. So Paulos growth has created urban patterns similar to those in other Latin American cities, characterized by large disparities in health, social and economic status (Jacobi, 1999). The outskirts of the city lack basic urban services and have been occupied by less privileged low-income groups. Around 90% live on paved streets and almost 93% have public lighting. The demographic growth rate of the city has decreased significantly since the 1980s, standing now at an annual 0.3% (IBGE, 1997). More than 50% of the central and intermediate districts have negative growth, while peripheral areas are responsible for 90% of the total population growth. According to the 1991 census data, 71% of the total population lives in the peripheral rings of the city, while 29% live in central/intermediate areas (Jacobi, 1995).

2 Lacking Urban Sustainability

More than 31 million commuter journeys take place daily, and of these 20.5 million are vehicular. 10.3 million people per day travel by public transportation while 10 million travel by cars. It is also important to know that 10.6 million trips per day are completed on foot. The transportation system relies on a subway, a bus network, and municipal and

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3 Socio-Environmental Problems, Trends and Solutions

3.1 Air Pollution The city of So Paulo faces specific problems of air pollution because of a combination of topographic and climatic factors, and an excess number of privately operated vehicles. The atmospheric conditions particular to the region create a phenomenon of strong thermal inversion during the wintertime, worsening the air pollution problems and their impact on health, particularly manifest in an increase in lung disease. The air quality standards are frequently exceeded. Those that most frequently surpass the limitations are the suspended particulate matter (carbon monoxide and ozone levels), and to a lesser degree, the emissions of sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, and organic compounds. Initially associated with industrial production, which has now significantly reduced its impact, air pollution today is produced by motor vehicles, responsible for 90 % of the total, with differences between each pollutant. The diesel vehicles, as well as those using gasoline and alcohol, produce toxic gases and particulates that are emitted into the atmosphere in varying amounts. The light gasoline and alcohol vehicles are the main expellers of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, and the diesel-powered trucks and buses are the main emitters of suspended particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen. Air pollution monitoring started in 1973 through the State Environment Protection Agency (CETESB) with the systematic manual measurement of the air quality sulfur dioxide, smoke level and carbon monoxide in the metropolitan region by a complex system of mobile and fixed sampler stations located in central and intermediate regions of the city. According to the CETESB, the average contributions of the polluting sources are: 50 % from vehicles, 20 % from suspended particulate matter, 10 % from secondary sulfates, 9.7 % from secondary carbonates, 3.6% from burning of combustible fuel, and 2.3% from others. The complexity of the management processes and the implementation of

Fig. 1: Skyline of So Paulo (photo: Phil Steffen)

intermunicipal trains. The subway system transports 57 million passengers per month, and 1.7 million passengers per day. With only three lines, it has an extension of 48 km. The municipal bus system in the city of So Paulo transports 93 million passengers per month, the intermunicipal bus system 35 million passengers per month, and the commuter rail system 22 million passengers per month. In the SPMR, there are more than 4.8 million cars, and in the city of So Paulo more than 3 million cars circulate on a daily basis. Around 25% of the workers spend more than 3 hours per day in public transportation, and 10 % more than 4 hours per day, reflecting a dramatic level of traffic congestion. So Paulo is relatively well served as in terms of basic environmentally related urban services water supply and solid waste collection although quality and quantity suffer important variations between central/intermediate and suburban peripheral districts (Jacobi,1995). While the public water supply network benefits approximately 95% of the population, around 80% are connected to the sewage network, of which 60% is treated. The rest is thrown into waterways. Precarious housing conditions in slums and many peripheral settlements add to the deficit of urban infrastructure. In addition, their precarious location on risk areas and watersheds multiply the predatory conditions of the existing urbanization and its impact on environmental degradation. The distribution in

terms of types of housing has the following characteristics 10% live in slums, 5% in tenement houses, and more than 35% in peripheral settlements, mostly through self-help housing. The metropolitan region can be considered to be undergoing a severe environmental crisis as a result. This crisis has been caused by lack of attention, delay, and inadequate management practices, which have all prevented actions to reduce the increasing and damaging problems linked to the following: The constant reduction of green areas, which causes an excessive impermeability of soil and an increase in critical areas of flooding with severe social, economic, and environmental impacts on the overall structure of the city during pretty much the entire year. The lack of more severe practical and short-term measures and policies to control air pollution. A very serious delay in the completion of the Sewage Master Plan. A very serious delay in the expansion of the subway network and more adequate public transportation alternatives that would enable a reduction in the use of cars. The contamination of most of the water sources and waterways within the city, and the risk that this involves for the population, mainly in the flooding areas. The exhaustion of conventional alternatives for the disposal of solid waste and the problems resulting from the contamination of ground water and surface water through run-off and leaking.

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nonconventional policies and programs to prevent an aggravation of the already existing problems in the metropolitan region, is very much related to socioenvironmental problems. In the last years, public authorities took some measures to limit the environmental degradation caused by the emission of toxic substances in the air. Since 1995, some mechanisms have been applied. These include the reduction of the use of cars once a week, and in 2002 the compulsory inspection of emission levels of vehicles, a practice that has its precedent in the experiences of other great metropolitan areas, such as Mexico City and Santiago de Chile.

3.2 Solid Waste The issue of solid waste dumping has become very problematic. The daily average of collected solid waste in the region is of 18,000 tons. Around 93% of the dwellers have solid waste collection. More than 90 % is sent to the citys landfills, most of which are at the limit of their useful capacity. These landfills do not have appropriate treatment for the liquids from the garbage which seep out into the soil and maybe even into underground waters. Besides this, not all solid waste collecting is under the control of public authorities. For the SPMR, the final destinations for solid waste are: 75% to landfills, 13% to waste dumps, 9 % to compost plants, and 3% to obsolete incinerators. Some municipalities, mainly those managed by progressive parties, have implemented recycling policies and selective recollection, but they are still few. Clandestine disposal is not a very serious problem in the city of So Paulo, but it represents a real problem in the So Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR), where the amount of waste discarded in dumps is 50 % of all the waste collected in the other 38 municipalities. The rest is discarded in landfills (38%), controlled landfills (5%) and compost plants (7 %). In the SPMR, around 25 municipalities have waste dumps as their only alternative to eliminating their garbage. This results in serious environmental problems, with water and soil pollution being the

most serious. In the case of the So Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR), a large number of waste dumps are located in Areas of Protection of Water Basins, representing 56 % of the SPMR. The existing infrastructure in the SPMR is obsolete and saturated. It is composed of nine controlled landfills, three incinerators, two industrial landfills and 25 identified active waste dumps (nine of them in environmental protection areas) and thousands of waste dumps that are scattered throughout the region, sometimes deactivated, sometimes in use, generally for discarding of industrial waste. The magnitude of the problem is directly linked to the fact that the huge quantities produced on a daily basis and the high degree of heterogeneity of the composition of solid waste is increased by an ever growing lack of areas that are physically and environmentally suitable for storage and final treatment. Particularly in the case of So Paulo, the exhaustion of the physical space for the installation of controlled landfills has left authorities with no obvious solution to the problem. The alternative proposed by the movements is based on an integrated logic of management, which articulates selective recollection, an increased production of high quality compost, and a very strict control of landfills.

dicate that the sewerage system services around 60 % of the total population. From these, 19 % of effluents are treated at a secondary level and less than 10 % at a primary level in the citys three sewage treatment plants. The main source of waterway pollution is domestic effluents, responsible for two thirds of the contamination, as 90 % of the sewage is not treated (Jacobi,1999).

3.3 Water and Sanitation The poor quality of the citys watershed is one of the most serious problems faced by the population. The present conditions of the two main storage lakes that supply the city (28%) represent a complex problem. Today most of the water consumed in the metropolitan region comes from sources more than 100 km away. This is directly linked to the constant deterioration provoked by irregular occupation, by clandestine land ownership transactions, bulk sewage dumping, the destruction of nearby forests, silting, and trash dumping. Despite the existence of serious environmental problems resulting from sewage and industrial waste water, water supply in the city reaches almost 95% of the population. Official data in-

3.4 Flooding Another very complex environmental issue in the city is that of floods. The lack of public policies compatible with the intense process of urbanization and lack of land-use legislation that could help control this irregular growth, created an illegal city located in the less valued areas close to streamlets, in the peripheries, and near water sources. The chaotic occupation of land provoked excessive waterproofing of urban soil and a lack of green areas created a permanent increase in the maximum flow of drainage leaving no time for concentration of the waters. The coefficient of runoff has increased significantly with urban growth, an important part of rainwater does not filter, and as the flowingoff occurs superficially, it contributes to the flooding. The region has more than 1,700 km of streamlets, and of these less than 500 are canalized, while more than 550 need public works investment. As a result, there has been a large increase in the number of critical flooding and erosion points in the city, reaching around 470 in the last year 220 of flooding, 180 of sliding, and 70 of both. As a result, the SPMR has seen a large increase in the number of critical flooding and erosion points, reaching almost 1,000. Although the authorities have implemented some solutions, the lack of coordination between state and municipal government has been very harmful to the city as a whole. The biggest shortcoming is the degree of waterproofing, (60 % of the city) as a result of which water flows ever faster and rivers do not have the required carrying capacity, thus bringing about an enormous degree of erosion (5 million of m3/year).

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Precarious maintenance and the obsolescence of the drainage system only exacerbate the problems.

4 Households and Environmental Risk Perceptions

4.1 Risks, Perception, Solutions and Actions The outcome of research concluded in 1995 about environmental problems and the perception of households, as observed at the neighborhood and household level, indicate that wellknown differences in opinion prevail on the question of environmental risks. This research was done in Accra, Jakarta and So Paulo, utilizing the same methodology under the general coordination of Gordon McGranahan (Stockholm Environment Institute until 2000). The samples included 1,000 representative households. In the case of So Paulo, the sample was chosen to allow the findings to be representative of six socioeconomic strata in 30 selected districts of the 96 that compose the city. For the households assessing environmental degradation in the city of So Paulo, the main problems are air pollution, degradation, pollution of water sources, and the effects of uncontrolled solid waste dumping. As to air pollution, 40 % of households emphasize the need to inspect motor vehicles and industrial emissions, followed by aspects related to city management, with 36 %. On the other hand, a reduction in the volume of vehicles in circulation is emphasized by only 9 % of respondents. This indicates that the solutions involving behavioral changes have a much lighter impact than those mainly dependent on actions of public authorities. As to water source degradation, 49 % of the households express their concern over cleaning up the citys rivers, watersheds, and reservoirs as well as controlling industrial and domestic waste and sewage disposal. Government action against these problems is favored by 88% of the respondents. This group of respondents recognizes the problems related to water source degradation and the need to change

attitudes, inform, guide, and educate about the associated risks. Respondents that favor shared responsibility emphasize the need for educational efforts on the relationship between quality of life and health, as well as the need to inform people about environmental problems caused by water pollution. It can be observed that there is only a small difference among the different strata concerning attitudes towards and awareness of the problems, despite sharply diverging socioeconomic contexts. As to solid waste, the most emphasized solution (48% support) is to educate people not to dump waste in vacant lots and streamlets, followed by the setting up of collection points in areas of difficult access, with 20 % support (more concentrated in the lower income strata). The solutions related to educational campaigns are backed by 35% of respondents, followed by those that require a wider commitment from the community in order to ensure better sanitation (28%). The outcomes indicate a situation where in terms of political decision making, more emphasis should be placed on public educational campaigns, as well as co-responsibility in preventing poor health and sanitation conditions, irrespective of socioeconomic stratum. An important conclusion of this research is that households of all income levels give more attention to those aspects of environmental degradation that are directly linked to daily life. The perceptions are generally oriented towards the constraints and discomforts that these problems cause in routine activities. This was observed in analysis of the importance given to problems of water availability, which is not a very significant problem at the city level, as compared to sewerage shortage, which is concentrated mainly in the more deprived areas of the city (as a result of the regionalization of distribution of goods and services). The familiarity with environmental damage is related to a set of interactions that include socioeconomic, political-administrative, informational and socio-cultural factors. The outcomes show

that most households are aware of the existing measures and possibilities for preventing diseases and other negative effects of environmental degradation (which mostly affect the low-income strata). Despite these perceptions, households generally accept living with these difficult problems, and consider that they have to be solved mainly through actions by the government, which is seen as the controller, manager, and agent responsible for preventing environmental degradation (Jacobi, 1995). Households establish links between degraded living conditions, poor information, and lack of awareness of environmental health risks. They also express frustrations about inaction by the government at all levels. The emphasis put on the need for educational campaigns and an increase of information indicates an important gap to be filled by public authorities, as well as a potential for collaboration with concerned civil society sectors in the development of innovative practices.

5 Concluding Remarks
So Paulo is no longer a fast growing metropolitan region, but with its huge population, it is affected by a series of problems linked to social inequality, lack of adequate public policies, and the inability of public authorities to cope with the basic issues linked to the existence of a certain degree of urban sustainability. The metropolitan region is undergoing severe changes at the demographic and employment level. On the one hand, the demographic transition represents a positive in the planning process. The high levels of unemployment, on the other hand, reflect a region that faces a loss of economic strength, and higher levels of poverty among the population. More people are in the informal sector, and this has increased the rates of violence and social unrest. The housing deficit is an enormous challenge that is not being dealt with adequately. It represents a very serious burden, as the lack of access to basic sanitation services sewage in particular has had and continues to have

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very serious effects on the waterways and water basins of the region. The demand for housing generates conflicts and social movements that lead the struggle for adequate housing. Public authorities have been implementing both at the state and municipal levels programs to reduce the levels of deterioration of the water basins. However, this has been a very slow process because of bureaucratic, financial, and political factors. Unfortunately, the burden is being shouldered by the population as a whole. Some very innovative institutional engineering initiatives have also been implemented through the creation of consortia to monitor and manage the environmental problems in one of the most populated subregions, an industrial belt where more than 3 million people live. This consortium has as its main goal to plan and execute projects and public works essential to upgrade the quality of life of the population of seven of the municipalities of the region. Another initiative is the Water Basin Committee of the Region, which involves government, civil society and commerce in a very complex process of implementing policies to reduce the deterioration of the water production system. As to air quality, the initiatives are still very limited, and are mainly directed towards reducing traffic. Catalytic converters have significantly diminished air pollution, and car inspection set to begin in 2002 will enable the improvement of air quality. The solution to problems linked to the deposition of solid waste has also been very complex, and some initiatives are taking place, such as those to eliminate the tragedy of children seeking their means of survival in dumps, which is still a problem that is very common in most Brazilian cities. Another significant challenge is the improvement of the public transportation system. The current subway system, totally inadequate when compared with Mexico Citys 200 km of subway lines, represents an enormous burden to the regions population, as people loose several hours of their day in both public and private transportation. The most challenging issue is to artic-

ulate policies between levels of government that can bring about a metropolitan program for urban sustainability. Such a program would enable increased cooperation to overcome the regions environmental degradation and the socioeconomic problems that affect both its development and the living conditions of a large part of its population.

References
CETESB (1999). Relatrio de Qualidade do Ar em So Paulo. Cetesb, So Paulo. EMPLASA (2001). Sumrio de dados da Grande So Paulo. Secretariat of Planning, So Paulo. FUNDAAO SEADE (1998). Pesquisa de Condies de Vida. SEADE, So Paulo. JACOBI, P. (1999). Cidade e Meio Ambiente. Editora Annablume, So Paulo. JACOBI, P. (1995). Environmental Problems Facing Urban Households in the City of So Paulo, Brazil. SEI, Stockholm. MC GRAHANAN, G. et al. (2001). The Citizens at Risk From Urban Sanitation to Sustainable Cities. Earthscan, London.

Professor Pedro Jacobi PROCAM-USP Rua do Anfiteatro 181 Colmias, Favo 15 Cidade Universitria 05508-900 So Paulo SP, Brazil prjacobi@usp.br