The municipality of Cuenca has until now had a ‘classic’ local public policy on waste management, which has been carried out by a specialised municipal corporation. The URB-AL project aims to: 1. Consider the social and economic dimension of waste collection and recycling activities and enhance the role and participation of people working in these activities. 2. Promote integrated management with a vision of social cohesion. 3. Spread a culture of environmental recycling. PROJECT: LA BASURA SIRVE (Rubbish is useful) Coordinator: Comune di Arezzo (Italy) Territory: Municipality of Cuenca (Ecuador)
4. Attempt to disseminate and promote this new perspective in other territories, with a view to making this model a benchmark for Latin America. Thus, the project seeks to have an impact on an existing public policy and contribute towards improving and transforming it, introducing new guidelines and experiences. It could be said, as indicated in the monitoring reports, that “previously, Cuenca’s Municipal Public Cleaning Company (EMAC) only handled the technical side of waste management, but it has taken advantage of the project to introduce the social element of recycling workers and it has promoted this in coordination with the municipality’s Secretariat of Social Inclusion, and the Ministries of Education, Health and Social Integration, in order to protect their rights and those of their children”. The project focused in particular on: 1. Drafting a specific plan for waste collection and recycling workers. 2. Developing technical training courses on waste management, and activities to raise awareness of environmental issues. 3. Consolidating EMAC as the public corporation in charge of waste management. 4. Coordinating the project with the other municipal departments and other levels of the Administration to jointly improve the health and rights of the people working in this sector.
come from either of the partners (i.e., from a local government’s desire to explore new perspectives and ways of doing things or from the partner’s interest in disseminating or spreading a successful practice), but the important thing is that the conscious and declared objective of the project is, in this case, to substantially transform an existing LPP with the support and know-how of a partner who has more experience in this field. In one way or another, the cooperation project involves exchanging and disseminating new methods, new approaches and new systems of
participation by local stakeholders, in an area in which both partners carry out a LPP, each with its own characteristics. A good example of this situation is the project “Local policies on the prevention of violence in marginal urban areas” (see table on page 36), which is aimed at reviewing a policy on security and controlling violence. Of particular interest in this case is the specific role played by decentralised cooperation. In addition to the financial contribution and institutional support provided by any international cooperation project, the presence of other local
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