in French

© Luc Raimbault
BENIN
Porto-Novo, Green City Strategic planning
and sustainable development
The "Porto-Novo, Green City" initiative aims to offer the city and
its inhabitants an urban development vision encompassing
sustainable development principles.
CLIMATE
CHANGE
PROJECT
Sustainable
urbans
Territories
Context
Porto-Novo has an exceptional tapped and untapped heritage; it houses natural
areas endowed with extremely di-verse flora and fauna. The city's strategic location
forms a hub that allows direct access to Niger and the western border of Nigeria.
However, with 310,000 inhabitants as at 2013, the rapid geographic spread of
Benin's capital is at odds with its low growth in terms of demographics and the
economy. Lacking economic drive, Porto-Novo is struggling to stimulate the
formation of a balanced development hub.
In its periurban areas, the majority of the population living in poorly structured,
informal settlements is encroaching upon wetlands and marshy areas, some of
which are prone to flooding.
N°CBJ.1207
KEY POINTS
Aims
Beneficiary
Five main objectives come to the fore:
Amount of FFEM grant
•
•
•
•
•
To support a global strategic planning task, which allows the area's vulnerability
and the conditions for its adjustment to climate change to be integrated, as well
as the impact of the envisaged development (coordination between the various
studies and projects on different scales in terms of space and time), leading to
the establishment of an Urban Development Plan;
To roll out development solutions on the ground that employ simple techniques,
allowing for the practices of the local population (social and revenue generating
activities) to be adapted to the environmental challenges, and capitalising on
these in the short- and medium-term;
To demonstrate that the sustainable development of the natural resources of a
lagoon ecosystem such as that of Porto-Novo can prove to be a valuable resource
and a key driver of economic development and job creation for the local
population;
To evaluate and draw on practices to raise awareness of, provide information on
and show the value of this method of production and management of a natural
area prone to flooding;
To augment the institutional capacities of community service departments
and encourage the adoption of an approach favouring the sustainable
management of ecosystems.
City of Porto Novo
€1,200,000
Co-funders
Decentralised cooperation,
Municipality of Porto-Novo, AFD
Total value of the project
€9,495,000
Date FFEM tender awarded
29/11/2013
FFEM Institutional partners
Expected results and impact
•
•
•
A "sustainable" urban development plan (UDP) backed by a study of the territory's vulnerability and resources which will lead to the
provision of a certain number of recommendations taking into account environmental and cultural challenges as well as those associated
with flooding risks. These recommendations will be incorporated in the UDP.
Developments, including those relating to more localised measures will be implemented, amongst which we note in particular a
promenade marking the boundary between land and water for the protection and development of the wetlands, training and
adjustment measures for production (fish breeding, agriculture), maximising the value from periurban agriculture (backed by the multistakeholder platform dedicated to this issue and a study on agricultural land in the wetlands) as well as generating value from plastic
waste.
Measures focused on communicating and highlighting the initiative's value are envisaged in order to learn from this approach, to
capitalise on its innovative nature and provide an opportunity to replicate the tools and methods at other sites.
N°CBJ.1207
BENIN
CLIMATE
Project description
Dates
The project is organised into five parts :
•
•
•
•
•
Drafting of a sustainable territorial development strategy that aims to focus the
actions of urban operators around the vision of a green city, mindful of making the most
of its rich heritage particularly natural and cultural and rigorous in terms of mitigating
risks relating to flooding; one that is ambitious in terms of strategic positioning.
Pilot' projects that hinge on tangible solutions to local challenges faced in the Lokpodji
area (economic development, environmental protection and social issues) through
actions that will benefit the entire city by addressing environmental issues and taking account of associated risks.
Developing and dissemination of information : on the basis of the evaluation of the
actions undertaken, feedback sessions will be launched to share experiences and
facilitate the replication of these initiatives within the city, countrywide as well as on a
larger sub-regional scale, while respecting the scope and contextual elements of the
project.
Managing the project : to prioritise the augmenting of local capacities of the Porto-Novo
City Council, with consideration given to sustain-able development principles in
municipal policies.
Large facilities located on the riverbanks : this component, which is not funded by the
FFEM, aims to undertake construction initiaves with an economic goal, which take into
account, upstream, all the environmental and social factors essential for their successful
implementation.
The project starts : 2014 for a
duration of four years
Amounts
The FFEM’S grant amounts to
€1,200,000, cofinanced by
Decentralised cooperation, la
Municipality of Porto-Novo, and
AFD.
The total value of financial
commitments to the project
amounts to €9,495,000.
The project will be managed by a dedicated unit within the city's service departments. As
partners in the project, the Cergy-Pontoise Urban Area Community and the Lyon Urban
Authority will contribute consulting engineer expertise to the project unit.
In addition, the project will be supported by structures already collaborating with the
municipality in their particular area of expertise, specifically the Songhai Centre, PortoNovo's multi-stakeholder platform for Urban and Peri- Urban Agriculture, EPA and the
Ouadada Cultural Centre.
The exemplary, innovative nature of the project
The production, upstream of urban planning, of flood risk studies and a biodiversity
diagnosis for biodiversity in the main humid zone is an exemplary and innovative process in
sub-Saharan Africa.
Pilot schemes aimed at raising awareness among the people and of demarcating heritage
natural areas (humid and/or prone to flooding), with a strategy for the promotion of
architectural and cultural heritage, constitute a new process in relation to institutional
participants, investors and everyone associated with them.
The waste sorting initiative is an example of this from the viewpoint of the introduction of
short circuits and the creation of a value chain enabling all intermediary parties being
remunerated.
Finally, the project offers an innovative general approach for the arrangement of areas with
people in difficult situations, combining the inclusion of vulnerability to climate change with
environmental challenges and sustainable forms of urban planning.
© Luc Raimbault
Contacts
Secrétariat du FFEM
For more information: www.ffem.fr
AFD, 5 rue Roland Barthes, 75598 Paris cedex 12 France
In charge of Sustainable City Projects - Janique Étienne
Tel.: +33 1 53 44 39 50
[email protected]
Communication
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The French Facility for Global Environment
(FFEM) is a bilateral public fund established
at the initiative of the French Government in
1994.
It is administered and financially managed
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