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GREENUT - Green Growth and Urban Utilities development programs in South East Asia: a comparative analysis of Metromanila and Iskandar

Introduction

The GREENUT program managed to bring together a group of scholars from different disciplines gravitating around the issue of green growth programs and sustainability issues pertaining to the development management and regulation of utilities.

The project GREENUT (USPC-NUS) has dwelt into the issue of green growth, urban development, utilities and public services provision. The research, has explored the dimensions of sustainability given the current governance and contextual features of Asian cities, with a specific look to South East Asia, and to Singapore, The Philippines and Malaysia; the provision of public services and the principles of efficiency, affordability and reliability; the issue of ownership and Public Private Partnership and its impact on service provision and an integrated management of urban services. Field research carried out in MetroManila (The Philippines) and Iskandar (Malaysia). The empirical research results shed lights about how sustainability and economic growth policy frameworks evolve in the present day in the region

Topics

Some of the main topics have been:

The green economy and the role of utilities
The provision of water and electricity in Metromanila within green growth frameworks
The dimensions of sustainability: risk, resiliency, justice and growth
The conceptualization and operationalization of “resilience" in Singapore’s water policy
The issue of sustainability in the light of risk-management and resilience principles in the Philippines

Involved researchers

Many researchers were involved, both in Paris and in Singapore as well as in other South East Asian Countries. Researchers involved in Paris are Tommaso Vitale (PI, Sciences Po, CEE), Alvaro Artigas (Sciences Po, CERI),
Morgan Mouton (LATTS, PhD student), Charlotte Halpern (Sciences Po, CEE). Please look at the table 1 for more information about the activities of the researchers involved in the program.

Academic Dissemination and Scientific Production

The GREENUT project generated several outputs throughout its year of existence, in the form of scientific partnerships, publication projects, organization of workshops and dissemination at international conferences and government fora.
These outputs allowed for the dissemination of the main preliminary results of the research such as:

A preliminary network analysis of decision-making in the energy and electricity sector in Manila (Meralco, Department of Energy)
A preliminary political economic mapping of metropolitan development and real state actors exerting an impact on urban services development in Manila and Iskandar region
A mapping of the water policy-sector in Metro Manila including utilities(ManilaWater, Maynilad), regulators (MWSS) and governmental concerned ministries (Ministry of Public Works)
A multi-level policy analysis of resilience policies of Philippines cities.
A theoretical model of governance and management of utility development in the Global South.

Scientific Partnerships

The Greenut project generated a sensible amount of tangible outputs both in the form of enhanced cooperation between Sciences Po - USPC and new research partners in South East Asia. The project allowed for research teams to meet with one another and favored through this channel the completion of agreements to be ratified between institutions pertaining to the status of visiting master and PhD students in Manila (El Ateneo) and Malaysia (UTM Malaya). It allowed setting up working teams with our institution on the issue of sustainability strategies, low carbon society programs and utility development from a comparative standing point between Europe and South East Asia. It has explored agreements for GLM capstones (Sciences Po Urban School, master Governing the Large Metropolis).

Organization of Workshops and Conferences organized by the Consortium Researchers

The GREENUT project led to the organization of a workshop at the LKY University of Public Policy at NUS under the title Green Growth in Urban Utilities in South East Asia. This workshop congregated scholars from Sciences Po Paris, LKY Sociology and Urban Studies specialists as well as representatives from the Water Policy Institute. Held on June 7th, with the assistance of the local antenna of USPC at NUS, it allowed for the presentation of communications on: the theoretical implications of green growth programs, the energy-water nexus development in the case of MetroManila, the issue of resiliency in Manila, the issue of water resilience in Singapore. This workshop encouraged fruitful debate on the different components of green growth templates and laid the future pathways of research of this project.
The GREENUT project will also hold a conference at Sciences-Po Paris in October 2016. This will be the occasion to roundup the findings and to finalize the publication of a special issue in a peer review journal.

Dissemination at international conferences

The work carried out in this initial stage, has raised the interest of South East Asian and French institutions carried out by researchers of our consortium. Two communications have already been committed. The first one will take place at the Annual Public Policy Conference at Manila on September 21st, with the title Energy/Water Efficiency and Metro Manila Sustainability Standards very much in line with the Conference's theme on "Risks, Shocks, Building Resilience». The second one will be presented on November 3rd at the 4th International Colloquium Territoires écologiques - "La ville: un nouveau territoire socio-écologique?" to be held in Paris, on the November 3rd and 4th November 2016. This conference is organized by USPC, the Université Paris Diderot and the University of Chicago.

Dissemination at Government Fora

The GREENUT project has generated a strong interest of the Philippine’s government and in particular the Philippine Institute for Development Studies. A researcher from the GREENUT consortium will attend the highly exclusive conference to be hosted by PIDS and co-sponsored by Bangko ng Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on September 22nd 2016. The objective of the conference is to flag to policymakers critical issues that must be addressed in the immediate term. This forum has had a track record of opening the policy space to more in-depth reflections and analyses of resilience building, risk reduction and management, structural transformation, and the role of appropriate policy interventions in building the economy's resilience to various environmental, political and social risks, stresses and shocks.
The questions raised and preliminary results produced by the GREENUT project have raised moreover an interest in the French Embassy at Manila, and the cooperation representatives, who seek to further explore how to sustain this research in the future.