Local Environmental Initiatives Oriented to Children and Youth: A Review of UN-Habitat Best Practices

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments 15(2), 2005 Local Environmental Initiatives Oriented to Children and Youth: A Review of UN-Habitat Best Practices Darcy Varney Willem van VlietChildren , Youth and Environments Center for Research and Design University of Colorado Citation: Varney, Darcy and Willem van Vliet--. (2005). “Local Environmental Initiatives Oriented to Children and Youth: A Review of UN Habitat Best Practices. Children, Youth and Environments 15(2): 41-52. Comment on This Article Abstract This paper presents the results of a study of the objectives and methods of a selection of child- and youth-oriented environmental initiatives around the world. Its goal is to review how local communities and municipalities are working to create physical environments that support the rights and priorities of children. To this end, we use a child-friendly city framework in an examination of 101 "good," "best" and "award winning" practices identified by UN-Habitat. We supplement these data with responses to a self-administered questionnaire, sent to a subset of the cases in the UN database. We provide profiles of several practices which promise to offer valuable insights into the dynamics of community-based practices that are oriented to the needs of children and which suggest directions for research to further guide such practices. Keywords: best practices, child-friendly cities, community-based initiatives This paper was initially commissioned by Save the Children Sweden.© 2005 Children, Youth and Environments Local Environmental Initiatives Oriented to Children and Youth… 42 After adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the U.N. General Assembly in 1989, and starting with the World Summit for Children in 1990, a series of world summits produced action plans that emphasized norms of social justice and environmental sustainability. The resulting policy platforms focused attention on population groups considered “at risk” and typically made special mention of children and youth. In combination, the preparatory activities and outcomes of these summits helped develop new policy frameworks concerning children, youth and the environment. These new frameworks gave emphasis to rights-based approaches and recognized children and youth as active agents with entitlements and competencies. One of these summits, the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), focused on living conditions worldwide. Among the activities related to the summit was a 1995 international conference on best practices for improving the world’s living conditions on a sustainable basis, hosted by the Dubai Municipality in the United Arab Emirates. Subsequently, UN-Habitat, together with the Dubai Municipality and other partners, established the Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme, which maintains a database of best practices submitted for the Dubai International Award every two years.1 UN-Habitat defines “best practices” as successful initiatives that have a demonstrable and tangible impact on improving people’s quality of life; are the result of effective partnerships between the public, private and civic sectors of society; and are socially, culturally, economically, and environmentally sustainable.2 This report presents the results of an exploratory study of a sample of these best practices, selected for their emphasis on child- and youth-oriented environmental initiatives around the world. A Content Analysis of Child- and Youth-Oriented Best Practices The Best Practices Database now includes 1,581 “good,” “best” and “awardwinning ” practices from 140 countries. Organizations that nominate their own or another group’s initiatives provide a narrative summary and a description of their work, explaining how the initiative came to be and succeeded in fulfilling its objectives. One of the 18 possible categories for these nominations is “Children and Youth,” and the database includes 164 “good,” “best” and “award winning” practices in this category. Among these are 101 practices that have involved an impact on the physical environment for children and youth, including attention to water and sanitation, to housing and neighborhood conditions, to the physical conditions within institutions for children, and to conditions that promote play and recreation, or that ensure mobility and access for disabled youth. A content analysis of these 101 narratives reveals activities on a number of fronts, some more common than others: 1) The majority of the initiatives (69) involved specific changes or improvements to the physical environment in response to the needs and concerns...