NETWORK NEWS

Canals : an asset for sustainable development

Attending a seminar in Brussels on 18/11/99, organised for the partners of the TERRA programme, VEV delegates were invited to reflect on "indicators" of performance of historic canals and navigations, particularly from the standpoint of sustainable development.

Eighty actors of the TERRA programme met in Brussels in November for a day of brainstorming on "indicators as tools for management and monitoring of processes for planning sustainable local and regional development". This apparently forbidding task definition was followed by a question of disarming simplicity to which the delegates tried to answer: "How useful are they?".
Umberto Vascelli Vallara for Lombardy, Jean-Pierre and Anne Gailliez for Wallonia and David Edwards-May, technical assistant delegated by Midi-Pyrenees regional council, attended a series of presentations which threw new light on the projects undertaken by the VEV partners.
The approach was inspired by one of the leading TERRA projects, SDTP (Sustainable Development Through Planning), a network which, like VEV, concerns a broad panel of regions through the EU.
The European Commission wanted to draw the attention of the greatest number to the work done by this partnership, led by Tees Valley Council (North-East England), which sought to apprehend the "nitty gritty" of planning processes, with a view to deriving transferable theories. Among the many other enlight- ening talks, Clive Gilbert (Kent County Council) had identified 69 indicators of quality of life of the county's inhabitants, but feedback forced planners to reduce the number to ensure efficiency of the process, while Mireille Grubert of DG REGIO, responsible for the Urban programme, described the work in progress on quality of life indicators in 58 towns (the biggest in the EU, excluding Paris and London).
This seminar will have been valuable for the VEV partnership, first by recalling the contours of the vast project within which our own work forms just one of the "building blocks". Perhaps more significantly, it will have provided a vision for the future. After analysing all the results of the TERRA programme, the Commission is expected to adopt one or several projects which will have proved particularly promising in terms of regional development, for new community-funded programmes.
Finally, it will have stimulated our own reflection. What indicators do we have to appreciate the value of our heritage of historic canals? Several research programmes, particularly those undertaken by Linköping University and British Waterways, are aimed precisely at providing indicators. One of the issues at the closing conference in Toulouse in October 2000 could be to propose a synthesis between the "quality of life" indicators, perhaps corresponding to the political perspective, and "socio-economic performance" indicators, which waterway authorities seek to identify and evaluate, in support of their submissions for funding investments or the equivalent of a "public service obligation" in operating their networks.
This is another example of the scope and ambition of the VEV network: starting from the necessarily contrasted viewpoints of the regional institutions and the bodies managing the canals on behalf of the nation, the objective is to forge a consensus. Our work takes place against a backdrop of major change, with key players jostling for position, and many hard questions being asked. This is the case in Sweden, for example, where the outcome of one study could be to recommend broadening the ownership structure of the Göta Canal, currently run by a central government department. Another observation is that our project is eminently "sectoral": does it not amount to defending the interests of one type of transport infrastructure, traditionally the poor relation of public sector transport investments? We clearly do not have the same detachment, the same broad view as some of the other TERRA projects. Is this to be regretted? Certainly not! We may even feel proud of this eccentricity, especially as the way of life offered by historic canals to all users is in total harmony with the ESDP's objectives of sustainable regional development. We have nine months left to unravel the knots of our common history and propose our own indicators !