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Creating a Framework for Integrated Resource Management in Heidelberg, Germany
PROFILE
City of Heidelberg, Germany
Population: 139,000
Land Area: 109 km2
Municipal Budget: US$413.9 million (466 million Euro)
STRATEGY
Strengthen Local Government
CHALLENGE
To address unemployment, unaffordable housing, population exodus to the suburbs and shifting demographics that threaten the city's unique economic, social and environmental fabric.
GOAL
To undertake development that safeguards Heidelberg's unique character while being equally socially responsible, environmentally compatible and economically successful.
ACTION
Develop a plan to integrate the management of the many and varied programs and policies for sustainable development, using environmental budgeting as the framework to control the use of natural resources.
ABSTRACT
The City of Heidelberg has long been a leader in environmental management and sustainable development. The 1997 City Development Plan, created with social, economic and environmental considerations, is a strategy to take Heidelberg to 2010. Its environmental target area includes a call to establish an environmental budget.
Environmental budgeting applies periodic financial budgeting processes, mechanisms and routines to the management of natural resources. In Heidelberg, environmental budgeting has allowed the city to set targets, and then use resource management processes to ensure that the targets are being met. Heidelberg has reduced municipal carbon dioxide emissions by 30% since 1993, drinking water consumption by 12% since 1990, and residual waste by 49% since 1990.
As part of the city's overall development plan, environmental budgeting shows the success of the cumulative and interactive effects the city's initiatives have on natural resources in both the short and long term, and links these environmental benefits to sustainable development.
CASE
Introduction
Cities, towns and counties, as the provider of basic services to their residents, have a key role to play in sustainable environmental management. To achieve this goal, municipalities have a number of management instruments at their disposal. The problem is that these instruments--policies, audits, reporting, indicators, etc.--often work in isolation from each other, and do not address the interconnection between environmental resources and economics and society.
Environmental budgeting is a management system for the use of natural resources that complements financial budgeting and human resource management. It applies periodic financial budgeting processes, mechanisms and routines to the management of natural resources so that city managers devote the same amount of attention and concern to these resources and to environmental quality.
As a comprehensive system of municipal environmental planning, controlling and reporting, environmental budgeting constitutes the environmental cornerstone for Integrated Resource Management (IRM). IRM relates the management of financial, human and natural resources to one another, thus building a consistent framework for effective municipal service delivery with efficient resource use.
The value of environmental budgeting for sustainable development was outlined in the 1994 Aalborg Charter, adopted at the first European Sustainable Cities & Towns Conference, where economic, social and environmental concerns were put into a hierarchy. "We seek to achieve social justice, sustainable economies, and environmental sustainability. Social justice will necessarily have to be based on economic sustainability and equity, which require environmental sustainability." 1 The charter committed signing local governments to "seek to establish new environmental budgeting systems which allow for the management of our natural resources as economically as our artificial resource, 'money'."2
Heidelberg was one of four German municipalities, along with the cities of Bielefeld and Dresden and Nordhausen County, to take on this challenge. These municipalities participated in a project to introduce environmental budgeting using the ecoBudget® system developed by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI).3 Over a full budget cycle, Heidelberg used and adapted the ecoBudget system and subsequently introduced environmental budgeting on an ongoing basis.
The City of Heidelberg, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
(photo courtesy of the City of Heidelberg.)
Heidelberg--Responsibility for the Future
The City of Heidelberg is located on the Rhine plateau in Baden-Württemberg and is a UNESCO-protected World Heritage site and tourist center. Heidelberg, apart from tourism, has a science and research-based economy. The city has long been a leader in environmental management and sustainable development. Heidelberg adopted a climate protection concept in 1992, committing itself to reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by at least 20% by the year 2005 (with respect to 1987 values). In 1994, Heidelberg signed the Aalborg Charter and also introduced a city traffic development plan. For these efforts Heidelberg received the European Sustainable City Award in 1997.
That same year Heidelberg city council adopted the City Development Plan. When the current mayor, Beate Weber, came into office in 1990, she found the existing 1974 city plan no longer fit with realities in the city. Growth had lead to an increase in the number of jobs by 20,000 and the number of dwellings by 16,000. However, the population living in the city had increased only slightly, with the number of commuters coming in from the suburbs having risen sharply. The number of unemployed people and those looking for housing in the city had increased. All of which led to "forced" mobility. As well, the city had an increase in multicultural residents and those with diverse lifestyles. 4 It was time to engage in a new city development planning process to further the city's activities toward sustainable development.
Developed over two-and-a-half years starting in 1994, and with broad public participation, from its incecption the debate around the plan was framed by the idea of "Responsibility for the Future." Social, economic and environmental factors were to be considered. The City Development Plan was to present a strategy to take Heidelberg to the year 2010. Participants were thus constantly reminded of the long-term nature of the plan they were creating.
Expanding on the city's 1974 development scheme and incorporating the lessons learned through developing the climate and transportation plans, the new City Development Plan,
sets the comprehensive and integrative scope of action for a policy which assumes responsibility for social co-existence within the City and the conservation of an environment worth living in. Its core feature is the commitment towards a sustainable city development which meets the task of the "Local Agenda 21"?5
In the end, the plan looked at objectives under seven target areas: urbanism, regional cooperation and development, employment, housing, environment, mobility, social matters, and culture. Existing commitments and plans, such as the climate protection and transportation plans, were incorporated into the broader City Development Plan, although they are still followed separately as well.
The environmental target area addresses overall improvement in the local environmental and permanently protecting natural resources such as water, soil and air. In this section is a call to establish an environmental budget as such a "scheme plays a vital role for the initiation of a sustainable development."6
Environmental Budgeting
Environmental budgeting was conceived in conscious imitation of financial budgeting. By transferring financial budget cycles to environmental management a system is created which has one big advantage: its principal function and terminology is already familiar to the public, politicians and municipal staff.
Environmental budgeting does not attempt to express environmental effects in monetary terms. To set limits on, and follow the "spending" of natural resources, budgets are based on five to twenty resource accounts, using environmental indicators measured in physical quantities. In Heidelberg, CO2 emissions, water consumption and residual waste generation were some of the indicators used. For each account (indicator) a mid-term (five to ten year) target is set. Based on the state of each indicator from the reference year, annual or biennial targets are set to reach agreed mid-term targets.
At the end of the budgetary cycle, an environmental budget balance is established to inform the municipal council of the progress towards meeting the targets. Environmental budgeting as a management system ensures that objectives are not only discussed but actually adopted, that implementation is controlled and that previous experiences are considered in the next period. The application of a budget cycle similar to the financial management process ensures that the issues of the use of natural resources and environmental quality are returning to the political agenda regularly. In a transparent way, municipal decision makers determine in advance the spending framework (targets), and can be held accountable for meeting the targets or overspending (debt to nature).
In Heidelberg, a project team with representatives from various departments in the city administration oversee the implementation of the environmental budget. Headed by the Mayor for Energy and Environment, these departments includes urbanism and statistic, treasury, urban planning, measurement, landscape management, water management and personnel, as well as the local energy and water supplier. This team develops the indicators and reviews the draft environmental budget before it is presented to the mayor and city council for approval. As an example of the outcome of this process, the city's 1998 budget balance is presented in Figure 1.
In the city, the environmental budget is seen as a "Meta-Environmental Management System" in that it provides a framework to review the success of various actions. The budget serves to build a network of departments and their various projects, each with responsibilities to balance their respective "budget lines." Heidelberg's concept linking the various single projects to their environmental budget (ecoBudget) and eventually their Local Agenda 21 (City Development Plan) is seen in Figure 2.
Heidelberg has expanded on the original environmental budgeting concept, keeping a budget for the city's overall environmental consumption (municipality, citizens, businesses, etc.). They now also have special budgets for environmental consumption by "big" municipal projects (those requiring an environmental impact assessment (EIA)) and municipal institutions.
RESULTS
The city recently completed the first review of the implementation of the City Development Plan. One of the main outcomes is that the city has taken action on all of the activities in the plan over the past four years. While some activities have been completed, others are long-term commitments that will continue to evolve. Completed activities from the City Development Plan include:
- the formulation of environmental quality targets through the ecoBudget,
- the creation of an "undeveloped area structure concept" and an "environment plan,"
- a 30% reduction of CO2 emissions by municipal buildings through energy saving measures,
- implementation of a voluntary municipal EIA.
- measures to reduce the CO2 emissions of municipal buildings, such as energy conservation; for example, the city has developed "E-Teams" at schools to promote renewable energy sources;
- measures to reduce the CO2 emissions of private households and the commercial sector;
- measures to reduce noise caused by road traffic;
- cooperation projects with local enterprises to reduce emissions and waste, to save resources and to implement a sustainable management;
- networking with local and regional enterprises and institutions to coordinate and improve environmental protection activities.
- reductions in municipal CO2 emissions by 30% since 1993,
- reductions in nitrous oxides (NOx) emissions by 65% since 1986,
- reductions in drinking water consumption by 12% since 1990,
- reductions in specific residual waste by 49% since 1990.
The cross-departmental nature of environmental budgeting has served to educate municipal staff not traditionally involved in that field on environmental concerns and limits. Overall, environmental budgeting has proven to be a useful controlling instrument for successfully meeting the environmental targets set out in the City Development Plan. It will continue to support Heidelberg's overall strategy going forward.
LESSONS LEARNED
Heidelberg found that properly organizing before starting the budget process led to a more successful outcome. For example, developing cross-departmental groups, setting very clear targets linked to other initiatives (such as linking climate protection targets to the existing Heidelberg targets to reduce CO2 emissions), and setting in place systems to develop and track budgets throughout the cycle were key to getting the process started. Part of this organization is the development of a system for ongoing reporting. As with many initiatives, a transparent system is critical to success. For the environmental budget to work, a willingness to systemize policies, set priorities and debate conflicts is absolutely necessary.
Data availability proved to be a stumbling block. Heidelberg found that the selection of indicators was limited by the available data--current, comparable, and easily and economically collected data are needed. Given the time required to see effects from changes in environmental activities, the city also found the environmental budget cycle worked better over two years.
Finally, support from the municipal leadership was very important for the establishment of the City Development Plan and the implementation of the environmental budgeting component of the plan.
KEY REPLICATION FACTORS
As the foundation of a sustainable community, natural resources like air, water and land need to be managed to ensure their long-term viability.
With environmental budgeting, Heidelberg has introduced a mechanism that sustains the attention of municipal decision makers on natural resources and environmental quality through periodic target-setting, controlling and reporting. Building a network within the administration to collect and analyze the necessary data from various initiatives and to define the budget accounts and targets together with the responsible departments was important in making the mechanism work.
As part of the city's overall development plan, environmental budgeting shows the success of the cumulative and interactive effects the city's initiatives have on natural resources in both the short and long term, and links these environmental benefits to sustainable development.
Budget and Staffing
The City Development Plan has been implemented by the various departments within their existing budgets. Similarly, the Heidelberg approach to ecoBudget as a "Meta-EMS" means that each budget has to be controlled by the responsible office or institution. Ideally it is based on already existing planning, controlling and reporting systems so that no additional staff is required. An estimate of staff time required is approximately 10 to 20% of a full-time position for each budget at the responsible institution, The same applies for a central coordinator, responsible for collecting the estimates and calculations and then setting-up ("writing") the budget.
KEY CONTACTS
Dr. Raino Winkler
City of Heidelberg
Tel: +49-62-21-58-18-18
Fax: +49-62-21-58-18-29
Email: Umweltamt.Heidelberg@Heidelberg.de
NOTES
1European Sustainable Cities & Towns Campaign. 1994. Aalborg Charter, Part 1.2.
2Ibid. Part 1.14.
3Erdmenger, Christoph, et al. 1999. Local Environmental Budgeting, concept description.
4City of Heidelberg. 1997. City Development Plan, page 7.
5 Ibid, page 2.
6 Ibid, page 18.
REFERENCES
Bull, Victoria and Holger Robrecht. March 2002. Environmental Budgeting: a summary of the ecoBudget Concept and System.
City of Heidelberg. 1997. Heidelberg City Development Plan 2010--Guidelines and Goals.
Erdmenger, Christoph, Konrad Otto-Zimmermann, Karen Buchanan and Andrea Burzacchini. 1999. Local Environmental Budgeting, concept description, second revised edition. ICLEI, Freiburg, Germany.
European Sustainable Cities & Towns Campaign. 1994. Aalborg Charter.
Stüven, Sylvia (Nordhausen County). March 2002. Conversations with Researcher.
Weber, Beate. (Mayor, City of Heidelberg). April 2002. Conversation with Writer.
Winkler, Raino (City of Heidelberg). March 2002. Conversations with Researcher.
Zirkwitz, Hans-Wolf and Raino Winkler. 2000. Environmental Budgeting: First Results from the German pilot project in the City of Heidelberg.
Zirkwitz, Hans-Wolf and Raino Winkler. 2001. Environmental Budgeting -- New Public Management of Scarce Resources. Case Study, City of Heidelberg, Germany.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Researchers: Holger Robrecht, Heather Kepran Author: Heather Kepran
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Case Studies of Local Government Success This case study is part of Local Strategies for Accelerating Sustainability: Case Studies of Local Government Success. This series of case studies highlights the diverse ways in which local governments and their partners have instituted strategies for action that are accelerating the transition to sustainable, equitable and secure communities. The series was prepared as part of the local government contribution to the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, South Africa, 2002). The case studies were researched, written and produced with financial support from the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, The Netherlands. |
© May 2002, ICLEI-Canada. All Rights Reserved.
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Tel: +1-416-392-1462; Fax: +1-416-392-1478
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Bielefeld, Germany Bielefeld, a city of 325,000 in northwest Germany, has been faced with excessive sprawl and increasing motorized transportation over the last few years. Local environmental budgeting was seen as a strategic aid to target setting in planning, especially related to the city's climate protection, water provision and open space activities. Environmental budgeting has been integrated into most of the departments involved. It plays an increasingly important role as Bielefeld politicians decided in early 2000 to introduce environmental budgeting into the local authority on a permanent basis, and are looking at extending the ecoBudget to include other accounts (indicators). Contact: Ms Susanne Schenk, City of Bielefeld, Fachdienst Umwelt, Gesundheit & Verkehr, D-33597 Bielefeld Germany; Tel: +49-521/51-28-60; Fax: +49-521/51-939-428-60; Email: susanne.schenk@bielefeld.de or fachdienst.umwelt@bielefeld.de |
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Nordhausen County, Germany Nordhausen is a county of about 100,000 citizens located in central Germany. As a small county with limited financial and staff resources, Nordhausen uses the ecoBudget approach to integrate their environmental policies and programs into their Local Agenda 21 in a cost-effective manner. As Sylvia Stüven from Nordhausen has stated, the county has found that, "?environmental budgeting appears as the optimal instrument for a sustainable use of natural resources on the basis of scientific, region-oriented environmental targets." Nordhausen recently approved its second environmental budget balance and environmental master budget for the next year. Contacts: Ms Gisela Hartmann and Ms Sylvia Stüven, Nordhausen County, Amt für Umweltschutz, Behringstr. 3, D-99734 Nordhausen, Germany; Tel: +49-3631/911-345; Fax: +49-3631/911-339; Email: Landratsamt.Nordhausen@t-online.de |
Figure 1. Environmental Budget Balance for Heidelberg 1998
(Source: Zirkwitz, Hans-Wolf and Raino Winkler. 2001. Environmental Budgeting -- New Public Management of Scarce Resources. Case Study, City of Heidelberg, Germany. Page 3.)
Figure 2. Draft concept for the environmental budgeting in Heidelberg.
(Source: Zirkwitz, Hans-Wolf and Raino Winkler. 2001. Environmental Budgeting -- New Public Management of Scarce Resources. Case Study, City of Heidelberg, Germany. Page 6.)
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