The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Nassau’s “sustainability and quality of life” are being targeted for improvement by a $1.1 million Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) project designed to improve its environment and governance.

The proposed initiative is designed to incorporate Nassau into the Emerging and Sustainable Cities (ESCI) initiative, which has been rolled out through the Latin America and Caribbean, with the main goal of improving residents’ quality of life over the long-term.

“The main objective of this Technical Cooperation (TC) is to improve the sustainability and quality of life of the residents of Nassau,” an IDB document outlining the project said.

It added that Nassau, and by extension, New Providence, was coming under increased pressure stemming from overcrowding and a growing population, plus the rise in global sea levels.

“Its population grew, on average, over 2 per cent per year over the last three decades, from 135,437 in 1980 to 246,329 in 2010,” the IDB paper said of Nassau.

“The city is the nation’s business centre as well as its capital. Over recent years, there has been much migration from the less populated islands to New Providence, putting pressure on the sustainability of this already densely-populated island.

“Added to the rapid population growth, coastal hazards and sea level rise due to climate change pose challenges for the future.”

The proposed project will conduct assessments, and “prepare an action plan to improve Nassau’s sustainability” in the areas of the environment, governance, urban living and fiscal/financial support.

Using interviews with stakeholders and residents, and assessments by experts, the project intends - once approved - to prioritise “critical action areas with the greatest potential to improve the sustainability and quality of life in the city using environmental, economic, and public opinion criteria.

“An action plan will then be developed with concrete strategies to address the issues identified in the priority action areas.”

The IDB project document added: “As a result, in the short term, Nassau will have a diagnosis and prioritisation of its critical areas, with solutions identified for the critical problems in an action plan.

“This plan will support an integrated vision of urban, environmental and fiscal/institutional sustainability. The action plan will provide the city with an agenda of priority investments compatible with the technical and financial capacities necessary to execute it in an effective and efficient way.

“This will allow the city to execute high impact investments, avoiding wasting resources on low priority topics.”

The IDB said the “two fundamental risks” to the project’s success were the “lack of co-ordination among government agencies”, plus “institutional weakness and low technical capacity of some areas of the city’s government”.

To deal with this, the project paper added: “To minimise the first risk, during the execution the bank’s team will hold coordination meetings with government agencies involved in the process, including the Ministry of Finance.

“As to the second risk, the action plan will incorporate institutional strengthening methods to improve the capacity of the Government to execute and supervise projects like those to be implemented from the ESCI action plan.”