Sustainable Development and Planning II, Vol. 2 1319 Intra-metropolitan inequalities in Rio de Janeiro and the Guanabara Bay Cleaning Programme V. A. Carneiro da Silva & G. Ribeiro School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Abstract This paper investigates the impact of the Guanabara Bay Cleaning Programme (GBCP) on the urban development process of the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area. Based on the magnitude of the budget of the programme (US$ 860.5 million) and its relevance to the improvement of the life quality of urban dwellers, the main focus of this paper is on the role of GBCP in the context of the Rio de Janeiro urban trends and intra-metropolitan inequality dynamics. We present here an analysis of GBCP’s role in Rio de Janeiro’s current urban development process, identifying its influences on the dynamics of socio- environmental inequalities. It can be affirmed that the GBCP plays an important role in improving the existing infrastructure of low-income areas in the Rio de Janeiro, but on the other hand several management and implementation problems counteract its positive impact and contribute to reaffirm the current spatial segregated pattern. Keywords: Guanabara Bay Cleaning Programme, urban planning, environmental management, sustainability, Rio de Janeiro, urban development. 1 Introduction The socio-economical and environmental inequalities in Brazil are well publicized facts and one can state that spatial segregation has been a defining factor in its urbanization. Brazilian metropolitan areas, such as Rio de Janeiro, are increasingly characterized by the presence of wealthy neighbourhoods provided with top quality services next to poor communities with extremely limited infrastructure [4, 5, 9]. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 84, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) 1320 Sustainable Development and Planning II, Vol. 2 During the last two decades the Brazilian Government has launched several policies and urban interventions in an attempt to minimize urban inequalities [4]. In this context, the Guanabara Bay Cleaning Programme is the biggest urban infrastructure project developed in Brazil in the last thirty years. That programme has mainly aimed at contributing to the improvement of living conditions of urban dwellers in low-income neighbourhoods through the provision of water supply and sewage services [6]. Implementation has been very slow and despite the important amount of financial support provided by international agencies GBCP has not achieved many of its goals [1, 3, 4, 10]. This paper focuses on the role of the Guanabara Bay Cleaning Programme (GBCP) in the current urban development process in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area. The question we are interested in is: what are the current environmental conditions of a metropolis with twelve million inhabitants, with accelerated demographic growth of the poor areas, heavily polluting industries, continuous generation of urban substance, notably through the growth of informal settlements, and the absence of good governance? 2 Background The Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area had a population of approximately of twelve million people in the year 2000 when the last demographic census was realized [4]. Comprising nineteen municipalities, it is considered the second largest urban agglomeration in Brazil. The metropolitan area comprehends five hydrographical systems namely: Guanabara Bay, Zona Sul, Jacarepaguá, Sepetiba and Maricá (figure 1). The Guanabara Bay Hydrographical System (GBHS) is the largest one in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area. The GBHS accommodates 2/3 of the entire metropolitan population (approximately eight million people), the commercial and financial metropolitan centre and the second largest Brazilian industrial park. Thus the GBHS could be said to include incompatible land uses, namely dense residential areas side by side fourteen thousand industries, sixteen ports (fourteen ports pertaining to the oil industry and two trade ports), two oil refineries, a large and dense transport system of industrial and chemical loads and many garbage and harmful waste landfills [4, 7]. Currently, the social and environmental status of the Guanabara Bay area is marked by serious problems and the local ecosystem is at this stage extremely degraded. This has been caused through neglect by the State of Rio de Janeiro in a number of spheres, namely: (a) land use planning and urban policy, (b) pollution control, (c) housing and infra-structure policy and (d) mobility planning. The Guanabara Bay Area receives 17m3/second of domestic sewage – that is 465tons per day, only 68tons of this sewage has had some kind of treatment and most of that treatment is just primary. In addition, it receives a large volume of industrial waste: 64tons/day of organic material and 0.3tons/day of oils and heavy metals (chrome, lead, zinc, mercury, etc). On the whole, 7tons/day of waste are released by oil refineries and ports [7]. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 84, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) Sustainable Development and Planning II, Vol. 2 1321 Other sources of pollution are the rivers belonging to GBHS that have been contributing with 4,000,000tons/year of waste. In addition, there are many garbage landfills, official and unofficial, that have a large environmental impact and release 800litres/day of chorume (extremely toxic liquid that leaks from solid waste landfills) in the Guanabara Bay. Another type of intervention with a large environmental impact are landfills covering an area of 91km2 which was previously integrated in the Guanabara Bay – that amounts to 29.1% of the Bay’s total area. These landfills have contributed to a pronounced depletion of the Bay’s ecosystem, mainly due to the destruction of mangroves – an essential feature of the Guanabara Bay. Mangroves that originally covered an area of 260km2 are confined today to only 82km2 [2, 7]. 2.1 Metropolitan planning Large metropolitan areas in Brazil such as Rio de Janeiro are characterized by a high level of complexity and fragmentation. Complexity is related to a scale of the intervention which has to deal with a number of quantitative and qualitative variables as well as several autonomous administrations inside the metropolitan area. Fragmentation is directly correlated to a high level of complexity where officials deal with fragments of the metropolis, usually confined by administrative borders, and execute piecemeal metropolitan planning, intervention and management. Such set-up does not provide a platform for dealing with urban problems on a metropolitan scale or in the context of local ecosystems, notably hydrographical systems [12]. Urban management on a metropolitan scale constitutes one of the main challenges for the states of the Brazilian Federation. A prevalent condition is that of a complex network of administrative bodies and an absence of a metropolitan sphere to guide comprehensive approaches to environmental management. In the case of Rio de Janeiro there are nineteen municipalities (local governments) which integrate the metropolitan area. Above these local governments is the Rio de Janeiro State Government with jurisdiction outside the metropolitan area. Castells [6] describes the emergence of metropolitan areas of a new kind, which fittingly characterize Rio de Janeiro – so-called metropolitan regions: “without a name, without a culture, and without institutions…”, “urban constellations scattered throughout huge territorial expanses, functionally integrated and socially differentiated, around a multi-cantered structure”. [6] Several challenges emerge through such fragmented urban management. First, there are problems in communication between governmental institutions of similar status (like for instance inter-municipal communication or exchanges involving Rio de Janeiro State agencies) or between different layers of government (e.g. between state and municipalities). Such fragmented communication is caused by lack of appropriate management and also through political differences. Second, there are pronounced inequalities between Rio de Janeiro’s municipalities which tend to aggravate the metropolitan segregation process. And finally, there is no metropolitan authority in a position of coordinating planning and intervention by the different spheres of government. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 84, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) 1322 Sustainable Development and Planning II, Vol. 2 3 Spatial analysis With the above considerations in mind, the present paper introduces a spatial analysis on 3 levels (figure 1): Municipality: The municipality is the smallest unit of administration of the Brazilian political system (local government) and the lowest level of physical planning and urban policy making. Metropolitan Area: The metropolitan area refers here to a spatially diffuse congregate of municipalities non-coincidental with the built-up areas. Hydrographical System: The hydrographical system is constituted as an official unit of environmental management in accordance to the new Brazilian Constitution promulgated in 1988; notwithstanding the fact that its status as a unit of planning is in practice both peripheral and mired by diverse political barriers [12]. Neder [12] points out that the implementation of an integrated management of hydrographical systems in metropolitan areas is one of the major challenges in Brazilian metropolitan