What is the role of green investments in the future of Romanian cities? A review of local development strategies is a pilot analysis of the green component of local development strategies, including by linking to available local government funding for capital investment for the period 2023-2030, assumed targets for improving the state of the environment in the urban areas and the role of the local communities in drafting and approving these key documents at the local level.
Ideally, local development strategies – which are the most important strategic documents at local level, as they include the whole portfolio of projects and provide mechanisms for prioritizing investments – should support strategic planning, targets and indicators assumed by the local authorities and the development vision. They identify and prioritize public investments and indicate the evolution of local development objectives in a structured manner. The reason why we say “ideally” is because in the Romanian administration the planning component, i.e., the monitoring and evaluation of these strategies, is deficient, with little public data available to assess the degree of achievement of the targets assumed.
At CRPE, we analyzed from a green perspective the project portfolios that are part of the development strategies of the county capital municipalities and the city halls of Bucharest for the current programming period (2021-2027). We built a methodology for selecting green projects or projects with a substantial green component in order to better understand the focus of public administrations in Romania ahead of decades that will prioritize green investments. The report, we hope, presents the vision of the most important municipalities in Romania in terms of sustainable development and (re)focusing of public investments towards the major objective that is climate neutrality.
Green investments prioritized by the Romanian cities for the 2023-2030 period
According to our calculations, Romania’s most important cities will allocate capital investments (including those co-financed by European funds) of over €19.1 billion between 2023 and 2030. This is an optimistic scenario, where 30% of local budget spending will be allocated to development, compared to an average of 20% between 2017 and 2022. Bucharest and its six sectors have an investment potential reaching almost €7 billion over the period 2023-2030, followed by cities such as Timisoara (€922 million), Iasi (€940 million) or Cluj Napoca (€913 million). However, this amount is significantly below the value of the project portfolios for the period analyzed and can only partially cover what we have identified as green investments.
What we have categorized as green investments or investments with a significant green component represent a portfolio of projects of at least € 19.2 billion out of a total of over €95.4 billion, divided into the following investment types: C1 (Air Quality) – 3.28 billion, C2 (Water Quality) – €1.3 billion, C3 (Urban Biodiversity) – €2.66 billion, C4 (Waste and Circular Economy) – €1.3 billion, C5 (Noise Pollution) – €0.14 billion and C6 (Energy Efficiency) – €10.5 billion.
Significant planned energy efficiency budgets dominate the project portfolios both in terms of estimated values and in terms of number of projects. Historical backlogs in public infrastructure, a preference for visible and more achievable projects, and a timid approach to greening and pollution reduction processes in big cities that could lead to lost votes (on issues such as road traffic, stricter waste policy, noise, heating, or air pollution) cause these portfolios to be focused around more achievable goals.
Involving citizens in setting priorities in local development strategies
Most local development strategies indicate tools for citizen consultation, but this key chapter on community participation in strategy development is often treated very superficially. Not many details are provided about the consultation process, its duration, or its results. A limited number of participation tools are included (in most cases only online questionnaires and thematic working groups) which almost never succeed in creating greater public participation in the drafting of the strategies, with limited access by citizens.
The analysis includes an in-depth presentation of the tools used for citizen consultation by each Romanian city and best practice examples from Romania and other EU member states.
Urgency of environmental quality indicators
Local administrations should enhance their capacity to collect, monitor and evaluate a set of mandatory indicators at strategy level. Many local strategies are affected not only by the lack of a process for monitoring the indicators agreed, but also by the lack of clarity on the evolution of the indicators and the target, in particular when there are no baseline indicators, but only targets agreed for certain periods. There is a need to rapidly strengthen the capacity of local administrations to collect, publish and update sets of binding indicators for each strategic objective, and this needs to be done in a transparent way and with priority.
What we propose is that local public authorities include in their strategic documents data on specific categories of indicators per component, as included in the Green City Accord initiative (and publish them in real time where appropriate, or to adjust them constantly). We add to this list several other indicators, in particular for Component 6 – Energy Efficiency, which should be a starting point for climate neutrality roadmaps and the green vision of government.
A roadmap to climate neutrality and a green investment plan
We propose the publication of a roadmap or a comprehensive green plan in a simplified version for the general public, summarising the local government’s vision on the subject. It should include the main targets, measures and projects promoted by the administration to achieve the objective of climate neutrality and improvement of the state of the environment and environmental indicators at urban level.
A green investment roadmap plays an important role in prioritising green investments for the period 2023-2030. Running this kind of pilot exercise can support strategic planning and increase transparency at local level, but at the same time it can also provide the answer to a question that has been asked more and more often in recent years about the (green) development vision of cities.
In Romania’s case, it is very difficult to find the answer for its large cities. Local governments can extract from the current strategic documents, based on a ranking methodology, green investments for the period 2023-2030. This new portfolio, coupled with a breakdown of the environmental targets and indicators assumed by the local government, can form the basis of a multiannual investment plan, better adapted to community needs and more transparent and easier to follow by the general public.
The Romanian version of the report is also available on our website – Ce rol pentru investițiile verzi în viitorul orașelor din România?
This report is part of the Green rights for a sustainable future: Enhancing citizens’ involvement in EU’s climate ambitions (Green-Rights) project.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.