INTEGRATED SAFEGUARDS DATA SHEET CONCEPT STAGE Date ISDS Prepared/Updated: May 6, 2013 I. BASIC INFORMATION A. Basic Project Data Country: Albania Project ID: P116404 Additional Project ID (if any): Project Name: Tirana City Development Strategies Task Team Leader: Artan Guxho, ECSS5 Estimated Approval Date: Feb 25, 2009 Estimated Completion Date: 30 June 2013 Managing Unit: SDNCA Lending Instrument: Grant Sector: Urban Theme: (TA) Urban Strategic Planning Cities Alliance: 250,000 USD Other financing amounts by source: 80,000 USD (Municipality of Tirana) Environmental Category: The project has been classified as an Operational Safeguard Policy 4.01 category ‘B’. The EA checklist does not highlight any negative impact for project activities. The project’s main activities are analytical or advisory in nature. None of the project activities are linked to any parallel or follow-up World Bank lending operations. Simplified Processing Simple [X] Repeater [ ] Is this project transferred to the region Yes [x] No [] B. Project Objectives [from Grant Proposal]: The main goal of this activity is to support the City of Tirana in developing a City Development Strategy (CDS) inclusive of the following objectives: (i) development of a medium to long term Local Economic Development Strategy; and (ii) Setting the agenda for adequate intra- and inter- governmental coordination in managing national and metropolitan Tirana. C. Project Description [from Grant Proposal]: Component 1. Local Economic Development Strategy 1.1 Initial Studies and Researches:  Establishing contacts with the stakeholders (LED promoters like national and international investors, national and international institutions devoted to LED);  Setting up LED monitoring system (the mechanism for identifying the state of art of economic development, including the economic development indicators vis-à-vis the EU practice and best practices worldwide, taking into account environmental sustainability);  Collecting existing studies and researches, local resources, interests and long term development proposals (see Partnership Forum and Communication Strategy). 1.2 Identifying the Development Potential:  Defining the development potential per sector (from Initial study and researches, and SWOT) territorial scale impact, fall-out occupational effect, services and facilities support needed;  Checking and facilitating the access of the most disadvantaged groups in society in the urban economic process;  Linking the potential investments to the interest and resources available at the local, regional, national and international level. 1.3 Setting up LED Strategic Activities:  Identify key investment (improving municipal services, and promoting sustainable local economic growth taking into account environmental sustainability);  Identifying prospective sites to establish industrial parks;  Partnership creation (promoting public-private partnership for Urban Land Development, international partnerships and FDI;  Systematizing and disseminating the knowledge acquired and good practices networking with other international programs (Universitas Forum, URBACT, ILS LEDA UNDP Art Gold II, IDEASS, SIP, DELNET), with other potential partners from the UN system and from the countries (bilateral and decentralized cooperation). Deliverables component 1:  Drafting LED project proposals;  Drafting a Municipal Financing Master Plan Preliminary Study;  Drafting a medium term investment plan;  Prioritizing the LED project proposals;  Revising proposals and priorities with the relevant stakeholders. Component 2. The Inter-intra Government Cooperation The inter-intra government cooperation is a concept indirectly introduced in Albania by the decentralization law and mostly focusing on functional relationship between local governments on issues like common services (water supply, sewage, landfill area, cemeteries etc.). Specific activities of the component are the following:  Revising of the legal status and administrative boundary of the Tirana region;  Identifying the potential economic development of a spatial system made of the Tirana- Durres corridor, the existing/planned railway and road network, port and airport services and facilities;  Defining competencies among neighborhood municipalities (technical and institutional);  Revising above proposals with government institutions. Deliverables:  Policy proposal outlining redefinition of services at national and inter-municipal level;  Tirana metropolitan area spatial plan to be included within the National Spatial Plan. All the project’s activities and deliverables are of analytic and/or advisory nature and primarily focused on assessment studies, capacity building, participatory and communications activities. They do not involve any direct buying of equipment and/or building/construction. The project’s environmental impact is expected not to be direct and will not produce irreversible environmental impacts. However, the project will advise the direction of the city development and identify investment plans for the supportive municipal infrastructure (including proposed locations for industrial parks) hence if strategy will be implemented as planned, it will impact the environment. The latter categorizes the project as environmental category B. The ToR has been updated to strengthen the initial assignment’s focus and reflect main types of environmental opportunities and threats related to planned development to biodiversity, soil, water, air, climatic factors, cultural heritage (architectural and archaeological). In addition the ToR requests emphasis on enhancing the environmental quality in the city to ensure environmental sustainability. The development of the CDS has a strong social development focus as it touches upon issues such as improving the situation of the urban poor, including those working in the informal economy, increasing access to critical infrastructure and municipal services and improving the overall socio-economic outcomes and sustainability of the city of Tirana. In order to adequately address these challenges, the project will need to pay particular attention to the following elements: Stakeholder Assessment and Participation for the development of the LED strategy. The development and implementation of a comprehensive multi-sector local economic development strategy (LED) will depend on the effective consultation and participation of all relevant stakeholders who have been or will be impacted by transformations in Tirana's local economy, including the informal economy. The LED strategy will clearly map out who these stakeholders are (including public, private and civil society groups, environmental NGOs as well as formal and informal community structures with a particular focus on the special situation of Roma communities) and define their overlapping and /or competing interests. Based on this analysis a viable action plan for effective stakeholder consultation and participation in the development of the LED strategy would need to be developed, including public outreach, and dissemination activities. Include social accountability mechanisms in the CDS. The Tirana CDS provides an excellent opportunity to strengthen social accountability through civic engagement (by citizens and civil society) in the development and implementation of the LED strategy but also with regard to the intra- and intergovernmental coordination in managing national and metropolitan Tirana. Cities provide better services and achieve more sustainable results when social accountability mechanisms are in place, especially mechanisms that strengthen linkages among communities, service providers, and policy makers, including through ICT applications. These social accountability mechanisms will also contribute to the stated objective of making the development and implementation of the CDS a highly participatory process. As a first step it would be helpful to map the existing urban social accountability landscape and highlight gaps as well as interesting practices and opportunities. CDS needs to include a clear gender dimension. As men and women often have different urban development needs, e.g. in relation to housing, services, energy, transportation, personal security, etc. a clear gender dimension will be included in the CDS. This will include analyzing gender-based constraints, barriers, opportunities and risks as well as access to different kinds of urban services and jobs, security and safety of women in the city and during intra-city travel. CDS will also include analysis of environmental issues in the urban area and priority environmental concerns of stakeholders. Key environmental issues will be identified based on expert judgment on existing studies, data and knowledge on water, land and air pollution, natural hazards and noise originating through different activities to address city’s main urban growth needs such as water supply, waste water management, solid waste management, urbanization, transportation, industrial production, etc. The analysis will include the assessment of the problem areas, gaps and the relationship between the CDS and other relevant plans and programs. Stakeholders' priority concerns will be identified through consultation with specific focus groups and the workshops open to focus groups and general public as well as close cooperation with UNDP who is financing and overseeing the preparation of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for Tirana Regulatory Plan. The SEAs conclusions and recommendations will be reflected in the Master plans that will follow the Tirana Regulatory Plan. Tirana Regulatory Plan (TRP) is currently being updated to reflect the current Tirana metropolitan area situation. The plan is based on the Regulatory Plan supported by the World Bank from early 2000 which was never enacted. As Tirana rapidly grew (including formal and informal settlements) in the last 10 -15 years, redefining of the Tirana Metropolitan Area and zoning is required for sustainable planning. Therefore, the new / updated TRP will focus on urbanization and spatial integration for the future development of the city. The plan will mainly focus on establishment of zones, i.e. zoning areas. The plan will in addition focus on the need to improve the current infrastructure sectors to support proposed zoning like: Roads and Urban Transportation, Waster Supply System, Sewerage/Drainage System and Solid Waste Management. For this infrastructure sectors improvement, individual Master plans will be prepared after finalization of TRP. The TRP will be followed by regulatory instruments that apply the vision and policies to the territory, based on what is known today and expected to happen in the coming years. It will contribute to enhancing the effectiveness of urban management and land use. The zoning proposed in the TRP will set limitations / boundaries for the CDS development planning, including the siting of potential industrial parks. The siting will be done according to proposed zones defined by TRP, taking into account environmental conditions in those parts of the city, connectivity of areas, logistics and type of economic needs. The Masters plans for supportive infrastructure development, prepared after finalization of TRP will be aligned with the CDS proposals. All recommendations of SEA process for Tirana Regulatory Plan will be implemented through the aforementioned Masters plans. The project does not trigger any social safeguard policies. D. Project location and salient physical characteristics relevant to the safeguard analysis (if known): Tirana is the biggest economical, administrative, political, social and cultural centre of Albania. Its territory covers 42 km2 with a population of ca. 600,000 residents, or 15 percent of the total Albanian population. Over the last two decades Tirana has more than doubled its size and grew from 250,000 inhabitants in 1991 to 600,000 in 2008 - an average demographic growth of 8 percent per annum. With reference to component 1 of the project, the LED strategy, the focus will be the Tirana Municipal area within a wider Metropolitan Area, featured by the most important infrastructural arterial main road, railways and gates (Durres port and Tirana International airport). E. Borrower’s Institutional Capacity for Safeguard Policies: The grant recipient is the Tirana Municipality and activities will be implemented under direct responsibility of the donor coordination unit within Tirana’s strategic planning department. A steering committee comprised of the Vice Mayor and the Directors of the department of planning and development, department of urban development and territory control, services management department, and the strategic planning department, department of environmental policies and awareness and outstanding experts with relevant experience on the main pillars of the CDS will be responsible for coordinating the activities, managing resources and supervising implementation. For the purpose of ensuring the environmental aspects are properly addressed in the strategy, the steering committee in charge for coordination of the strategy was extended by environmental expert, a member of the Department for Environmental Policy and Awareness. The aforementioned department has several environmental experts employed, some of which are participating on preparation of SEA for TRP. These environmental experts do not have sufficient experience on implementation of the WB safeguards policies, however do have experience with the harmonization of policies and plans with the EU environmental policies and are continuously trained through different grants and twinning projects on environmental issues. They do posses considerable knowledge on the state of environment and environmental issues in Tirana. Within the steering committee, at the expert level, CDS working groups will be established, including local economic development, environmental sustainability, and intra and inter-governmental coordination. During the preparation of the strategy, opinions and environmental concerns of the environmental NGOs and other stakeholders will be taken into account and addressed by CDS working group in the final document. . The dialog with environmental NGOs will be lead by CDS environmental sustainability working group. The working group will make sure that the environmental concerns raised by different stakeholders are properly addresses in the strategy. At the same time the working group will provide to the consultant technical expertise, relevant environmental data and know-how, and anchor CDS formulation process and implementation; and cooperate with the SEA team working on TRP. The borrower is currently coordinating preparation of Strategic Environmental Assessment financed by UNDP. The SEA project for TRP will also include training of the staff. Activities of the project will be implemented by the joint venture between Mott MacDonald and A&B Business Consulting that, after WB revision of the ToR, added an environmental specialist to the team. From the World Bank end, the project will be supervised by the Albania Country Office. The TTL function will be performed by Artan Guxho, Senior Infrastructure Specialist, ECSTR. F. Environmental and Social Safeguards Specialist: Natasa Vetma, Senior Operations Officer, ECSEN. Valerie Morrica, Social Development Specialist, ECSS4. II. SAFEGUARD POLICIES THAT MIGHT APPLY Safeguard Policies Triggered (please explain why) Yes No TBD Environmental Assessment (OP/BP 4.01) X The environmental Assessment policy is triggered. The environmental issues related to the planning of the development of the City of Tirana are included in the ToR and the Bank will closely follow preparation. The initial ToR was updated to include description of environmental baseline information and identification of main types of environmental opportunities and threats related to planned development to biodiversity, soil, water, air, climatic factors, cultural heritage (architectural and archaeological). The ToR will be publically disclosed in Albanian and English language subject to commenting. All comments will be reviewed, addressed and reflected in ToR. In addition the strategy will be enhanced during consultation with environmental NGOs and stakeholders. Natural Habitats (OP/BP 4.04) X Forests (OP/BP 4.36) X Pest Management (OP 4.09) X Physical Cultural Resources (OP/BP 4.11) X Indigenous Peoples (OP/BP 4.10) X Involuntary Resettlement (OP/BP 4.12) X Safety of Dams (OP/BP 4.37) X Safeguard Policies Triggered (please explain why) Yes No TBD Projects on International Waterways (OP/BP 7.50) X Projects in Disputed Areas (OP/BP 7.60) X Piloting the Use of Borrower Systems to Address X Environmental and Social Safeguard Issues in Bank- Supported Projects (OP/BP 4.00) III. SAFEGUARD PREPARATION PLAN A. Target date for the Quality Enhancement Review (QER), at which time the PAD-stage ISDS would be prepared: N/A B. For simple projects that will not require a QER, the target date for preparing the PAD-stage ISDS: N/A C. Time frame for launching and completing the safeguard-related studies that may be needed. The specific studies and their timing1 will be specified in the PAD-stage ISDS: The “safeguard-related study� for this project is the environmental and social aspects of the CDS, as set out in the TORs for CDS preparation. Also, in parallel, the preparation of SEA for the Regulatory Plan (financed separately through UNDP) IV. APPROVALS Signed and submitted by: Task Team Leader: Federico Silva 04/13/2011 Artan Guxho (Transferred on July 10, 2012) 12/11/2012 Approved by: Cities Alliance Safeguards Focal Agi Kiss 05/06/2013 Point or Regional Safeguards Coordinator: Comments: Program Manager: William Cobbett Date 12/07/2013 Comments: 1 Reminder: The Bank's Disclosure Policy requires that safeguard-related documents be disclosed before appraisal (i) at the InfoShop and (ii) in-country, at publicly accessible locations and in a form and language that are accessible to potentially affected persons.