There
are three sets of conditions for a land use plan to have a positive and
significant impact. First,
it must have technical merit such that we know what issues need to be addressed
and how to
address them; second, it must have the political mandate and organizational
capability to allow implementation;
and third, it must be backed up by sufficient financial and other material resources.
Technical
merit
The
overall objective of a land use plan is to identify the most appropriate
locations and promote efficient
and safe environments of social activities (land uses). This includes
transportation linkages
among the various activities as well as administrative and other associated
governance requirements.
Ideally, it should also support the national government’s goal of inclusive
growth, complement
other sectoral development plans, and provide detail to regional and provincial
land use
policies. Its most immediate role, however, is to serve as the core of the
CLUP, which is intended
to guide or lead the LGU in the attainment of its goals and objectives.
Typically, these goals
and objectives are defined and measured by employment, income/poverty,
education, health,
and other development indicators.
We need
not go into the details of the structure and components of a land use plan. As
far as technical
merit is concerned, we have already noted major shortcomings of land use plans
which need to
be addressed, in particular: the lack of consideration for the demand side, the
lack of inter-local
or metropolitan integration and multi-level analyses, the need to update basic
planning principles
and standards, and the need to integrate more effective disaster risk reduction measures.
Two additional points, however, are worth mentioning.
In
general, consideration should be given such that land using activities take
place in areas that, in
order of priority: (1) do not pose direct threats to public safety (disaster
risk reduction measures);
(2) enhance and protect lifeline systems (transport routes, communication
lines, water and
power service delivery); and (3) promote the sustainability of productive
resources and keysupport
services.
Implementation
mandate and organization capability
The
mandate of cities and municipalities to prepare, implement and enforce land use
plans resides
in the constitution, various provisions of the 1991 Local Government Code,
Executive Orders
72 and 648, and Republic Act 7279. A full list is provided in the CLUP
Guidebook prepared
by the HLURB. Meanwhile, formal approval of a specific plan is given by the
local development
council following a prescribed process.
As
mentioned earlier, the CLUP and its implementation instrument, the zoning
ordinance, are intended
to directly regulate land use in the country, as part of a set of plans that
covers the entire national-regional-provincial-local
hierarchy. However, consistency and integration within this multi-level
and multi-sectoral hierarchy of plans are not yet in place.
Given
this scenario, the enactment
of a National Land Use Act (NLUA) could provide the much needed mandate to consolidate
and integrate land use policies even while retaining LGU jurisdiction over land
use planning
and enforcement. Because it is a legislative act, however, the NLUA should
defer from prescribing
specific design and planning standards. Instead, it should refer these to the
National Physical
Framework Plan (NPFP). In this manner, the basic policies are established in
the NLUA while
design and planning standards that are subject to regular adjustments (because
of technological
changes for example) can be done accordingly without having to go through Congress.
This also provides the NPFP, which to date serves only as a reference document,
with the
required implementation mandate.
As far
as manpower is concerned, many LGUs do not have the sufficient number to
conduct required
planning activities. This is part of the reason for the low percentage of
cities and
municipalities
(35% of 1,610 cities and municipalities in 2008, according to the HLURB) that,
in recent
years, do not have any CLUP or do not have an updated CLUP. Most LGUs are
likely to continue
to encounter this problem because of the lack of qualified personnel,
especially trained planners,
in the country.
As of 2008, there were only 609 registered Environmental
Planners (authorized
to sign subdivision and other urban/regional plans) in the Philippines; this
number includes
inactive and international-based planners. With only an average of 21 planners
being added
to the professional roster every year (during 2000-2008, according to the
Philippine Institute
of Environmental Planners), and assuming every registered Planner works for
cities and municipalities,
it will take 47 years for the number of planners to match the total number of
cities and
municipalities. Further aggravating the situation is the apparent large amount
of planning tasks
required of local planning offices such that, according to one estimate, one
office is typically
required to prepare 28 plans within three years. And this does not include
non-planning responsibilities
assigned to local planning officials. (Corpuz 2008) LGUs with larger operating budgets
will have less difficulty but for the majority, and without external
assistance, the lack of qualified
personnel will continue to be a problem.
The
other serious obstacles to the performance of the planning and implementation
bureaucracy are the
weak linkages within the planning-investment
programming-budgeting-implementation process.
Ideally, the PPAs proposed in the CLUP/CDP are prioritized as part of an
investment programming
exercise and incorporated into the annual budget for implementation.
In the
real world, however, few projects identified in the plan are actually
implemented. (There is no
actual data available for cities and municipalities but this is consistent with
a recent study of provincial
plans which found that only 15%-30% of the PPAs identified and listed in the
plan are provided
a budget.) (Carino, Corpuz and Manasan 2004) Further, some PPAs not identified
in the
plan are inserted into the budget for implementation. This suggests that
political considerations
dominate the budgeting and implementation end of the process. It is also in
line with
the reported “divide by n” resource allocation practice where LGU capital
investment resources,
however limited, are distributed among allies of the local political
leadership.
It can
be argued that if the quality of the plan and its PPAs is poor, because of the
lack of available
professional planners, for example, then the low implementation performance is
not
necessarily
bad or inconsequential, i.e. not implementing bad projects is good. Or
conversely, quality
is not important to begin with because of the low implementation performance,
i.e. why waste
time and resources to come up with a good plan if it is not likely to be
implemented anyway.
Further, the three-year tenure of the local leadership does not encourage or
even makes it
impractical to initiate a plan that looks seriously beyond the short term. This
does not mean that
bolder, longer term or more innovative land use plans and policies cannot be
conceived and approved.
Rather, it means that regardless of the plan, it is likely that actual development
will be incremental.
Having the right technical land use policies is good to have but not having
them is not
important or even relevant if the CLUP itself is not expected to play an
important or catalytic role in
the first place.
Ultimately,
it is not enough to have good quality plans and projects; the entire planning investment
programming-budgeting-implementation process and bureaucracy must also work efficiently
in order to get desired developments in place.
The
politicized nature of the budgeting and implementation stages contrasts with
the more technical
orientation of the planning stage of the process. To be sure, the local
leadership may assert
its vested interests and influence certain features of the plan but, as a
whole, the planning stage
is recognized as an exercise better left to technical experts. In the absence
of such experts, the
resulting plan may be compromised but, nonetheless, the prevailing view is that
planning should
be a technical exercise. This perception is reinforced by professional planners
who consider
the ideal plan as one devoid of or insulated from politics. Although there are
exceptions, even
public consultations intended to draw planning inputs and support from
stakeholders are usually
compliance-driven and marginally participative.
In
summary, the weakness in the linkages among planning, investment programming,
budgeting and
implementation coincides with the gap between the technical orientation of
planning on the one
hand and the political nature of budgeting and implementation on the other. In
the end, it is the
latter that matters because regardless of the plan, other projects can be
inserted into the budget
and implemented.
How
then, should the weakness be addressed? A logical approach is, first, (a)
politicize the planning
process by increasing or introducing genuine participation among stakeholders,
thereby encouraging
broader public ownership of the plan and enhancing the possibility that
proposed projects
are shepherded and implemented. Second, (b) increase the technical basis for
budgeting and
implementation in order to reduce the influence of a “dividing the spoils”
approach to resource
allocation. (Corpuz 2007)
