Eco-Municipalities and Municipal Applications for Sustainability

Abstract

Climate change effects, losses in natural environment, limited and diminishing energy sources are great threats for the countries in ecological and social aspects. In recent years some districts in Istanbul have been badly affected by disastrous floods. Climate change might have taken part of this problem but the main reason for the case is shanty housing, and poor location of settlements nearby to riversides, and even within riverbeds. All those experiences increase the necessity of the ecological planning for the settlements and of applying the Eco-municipal model for creating healthy environments. While some phenomena provide against the sustainable development of Turkish cities, solutions will be found in projects with ecological background. The eco-municipality models and municipal applications for sustainability are criticized for not yet finding a sustainable development model for Turkish municipalities. In the improvement of the sustainable municipality concept, some common decision had been taken and defined the related standards. LA21, EMAS for municipalities, and ISO standards are the examples coming forward. The methodology is based on literature review of experiences of the eco-projects that have been made in municipalities and SWOT analyses for these projects. In Turkey, the first step has been taken in LA21 processes to adopt the eco-municipal approach in transformation. For the further steps, the need for establishing an integrated model among the different applications has been concluded.