A/HRC/22/61 A. National and city governments 50. Anti-poverty efforts made by the Government of China serve as a useful example of a long-term, phased and integrated approach. 106 Beginning with its rural-oriented development strategy in 1984, it has undergone four phases. Since 2000, the second phase established and improved urban and rural social security systems, and began making investments in human capital. Phase three, beginning in 2006, was characterized by the consolidation and enhancement of human capital investments. The most recent phase, beginning in 2011, is an integrated strategy that combines three components: investment in infrastructure; social security interventions; and measures to empower poor communities through human capital investments. 51. Brazil pioneered the concept of participatory budgeting in the city of Porto Alegre in 1989.107 The initiative was designed to enhance accountability and transparency, and allow citizens greater influence on how municipal budgets were spent. The model allows citizen representatives of neighbourhood associations from throughout the city, including the favelas, to participate in meetings where they influence how available investment funds (usually 15 per cent of the overall budget) will be spent. Since its establishment, most figures cite impressive improvements in water and sanitation indicators. For instance, in the first 10 years since the introduction of participatory budgeting, the share of households in the city with water connections increased from 75 to 98 per cent, and sewage coverage rose from 46 to 98 per cent.108 The Porto Alegre model has since been replicated throughout Brazil, the rest of Latin America and elsewhere. While the model has its own limitations, 109 its innovation and effectiveness is clear when combined with a strong commitment to transparency and improved urban governance, as well as investments in educating the urban poor participants. 52. In Thailand, the national Government enhanced urban governance by nurturing and collaborating with community-based networks or federations. For example, it merged two offices (the Urban Community Development Office and the Rural Development Office) to form a single body to target the poor urban communities were being left out of the economic growth of previous decades. The Urban Community Development Office had been providing low-interest loans for community-based savings and credit groups who demonstrated sufficient capacity to manage the funds, which were used for a variety of activities, from income-generation to housing improvement and relocation. The real innovation of the Community Organizations Development Institute 110 was in how the programme was scaled up. It linked individual savings groups into larger networks or federations of slum dwellers, who managed and on-lent the funds to their member organizations. These networks were particularly effective because they (a) decentralized decision-making processes, making them closer and more responsive to communities and the needs they identified for themselves; (b) created a means for poor urban communities and municipal authorities to engage with each other constructively thanks to the ability of the networks to negotiate, advocate or influence urban policies, and collaborate with city- 106 107 108 109 110 See Lu Mai, “Poverty Eradication in China: A New Phase” for the China Development Research Foundation (2011). Donald P. Moynihan, “Citizen Participation in Budgeting: Prospects for Developing Countries”, in Participatory Budgeting, Anwar Shah, ed. (New York, World Bank, 2007), p. 66. See Gianpaolo Baiocchi, “Participation, activism, and politics: the Porto Alegre experiment and deliberative democratic theory”, Politics & Society, vol. 29, No. 1 (March 2001). See Brian Wampler, “A Guide to Participatory Budgeting” in Participatory Budgeting, pp. 45–47. Celine d‟Cruz and David Satterthwaite, “Building homes, changing official approaches”, Poverty Reduction in Urban Areas Series, Working Paper, No. 16 (London, IIED, 2005). 17