MEDITERRANEAN ACTION PLAN

Rapport de l’Atelier sur le tourisme et le développement durable en Méditerranée
Antaly (Turquie), 17, 18 & 19 septembre 1998
proved that without the government's technical guidance and financial support,
none of the municipality along the coastline could successfully realise the project
objectives with their limited resources.
Along the Aegean and Mediterranean coastline, there are many small and medium
sized municipalities located very close to each other and their resident population
doubles or even triples during the tourism season. Each municipality has separate
units assigned to the environmental infrastructure services like water supply,
sewerage, solid waste etc. Considering the limited resources of these
municipalities and the extent of the new investments required for the existing and
projected demands, changes in service delivery have to be made.
To overcome this fragmentation, environmental services like water supply,
sewerage, solid waste services could be combined into a single autonomous service
entity serving each municipality. This would be an important step towards costcentring
the services and promoting cost recovery. In particular, the common
nature of some important components of the service facilities necessitates the
unification of the services. Because of the following main reasons, unification is
inevitable in many places.
a) Certain components of water source, transmission, treatment and distribution
systems are under joint use,
b) Sewerage systems which have main collectors, pumping stations, treatment
and disposal facilities serve more than one municipality located in the same
cluster,
c) Common sanitary solid waste disposal sites are shared by more than one
municipality.
Unification of the service delivery capabilities within one entity would permit
improved organisation of the services through a wider « economy of scale » and
sharing of financial, technical and personnel resources.
Therefore, to realise the objectives of Southwest Coast Environmental Project; the
municipal unions are formed by the municipalities in each cluster (sub-project
area) considering the optimum services area, physical and administrative
boundaries. The municipal unions will be responsible for the implementation of
the projects and this will create a new and increasing trend of transition from
central management to local management. Strengthening of local authorities will
be the first step for proper implementation of the project.
Some examples of the projects, which will contribute to the sustainable tourism
development, are summarised below:
• In South Antalya (Kemer), where about 70 000 tourist beds are currently under
service, a municipal union was formed by the municipalities and villages in the
area. All the infrastructural facilities were realised by financing through World
Bank loan and governmental sources in parallel to the development of
accommodation units. Then, the union established a public-private company by
the end of 1980's to construct, operate and maintain environmental
infrastructure facilities in the designated area under the organisational support
of Ministry of Tourism. This model formalises the principle of commercially
operated utility services while leaving the ownership of fixed assets with public
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Plan Bleu