Interview with U-LEAD representative: “Only a country where decisions are made locally will be resilient to threats”

Photo: REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak

The full-scale Russia’s invasion has slowed down local government reform in Ukraine. On the other hand, the current situation has allowed communities to take the lead in helping residents and internally displaced persons (IDPs), and to develop post-war reconstruction plans according to their needs, which they know better than officials in the capital.

Decentralisation helped local authorities to mobilise as much as possible in the first days of the aggression and act without waiting for instructions from Kyiv. Today, international partners are helping municipalities prepare reconstruction projects according to new, “non-Soviet” standards. Mariana Semenyshyn, Deputy Head of the Sustainable Development Department of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme, spoke to Radio NV about this.

“What is U-LEAD?”

“U-LEAD with Europe is a programme that has been supporting Ukrainian communities since 2016. Our main mission is to support communities in their formation, development and now, for the last year and a half, in planning their recovery. We work all over Ukraine, in every region, with almost 14,000 communities.”

“Did the Russia’s invasion stop the development of local communities? When there seemed to be no time for it?”

“I will speak based on research. In fact, there was a certain lack of understanding of what needed to be done, but it was minimal. Because from the first days of the full-scale invasion, the communities knew what to do. They knew they had to provide services to citizens who came to them or sought refuge in the west, and they knew they had to help the Ukrainian army. According to a study by the Council of Europe, municipalities only experienced confusion in the first few days, by their own account. More than 75% of municipalities resumed their normal activities within the first two to three weeks.

It is clear that even now it is very difficult to talk about normal functioning under shelling, rocket and drone attacks. But it is a fact.”

“Is our society in general prone to such rapid self-organisation? “

“I think so. The two Maidans and the local government reform itself underline this. As you know, the reform began with voluntary mergers. It took four years. It was a big surprise for the whole of Europe: how is it that communities voluntarily merge for four years in a row? For me, this underlines the effect of Maidan. There are no obstacles to self-organization when we have a clear goal.”

“You said that after the full-scale invasion it took literally two days for local communities to come to their senses, and then people figured out how to organise the process, what to do, where to run, who to help, where to collect funds. What if these functions were carried out at government level? What is the difference between government management and local community management?”

“You have emphasised the ability to mobilise quickly. Why is that? Because, according to the principle of subsidiarity, the municipalities are the first service providers. It is the first institution that represents the authorities, that people communicate with, that receives appeals from citizens and that has to respond to what is happening around it. This is a very important principle – subsidiarity or a “bottom-up” approach. If a particular issue or problem can be solved at the local level, it should be solved there.

The fact that communities have been able to mobilise so quickly to help the army, IDPs and citizens suffering from shelling, proves once again that the local government reform that has been going on for almost eight years has been effective. After all, no one at the government level decides how education should be provided in a particular school in a particular locality, because that is the direct responsibility of the local governments.”

“Do you think a decentralised country is better able to resist large-scale aggression than one where decisions are made in one centre?”

“Absolutely. A year and a half of our victorious resistance proves this. The people who can and do make decisions at the local level do not wait for a reaction from above. They can act quickly. Talk to mayors or starostas – they will tell you how the time for their decisions was sometimes measured in hours: either they would help the people or they would not. Imagine the same situation in 2014.”

“One hundred percent! I recall these phrases of the military: “and we are waiting for an order from Kyiv”. This is how the occupation of Crimea developed. No orders were needed – you had weapons and you had to act. The same was true of the local civilian authorities at the time.”

“It is no coincidence that one of the first decisions of the newly formed government on 1 April 2014 was to adopt the concept of local government reform. The Ukrainian government understands that only a country where decisions can be made at the local level will be able to withstand threats. Back in 2014, we laid the foundations for our success, for the fact that we can work in a coordinated way as one country.”

“For local communities to do anything, they need certain resources. During the war, these resources, including financial resources, were not taken away with an understandable motivation – what are the country’s needs now? Has the capacity of local communities decreased?”

“I wouldn’t say that they have decreased, especially when it comes to the financial resources of the communities. It is the same as it was before the full-scale invasion. Of course there is a loss of infrastructure resources, a loss of people, and I would draw attention to that. Taxes, revenues, subsidies – they are all there. But it is very difficult to bring people back, to make the territories habitable. I would like to clearly separate these issues. The state has not limited the financial resources of the municipalities. But we have to talk about the loss of human resources and the loss of territories that will be unsuitable for growing food and living for decades to come because of mining and so on.”

“But we also hear complaints about local authorities, especially those that are starting to work on projects worth hundreds of millions of hryvnias. Building stadiums to host Champions League matches, investing in a few road junctions that could wait another 50 years. At least they would have waited until our victory. And there is a certain dissonance with the slogan “Everything for the front, everything for victory”. What do you think about these problems and their solutions?”

“You know, generalisation is the worst tool here. You can’t generalise the practice of all 14,000 communities in Ukraine based on one case you saw in the media or on social media.

Secondly, we should always remember that local authorities are first and foremost accountable to the citizens who live in the area and who elected them. You have to look at the specific situation. It may be that the infrastructure facility you are talking about is very important for a certain community. You have to admit that if the citizens who live in that community do not react to it, it seems strange that people from other settlements do.”

“I see some of this with my own eyes. For example, there is a road that I drive along. As someone who has been driving for many years, I know for a fact that this road would have survived for a long time if the asphalt had not been replaced. Everything would have been fine, there would have been no need to remove the asphalt and put in a new one. This is where I see the dissonance. But you are right that when this issue was actively discussed, everyone saw reports from different municipalities that this is the amount of money they are allocating to the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

“Yes, that is the other side of the coin. And this is not just happening now. Drones, cars, etc. Even small communities have been making such purchases since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Ukraine’s current legislation does not restrict them in doing so.”

“But you have confirmed that there is no need to be silent, you have to talk about it, then the situation begins to improve.”

“First of all, the citizens who live in this community should react because this is the essence of local self-government. As a responsible resident, you should contact the executive committee of the council, your representative, and ask: “Listen, what has happened? Why is this happening?”

“Are there conflicts between local communities and national government officials? How do the government’s reconstruction plans fit in with the regional plans?”

“We are now at a particular stage where both the national and local or regional levels are planning how to rebuild the country. So far, no single document shows how the country will be rebuilt. But each of these levels can make a proposal, start thinking about what a particular community will look like if it has to be rebuilt.

What is very important is that the current legislation provides for a mechanism whereby the Plan for the Reconstruction and Development of the Regions of Ukraine (the main document that will collect data on all territories) should be based on regional plans, which, in turn, should be based on local plans. In other words, the bottom-up principle is very clearly established, with municipal plans forming the basis for other plans. This is a great opportunity to rule out the possibility of someone later saying: ‘Where is my project?'”

“Are you saying that someone at the local community level is making such plans?”

“Yes, they are! We, the U-LEAD with Europe programme, support the communities in drawing up such plans, because recovery planning has to start now. We cannot wait for the day of our victory, which we are all sure will come. We need to start collecting data, we need to think about who lives in the communities, what I have, what I don’t have, how we will develop. Very often, we are faced with communities not having basic data on which to base their planning. Not because this data does not exist. This data has often been stolen or destroyed in unoccupied settlements – the detailed master plans of the territories.”

“Listen, even without the war, there were no master plans for many of our cities. For example, there is a detective story with the development of the city of Kyiv.”

“I have to correct you. They did exist, but they were probably outdated and needed updating.”

“That is very true – about obsolescence. We are not interested in updating the Soviet infrastructure, you must admit. There is no point in going back to the day before yesterday. We need to restore and rebuild the country at a qualitatively different level. How is this reflected in the plans currently being developed?”

“You have raised an important issue. There is a principle: “Reconstruct better than before”. Our Western partners and the Government of Ukraine have clearly stated that we will rebuild the country according to this principle. What does that mean? As you rightly pointed out, sometimes people say that we shouldn’t look at the facility that was destroyed, let’s rebuild it because it looked good.

“Quite often these facilities looked bad, to be honest.”

“But, you know, there may be some emotional attachment and so on. The principle of “rebuild better than it was” is linked to three criteria. The first is the availability of baseline data that justifies the need. For example, if there was a school on the site, should it be rebuilt with the same educational facilities? Let us say it was a school for a thousand pupils. Will enough schoolchildren in this settlement attend this school for the next ten years?

In fact, we try to help communities (and this is very difficult in today’s conditions, when 8 million people have left or moved) to understand and plan their needs. But you have to think not a month ahead, but several decades ahead.

The second criterion is modernisation. This is enshrined both in the plans for Ukraine’s reconstruction and in the instruments provided by our Western partners, including the European Union’s Ukraine Facility. What does modernisation mean? It means that we should not rebuild the way it was, but take into account inclusiveness and energy efficiency. The principle of “green reconstruction” or “green transformation” is what we have confirmed as we move towards the European Union.

The third criterion is participation. In the Soviet Union, social facilities were often built simply for the sake of building them, without involving the citizens, who were not asked what they wanted these facilities to look like.”

“There was a certain grid: for a certain number of inhabitants there should be, for example, a hairdresser, a cinema, a library. The infrastructure was built on that basis.”

“Absolutely! If the community at the local level takes this principle into account, it will involve the citizens in the decision-making process, asking “where do we start, why do we need and want this? “We have such and such a population, we need such and such a number of services that we can place in the settlements”. Then he will justify it according to the new principles, so that it is an energy-efficient building that can serve the community for decades, with all the factors of inclusion, so that all people can enter, leave and feel comfortable. Of course, it will be better than it was before.”

“Will there be libraries too?”

“I am more than sure. In the communities we work with, people have the energy to build, to think about the future, to engage citizens. That is what energises us and makes me, among others, get up in the morning and say: ‘We are planning for the next ten years’.”

“We also need legislative support. There is an urban planning law that has caused a wave of emotion. Do you think it is in line with the times? How do you regulate the fact that, for example, a developer has to build not only a house but also a shelter under it? Not just a basement with pipes from which water flows, but a reliable shelter that meets certain parameters set out in the technical specifications.

I read about how people in Israel live. They have a reinforced concrete capsule in every house.

I don’t want to use the word “force”… How can we “encourage” companies to adapt their development to current realities, so that it really is a step forward?”

“It is both simple and difficult. The authorities responsible for commissioning infrastructure must be aware of these standards and monitor their implementation. Local governments have an important role to play here.

Yes, the legislation is changing, as you mentioned, and there is a major update of standards. Ukraine has decided that we are going to rebuild better than before. Not only energy efficiency and integration standards, but also shelter standards are changing. Sometimes even keeping track of these changes is a very big job. But that is the direct responsibility of local governments. In fact, we help them. Because if you don’t know the standards, you can’t control the designer or the developer.

The system works in such a way that local governments now have enough tools to plan and manage development and reconstruction.

In fact, there are examples of many communities that know exactly what infrastructure they have and what they want to get. They follow the rules, they control the planners and developers, because they live there first and foremost.”

“And who will control the local communities themselves and their leadership to ensure that there are no abuses?”

“Ukraine has certain tools to ensure such control, particularly in wartime. The local government reform is still ongoing. One of the main tasks of this reform is to create a mechanism for overseeing decisions made by local governments. Ukraine is in the process of implementing this mechanism. It is quite complex, as it must take into account the interests of different parties.

The Russia’s full-scale invasion has slowed down the pace of this reform. But, of course, this mechanism is being discussed very intensively. Tools should be created to monitor the legality of local government decisions.”

“How do you and the local communities calculate the dynamics of people returning to Ukraine?”

“Local governments monitor this dynamic, because when a citizen arrives, they register in a particular municipality and at the state level. It is not the responsibility of an international technical assistance programme to monitor this.

There is also a difficulty here, because now it is difficult for communities, especially those close to the frontline, to think about what will happen in, say, a year or three months’ time. That is a challenge for planning.”

“As the country recovers, will local communities become richer and have the resources to engage in self-development?

“Absolutely. That is the main objective of local government reform.”

“What will they earn money from? Construction?

“They will make money from the resources they have. First of all, these are people who are going to do business.”

“It’s not for nothing that I raised the topic of people returning.”

“Yes. They are the people who will create businesses, so it is very important to bring them back. We must not think in terms of rebuilding infrastructure, but in terms of bringing back those who will use that infrastructure.”

“The DREAM platform (Digital Restoration Ecosystem for Accountable Management) – what is it? What does it mean in the context of our discussion? Only the lazy don’t talk about digitalisation these days. But I noticed that one of the complaints against the Ministry of Defence was the lack of digitalisation, which surprised me. How will DREAM affect the country’s recovery?”

“This is a very large project that was launched by civil society. It quickly found a response in the Ministry of Reconstruction. This system provides a transparent mechanism for submitting documents for reconstruction projects. Eventually, there will be a complete database of projects that your community is doing, and you can go in and look for all of them.”

“Will everything be transparent? If we see a road junction costing one and a half billion hryvnias, can we ask questions?

“Yes, we can ask questions to our municipality. Another thing is whether such a project will be financed. In the DREAM system you can see at what stage it is – under discussion or already discussed and you just missed the public hearing. Among other things, this system helps citizens and businesses to see what is happening in the community.”

NV.UA