Intercommunality: The success story of CODENOBA, Argentina
In the early 1990s, the productive consortia of Buenos Aires Province were developed to encourage the productive reconversion of the province's hinterland and to find common solutions to shared problems. The Consortium for the Development of the North-Western Part of the Buenos Aires Province (CODENOBA), is one of 13 such consortia and is itself composed of nine districts. The consortium was established in 1994 in response to massive flooding affecting 70% of the inter-municipal territory. CODENOBA’s primarily agricultural economy accounts for nearly 4% of the province’s GDP, and over the years the consortium has augmented and diversified its activities through promoting local agriculture, handicrafts and culture.
Yet, despite the member districts’ political will to collaborate within an intermunicipal structure, at the outset CODENOBA lacked the legal or methodological tools to defi ne regional action and suffered from the absence of an integrative regional policy project. It also suffered from the absence of administrative, technical, legal and financial institutions necessary to execute regional development projects. CODENOBA statutes did not establish sources of financing, and initially the consortium did not receive any endowment or permanent subvention from the national or provincial authorities to ensure intermunicipal project implementation. In the second half of the 1990s, CODENOBA received substantial aid from the national government. However, there are no relevant records because the consortium lacked the administrative culture needed to generate a usable record-keeping system. Overall, the districts had not been able to achieve their goals because of the immobility of the consortium’s structure in relation to regional action.
In 2003, CODENOBA authorities requested the MOST Programme’s support in institutional consolidation and in the development of implementation methodologies. Having established contacts with CODENOBA authorities through the Grupo Hábitat y Sociedad (GHS), an urban and regional planning office formerly part of UNESCO’s City Professionals programme. MOST agreed to provide technical assistance on an exceptional basis and to treat CODENOBA as a pilot project.
In the early 1990s, the productive consortia of Buenos Aires Province were developed to encourage the productive reconversion of the province's hinterland and to find common solutions to shared problems. The Consortium for the Development of the North-Western Part of the Buenos Aires Province (CODENOBA), is one of 13 such consortia and is itself composed of nine districts. The consortium was established in 1994 in response to massive flooding affecting 70% of the inter-municipal territory. CODENOBA’s primarily agricultural economy accounts for nearly 4% of the province’s GDP, and over the years the consortium has augmented and diversified its activities through promoting local agriculture, handicrafts and culture.
