In the effort to improve their urban environments, cities are supported by a wide range of international programmes. These are implemented by United Nations agencies, other multilateral development organisations, bilateral development bodies, international NG0s, associations of local governments, and other organisations. Coming from different institutional and political backgrounds, these various programmes naturally have different mandates, scopes of work, and orientations. Despite these differences, however, the international support programmes are united by a shared commitment to work - each in its own way - with the cities of the world to help them deal effectively with their pressing environmental problems.
The Istanbul Manifesto reports: "In addition we have reviewed the experience of international programmes in supporting the cities' work towards sustainable growth and development, and found compelling evidence of a variety of effective strategies for supporting cities in implementing their environment agenda; therefore, we recommend that the following approaches be broadly applied and further developed:
(Istanbul Manifesto, June 1996)
International support programmes have been developing - through years of experience - a great diversity of increasingly effective strategies for co-operating with and supporting cities. Some programmes work only in specific geographical areas, while others operate worldwide; some focus on particular issues or activities, and others on special sectors or "points of entry"; some programmes are concerned with technology, others with administration or planning; some work through technical assistance, others through information exchanges, and others through research. This wide range of different programme approaches is a source of strength, because it matches the diversity of support to the diversity of environmental problems and city needs.
Indeed, one of the important purposes of this EPM Source Book is to narrow the potential "knowledge gap" between cities and support programmes, by helping the cities to understand better the types of support which are available from international programmes, while at the same time helping those programmes to better respond to and work with the cities - and especially to ensure that their support activities are mutually reinforcing and complementary. By strengthening complementarity among activities and by promoting genuine demand-led partnership with the cities, the international support programmes can work more effectively within the framework established by the cities' own urban environmental priorities.
To illustrate how support activities are converging toward a common agenda for support to cities, a review of 22 international support programmes active in the field allowed four major categories of support modalities to be identified. This four-way grouping, although it simplifies and clarifies the exposition, necessarily places programmes into single categories, whereas in reality many of the international support programmes have activities in two, three or even all four of the categories (as shown in the matrix diagram which cross-relates programmes
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