International Institute for Environment and Development - Urban environments

Urbanization: A double-edged sword for women

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:25:27 +0100

Urbanization is often associated with greater independence and opportunity for women – but also with high risks of violence and constraints on employment, mobility and leadership that reflect deep gender-based inequalities.

These issues – along with climate change, waste, water and other topics -- are explored in the April 2013 issue of the IIED journal Environment and Urbanization, published today.

"Urbanization is among the defining features of current times, but it can mean very different things for men and women," says the journal's guest editor Cecilia Tacoli of the International Institute for Environment and Development. "Unless policymakers, urban planners and development agencies understand these differences, urbanization will fail to meet its potential to improve the lives of all urban citizens."

The journal’s editorial – available online here – highlights the key points from each paper. These include papers on the following topics under this edition’s main theme of ‘Gender and Urban Change’:

where and when urban women enjoy advantages over their rural counterparts;
community savings schemes that build women’s leadership and support upgrading;
how transport planning still fails to respond to women’s travel needs;
how urban contexts can reduce gender based violence, although often they can increase it;
how income and ideology influence women’s decision making in rural and urban areas in Nicaragua;
the changes in women’s participation in labour markets in Dhaka, Bangladesh and the tensions this can generate within households;
what was learnt from a project working with girls and boys with disabilities in Mumbai, India;
and, the particular roles of women in seeking to get better services for their low-income/informal neighbourhoods in Bengalaru, India.

This issue also has two papers on climate change:

a detailed benefit-cost analysis applied to Durban, South Africa;
the different responses of low-income tenants and squatters to adaptation to climate change in Khulna, Bangladesh;

The subjects of other papers include:

the limitations in the Indian government’s Basic Services for the Urban Poor Programme;
the politics of non-payment for water in low-income communities in Manila, the Philippines;
community-managed reconstruction in Old Fadama (Accra, Ghana) after a fire;
developing a solid waste collection service in informal settlements in Managua, Nicaragua;
how well-connected individuals control land allocations and water supply in an informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh;
and an assessment of provision for water, sanitation and waste collection in two informal settlements in Kumasi, Kenya.

Full table of contents for the April 2013 edition of Environment and Urbanization.

To request any of the papers please email the journal’s editor Dr David Satterthwaite – david.satterthwaite@iied.org

How does a changing climate impact on urban poverty?

david.satterthwaite@iied.org (David Satterthwaite) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:48:14 +0000

When floods hit a city, it is usually low-income groups that are hit hardest. The devastation that such disasters cause can be linked to the failure of city governments to manage growth, build infrastructure and work with low-income groups.

Floods are among the most common causes of disasters in cities. Many cities are built on rivers or on low-elevation sites on coasts so they’re vulnerable to flooding. As cities expand, so the increased building further limits natural drainage and can increase flood risks each time it rains heavily.

In the last year, the list of cities where serious floods and loss of life has occurred include Jakarta, Chittagong, Manila, Beijing, Krymsk, Buenos Aires, various cities in Nigeria, New York and other cities in the US, and the Caribbean which was hit by hurricane Sandy in October 2012. In 2011 floods in Thailand devastated Bangkok and many other Thai cities (and rural areas).

In this year, serious floods hit many cities in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, Myanmar, Pakistan and China. Many more cities would be added to this list if reports on flooding were more detailed and comprehensive. Many floods do not get reported, or reports of flooding only refer only to the region in which the flooding occurred, not the locations most affected.

Most cities are at increasing risk from the effects of climate change, including increasing heat waves and, for coastal cities, rising sea levels and storm surges. In many locations, climate change is also likely to be increasing the intensity of extreme rainfall in the city or ‘upstream’, as seen in Bangkok in 2011. Climate change is likely to constantly increase these risks; the world is still so far away from reaching agreement on the measures needed to halt global warming.

Around one in seven of the world’s population lives in informal settlements in urban areas. When storms or floods hit cities, it is generally low-income groups that are hit hardest in terms of deaths and injuries. This is especially true when they live in informal settlements found in most cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The devastation caused by storms and flooding to cities cannot be attributed to climate change. A city government’s ability or failure to manage city growth, to ensure that risk-reducing infrastructure is in place and that low-income groups can find shelter on safe sites, is key. Having early warning systems in place when storms approach, and measures to ensure those most at risk can and do move to safer locations when needed is also critical.

And people are starting to make this connection. Somsook Boonyabancha’s blog highlights how excess water management became a sensitive political matter in Thailand during the unprecedented flooding in 2011 and led to confusion and delays in the government’s response.

Most informal settlements lack risk-reducing infrastructure, such as functioning storm drains. Most cities in sub-Saharan Africa and many in Asia have no sewers and storm drains – or if they do, these only serve a small proportion of their population and certainly not those living in informal settlements. Most houses in informal settlements are poorly built, and more liable to collapse when hit by storms or floods. Many informal settlements develop on dangerous sites – for instance flood plains or unstable slopes – because housing on safer sites is too expensive for them. It is also very rare for people living in informal settlements to have insurance for their homes, health or possessions – and no business will insure someone who faces very high risks and has very limited capacities to pay.

Self-help measures

Of course, low-income households take measures to try to reduce risks. To protect against flooding, they may build homes on stilts or walls around doorways to stop floodwaters entering their homes. They may dig ditches to divert flood waters away from their home. In settlements that often flood, people put shelves up as high up as possible (to store food and water safely). Cupboards or tables can be sat at or slept on when the house is flooded (and their height may be increased – for instance by standing them on bricks). Read Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (former President of Brazil) describing how his home in Sao Paulo was constantly flooded, and what they did to cope.

But these are self-help measures, aimed at survival and at limiting the damage done. Residents in informal settlements need the basic infrastructure that should serve all homes and neighbourhoods – water piped to the home, sewers or other means to remove human wastes, storm and surface drains and regular collection of household wastes (also essential for keeping drains clear). Also all-weather roads and paths would allow residents to move away from rising flood waters and allow access to emergency vehicles. Without such improvements residents face ever increasing risks posed by disasters.

Why so little action?

What will it take to get city governments to act on this and to get national governments to support them in doing so? When will this grab the attention of international agencies, most of whom have given little or no attention to these issues or to cities?

In cities in high-income nations, low-income groups also face many disadvantages, but the vast majority at least live in homes that do not collapse during storms or floods and in settlements with basic infrastructure.

But city governments can take measures to reduce urban poverty that also contribute to reducing disaster risk and to building greater resilience to climate change. For example, they can support low-income households to buy or build safer homes or work with them to identify safer sites to move to.

Addressing the massive backlog in basic infrastructure is often best done in partnership with community-organizations as this lowers costs and speeds implementation. Having a city government that sees the necessity of working with the inhabitants of informal settlements – and working with their organizations – is crucial. Many cities have federations or networks of grassroots organizations formed by slum/shack dwellers that are working in partnership with local governments to address disaster risks (as documented in the Philippines). The Asian Coalition for Community Action is rethinking how external funding can support low-income communities to work together to reduce risk.

As the basic infrastructure that all city districts need is built or improved, so this builds the financial and institutional basis for greater resilience to the impacts of climate change.

Find out more

Read Environment and Urbanization Brief 24 on how the residents of informal settlements are surveying and mapping their own settlements to provide the information needed to work with local governments to install infrastructure.

Read Environment and Urbanization Brief 23 on how support for community organizations, including those formed by disaster survivors, can achieve effective post-disaster responses and, in the longer term, effective responses to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

Report warns of ways climate change threatens food security of urban poor

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 06:37:19 +0000

Policies to increase food security in the global South focus too much on rural food production and not enough on ensuring poor people can access and afford food, especially in urban areas, says a report published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

It warns that climate change will only make this policy gap worse, because climate change impacts will affect not only harvests but also the systems that people use to transport, store and buy and sell food.

"Food security is back on the agenda thanks to rising prices and the threat that climate change poses to agricultural production," says the report's lead author Dr Cecilia Tacoli. "But policies that focus on rural food production alone will not tackle the rising food insecurity in urban areas. We also need policies that improve poor people’s ability to access and afford food, especially in urban areas."

Most people in urban areas must buy their food and this makes the urban poor particularly at risk. Any climate-induced disruption to food production, transport and storage – either in the urban area itself or in distant farmland – can affect food supplies and prices in urban areas.

Yet most policies that aim to increase food security focus solely on boosting production from farms and fisheries in rural areas.

"The journey that food takes from a rural producer to an urban consumer involves many steps," says Dr Tacoli. "It must travel through formal and informal systems as it is stored, distributed and sold. Each one of these steps is a point of potential vulnerability to climate change. For consumers, this will mean sharp and sudden increases in food prices."

The report highlights the link between income poverty and food insecurity in urban areas. For most low-income urban citizens food represents a sizeable portion of the money they spend. Even small increases in price would therefore have big impacts of food security, with citizens reducing the amount and quality of the food they buy.

For the residents of informal urban settlements, food insecurity is also the consequence of lack of space to store and cook food, lack of time to shop and prepare meals, inadequate access to clean water and often non-existing sewage systems. These settlements are disproportionately affected by floods, typhoons, heat waves and other impacts of climate change because they tend to be located in areas more exposed to these events, and because they lack the most basic infrastructure.

Tacoli says that governments must rise to these challenges by ensuring that policies can protect the urban poor from food insecurity linked to rising prices, inadequate living conditions and the effects of climate change in both rural and urban areas. Decent and stable employment is essential but not sufficient: adequate infrastructure and housing and access to formal and informal markets are just as important.

"Climate change threatens to multiply many of the big challenges that face the world's urban poor," says Tacoli. "Policymakers need a far better understanding of what it means to be poor in an urban centre."

Download the report

Study reveals roots of urban land issues that limit development

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:26:40 +0000

Local and international politics can limit the potential for urban centres to deliver benefits to their poorest citizens, even where there are pro-poor policies and market liberalization. So concludes a study, published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The research focused on Karachi, Pakistan whose politics are unique, but its findings are relevant to cities around the world. It showed that the root causes of inefficient or inequitable development include colonial legacies, modern day politics and financial speculation, all of which can fuel conflict over land, and render markets dysfunctional and pro-poor policies irrelevant.

"The development orthodoxy is to seek solutions to urban development challenges in either better government policies or through improved land titling," says architect Arif Hasan, who led the study. "But as this study shows the problems often lie in land contestation, which undermines both markets and the capacity of government agencies to address land issues. The problem is not the lack of laws and regulations for city development, but the conflict over land that makes it difficult for officials to follow them and the procedures they lay down."

The study aimed to identify why Karachi – which is Pakistan’s financial capital – has not achieved its potential. It found that part of the problem is the large number of land-owning agencies whose influence overlaps but whose governance is weak, unclear or ineffective. This has enabled politically motivated land grabs.

"Land is hotly contested because of speculation and real estate development, which bring not only enormous profits but also help Karachi's different ethnic parties consolidate their hold in different areas of the city," says Hasan.

Three important factors compound Karachi’s complex land governance system, in which 13 different land management authorities operate. The first concerns Karachi’s strategic location in the regional conflict related to the Afghan war. The second is its immense economic power in the context of Pakistan in general and in the Sindh province (of which it is the capital) in particular. Third, Karachi’s migrant population far outnumbers its native Sindhi and Balochi speakers. An understanding of these features is necessary to comprehend Karachi’s persistent land management and governance problems.

"In many cities there are struggles over land," says Gordon McGranahan of IIED. "These struggles can make irrelevant any improvement strategies that imagine that land can be managed by a conventional combination of private owners operating in the market and public agencies operating within a bureaucracy."

The study shows that the method of governance in Karachi makes it difficult to implement laws. Bureaucrats and government ministers have discretionary powers over land which they use for patronage purposes. Powerful groups invest their money in the lucrative formal and informal real estate business. And the armed forces and other federal land owning agencies also interfere in land-related matters within the city.

These sorts of messy politics make social and environmental improvements difficult. Meanwhile international development agencies and nongovernmental organisations try to rise above them yet this just makes them irrelevant or subject to manipulation.

"The current status of development in Karachi and many other urban centres is rooted in struggles that cannot be addressed without coming to terms with how local politics play out in each particular place," says Hasan. "A similar mix of land speculation, real estate development, dubious developers, compromised politicians, and ineffective bureaucracies, exist to a lesser or greater extent in most Asian cities and also in cities of industrialised nations. The Karachi study identifies the actors and factors in this process and uses a methodology through which other cities can be viewed."

Gordon McGranahan of IIED adds: "Unless and until cities can overcome such barriers to equitable management of land and finances, poor communities will not have their housing needs met. This will create not create hardship in the present, but will leave a legacy of social and environmental problems for future generations to address."

Download the report

IIED mourns long-term partner and friend Perween Rahman

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:32:35 +0000

Staff at IIED are reeling from the news that our long-term research partner Perween Rahman was murdered yesterday.

Perween was director of the Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute, a Karachi-based NGO that works with the city’s poorest communities to improve their neighbourhoods. She was an architect-turned activist who devoted her life to improving the lives of people in Karachi’s poorest neighbourhoods. Since the 1980s, the Orangi Pilot Project has provided thousands of people with improved water, sanitation and housing. The project is famous worldwide for both its success and its distinctive approach.

Perween was murdered by masked men who shot at her car as she travelled home from work on the afternoon of 13 March. Recently she had had been documenting land-use around Karachi, and this may have antagonised the city's powerful land-grabbing criminals.

IIED researchers who have long worked with Perween have described her today as: "A very, very remarkable person and a wonderful friend, colleague and teacher." (Dr David Satterthwaite), and: "A brilliant, beautiful and principled person" (Dr Gordon McGranahan). IIED’s thoughts are with Perween’s family and friends and with everyone at the Orangi Pilot Project at this most difficult of times.

Here Dr Diana Mitlin reflects on the impact of Perween Rahman’s life and work.

"I remember the first time I met Perween, many years ago in 1991 or 1992. Immediately she struck me as so different from many development experts. Rather than saying how little time she had to meet with me, she said her only problem was if I did not have long enough to spend with the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP). She emphasised that I needed to spend long enough with the OPP to understand their approach and the work they were doing.

Under Perween’s leadership the OPP has had a profound impact on an alternative vision for the city of Karachi – a vision based on integrated neighbourhoods that challenged existing practices and enabled different groups to engage with one another. Karachi is a city torn apart by religious conflict but OPP staff were clear that — in their experience — most people did not want to live in ethnic enclaves.

Equally fundamentally, their OPP’s vision of the city was one based on justice – in the last few years they had been working with communities to support their mapping of their homes. These were communities whose longstanding residency was under threat. Powerful groups sought to evict them and take over their land for their own gain. OPP both studied the problem and worked with these communities to improve their mapping skills, enabling them to advance their legitimate claims to their homes with the authorities.

Previously, Perween had been involved in research that showed how people were stealing water from Karachi’s piped network and selling it back to very low-income communities from tankers -- at higher prices and through less safe, less accessible delivery mechanisms. In this, as in other things, the research modality exemplified the qualities that Perween and OPP brought to their work.

OPP brought the officials responsible for the situation and the people selling the water into the research process. The people experiencing the problems were central to the processes of knowledge creation too. Throughout, OPP respected and included the perspectives and experiences of everyone involved. The research did not identify an enemy or problem to be defeated but considered people responding to a context of constraints and opportunities, determined by structures bigger than themselves, seeking to do the best for themselves and their families but, despite the realities of their activities, wishing to be good and positive citizens.

Perween knew the risks that she was exposed to – of that I am sure. I remember just two years ago visiting OPP and observing how she shielded her face in the car when leaving the office compound. On that occasion she talked about the conflicts they faced – how OPP staff had been forced to stop work for a month while one warlord occupied the land in the hope of forcing them off the plot (once peripheral but now well-located) and they negotiated with other power brokers who recognised their contribution to improving people’s lives and were willing to intercede to enable them to continue.

In this case they were successful. Perween had worked for years in a city in which land is fought over. She had seen several community leaders threatened and killed for their anti-eviction work. These conflicts have got more rather than less intense over the years. Despite these risks, she never expressed any ambivalence or uncertainty about her activities.

I last saw her just two weeks ago at a meeting of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights in Bangkok. She had brought a team of six or seven community leaders from Pakistan to share their work on planning and mapping the land around Karachi, and the contribution of young people to Pakistan’s future.

She spoke with such excitement about the savings groups they had recently formed and the ways in which they were making women see new opportunities and have a new energy and creativity. She also talked about the power of the network they had established across Pakistan – many community organizations now able to manage their own sanitation programmes – and the network coming together each quarter to share experiences, problems, success.

We also discussed a forthcoming visit she was willing to make to Uganda and Malawi to support improved sanitation strategies there. Because despite all I have written here about knowledge and power and land, Perween was a sanitation expert with an incredible skill to think through options and opportunities.

She believed both in the essential contribution of expert professionals to improve infrastructure systems (designs, operational realities) – and the equally essential importance of recognising the modest nature of that contribution. She would be the first to say that while professional contribution is significant and important – it needs to be integrated within a broader programme driven by the energy and knowledge of those living in informal settlements.”

Perween Rahman - Interview from Balazs Gardi on Vimeo.

Zimbabwe needs “more urban, more public” climate change strategy

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:06:31 +0000

Zimbabwe’s climate change strategy should focus on urban communities, give a greater role to civil society participation, and learn lessons and gain experiences from other highly vulnerable nations, according to a new briefing paper published today by ZERO Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO) and IIED.

The paper draws substantially on research and discussions with civil society organisations, as part of a wider project on adaptation to climate change led by ZERO, a Zimbabwean non-governmental organisation involved in environment and development issues.

"Climate change is a major challenge to Zimbabwe’s development because of the country’s poverty, lack of capacity to adapt and heavy dependence on rain-fed agriculture," says Shepard Zvigadza of ZERO. "The climate has already begun to change, with more variable rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. This makes work on a comprehensive strategy for adaptation all the more urgent."

The paper's authors — Donald Brown, David Dodman and Shepard Zvigadza — outline recommendations for policymakers and agencies that work on climate change adaptation. These include the following:

Focus more on vulnerable urban people

Zimbabwe’s development policies have strong rural bias. Policymakers often state that only 20-30 per cent of Zimbabwe’s population is urban but, thanks to rapid urban growth (see paper) in recent years, the true figure is between 38 and 50 per cent. A continued focus on rural areas will mean that Zimbabwe misses opportunities in urban areas and could face yet bigger challenges there as climate change takes hold.

Take advantage of knowledge and skills in civil society

Civil society organisations (CSOs) can help to close the gap between vulnerable people and the policymakers and planners whose job it is to protect them. In Zimbabwe, a growing number of CSOs works on climate change. Their knowledge and skills – and their connections with the most vulnerable communities – make the critical partners for policymakers to work with as they design, implement and evaluate climate change projects.

Learn from other vulnerable countries

Zimbabwe shares many vulnerability traits and climate change challenges with other nations, but is not formally listed by the United Nations as one of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the world. The LDCs have generated many important lessons in how to plan for, and finance adaptation activities, and Zimbabwe could learn from these and other highly vulnerable countries to prepare more effectively for climate change.

"A growing number of Zimbabwean non-governmental organisations, which have come together to form the Climate Change Working Group, have a wealth of experience that policymakers can draw upon as they develop the national response to climate change," says Zvigadza. He adds: "This includes strong connections with vulnerable communities and international research networks, as well as experience of the UN climate change regime and how Zimbabwe can benefit from it."

David Dodman, a researcher at IIED and co-author of the new paper, says: "Climate change is a significant threat to Zimbabwe’s development, but the country can take a number of steps now to help ensure it can adapt effectively to the changes ahead."

"One of the biggest challenges will be to pay adequate attention to the needs of the urban poor," adds Dodman. "The urban poor make up a growing proportion of the country’s population but receive only a small fraction of policy support. Ignoring their needs will create new challenges and could mean that Zimbabwe misses important development opportunities."

More than half of the world's people now live in urban areas. Many live in makeshift houses in unplanned areas that often lack adequate water, sanitation and waste collection. Such areas face hazards – such as flash flooding – that may become more frequent or intense as a result of climate change.

Zimbabwe has a total population of 12.9 million people, according to preliminary results of the 2012 national census.

Download the 4-page briefing paper

Download the research paper Climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation in Zimbabwe

E-discussion: Urban inequalities in the post-2015 development agenda

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Tue, 8 Jan 2013 10:01:34 +0000

UNICEF, UN Habitat and the International Institute for Environment and Development are moderating an online discussion addressing inequalities, from 4-18 January 2013.

The discussion takes place on the World We Want website, which is open to the public, following a simple registration process.

The recommendations emerging from your contributions will be incorporated into a report on ‘Addressing Inequalities in the Post-2015 Development Agenda’, to be presented at a high-level meeting in February 2013 in Copenhagen. The report will also be transmitted to the High-level Panel on Post-2015, appointed by the UN Secretary-General.

Why?

Despite many of the successes of the MDGs, they have not managed to fully address the values and principles outlined in the Millennium Declaration, particularly in relation to human rights and equality. Addressing inequalities in the post-2015 development agenda means looking at both equality of opportunities and outcomes (or lack thereof), and entrenched structural factors, that perpetuate various forms of inequalities such as discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, age, location, etc.

While cities have long been associated with employment, development and economic growth, hundreds of millions in the world’s urban areas live amid scarcity and deprivation. According to UNICEF’s “The State of the World’s Children: Children in an Urban World,” the world’s urban population increases by about 60 million annually. By 2050, 7 in 10 people will live in cities and towns. As a result of a rapidly increasing urban population, many are denied such essentials as clean water, electricity and health care even though they may live close to these services. Thus, investment in addressing the needs of those living in urban areas is the cornerstone for healthy societies with more sustainable and inclusive economic growth and shared prosperity. People living in urban areas – as creators of innovative solutions and as stakeholders in both present and future progress – should be highly involved, as a matter of course, in the discussions, design and eventual implementation and monitoring of the post-2015 development agenda.

How?

The e-discussions are a series of time-bound, moderated dialogues designed to seek the views of a broad range of stakeholders including governments, UN and other development agencies, civil society, philanthropic organizations, the private sector, and most importantly, the general public. The recommendations emerging from the e-discussions will be part of a synthesis report that will be presented to a high-level meeting in Denmark in February 2013 on Inequalities. The report will also be provided to the High-level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda appointed by the UN Secretary-General.

To participate, representatives of civil society, academia, the UN, governments, the private sector and others are invited to visit the discussion forum at: http://www.worldwewant2015.org/inequalities to follow the discussion and post a response. The site is available in English, French and Spanish and contributions are welcomed in any of the sixty languages supported by Google Translate. For those unable to access the site, replies may be emailed to inequalities@worldwewant2015.org.

Discussion website: http://www.worldwewant2015.org/inequalities / Further enquiries: inequalities@worldwewant2015.org.

The conversation aims to draw out the answers to the following questions, under the themes outlined below.

What are the most important forms of inequalities faced by people living in urban areas? - including discussion of where and among whom these challenges occur, their severity, the evidence about them, etc.
What are the major structural factors at the root of these inequalities, within and among different societies?
What kinds of policies, strategies or interventions have been most successful in addressing the various inequalities experienced by people living in urban areas? And under which conditions/in which situations have particular policies, strategies or interventions had the greatest, lasting impact? (Contributors may wish to cite examples or give references to these “successes”).
Based on experience, what are the most important recommendations that could be proposed in the Post-2015 Development Agenda for making a lasting and transformative impact on the different forms of inequalities faced by people living in urban areas?
What actions and initiatives could be taken by different stakeholders, including civil society, to bring about lasting improvements in these inequalities? And how should those who face inequalities themselves be enabled to participate in the implementation phase of the new Development Framework?

To help us engage with urban inequalities we are proposing that the time is divided into a number of themes:

January 4-5 - Experiences of being an urban citizen – including the role of children and young people, security and safety.
January 6-7 – Spatial inequalities – including how are cities being planned, including exposure to pollution and flooding risks.
January 6-7 Social inequalities – including migrant populations, women, adolescents
January 10-11 - Political inequalities – including recognition, participation, decentralized decision making, data.
January 12-13 - Income inequalities – including recyclers, market traders, social protection.
January 14-15 - Solutions for addressing inequalities – including community-led solutions
January 16-18 - Concrete recommendations for High Level panel – recommendations from the consultations will be drafted by UNICEF, IIED and Habitat and presented to the consultation for discussion and agreement by the 18 HJnauary.

The official joining instructions for the global consultation are below.

Please click the link and follow the instructions to register.

To participate, please visit this site and post your response in the discussion forum, starting from 4 January.

If you are unable to access the site or have any problems, please email your response to: inequalities@worldwewant2015.org.

This is a public, open-access discussion forum and contributions are welcomed from all those with a stake in the next development agenda. This is an opportunity to influence that agenda, and you are encouraged to share the voices of the people or communities you represent, particularly those who are not able to access the consultations online.

Book challenges policymakers with new portrait of urban poverty

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:38:51 +0000

Governments and aid agencies fail to tackle urban poverty because they fail to understand it, according to a new book that paints the most detailed picture to date of how a billion-plus poor people live in towns and cities worldwide.

Urban Poverty in the Global South draws on more than 20 years of research. It shows how policymakers and development organisations underestimate urban poverty — and why this can lead to poor policies that fail to address injustice and inequality.

The book also challenges the idea that economic growth alone can eliminate that poverty, as many successful economies show little sign of decreasing poverty in their urban centres.

"If we want to build a better world we have to understand better what the urban poor experience," says co-author Professor Diana Mitlin of the International Institute for Environment and Development and the University of Manchester. "We have to understand what it means to have little income and face income, spatial, social and political inequalities. Only then can governments, development agencies and community organisations work with the urban poor to improve their options."

One in seven people worldwide live in poverty in urban areas, and most of these live in the global South – mostly in overcrowded informal settlements that lack adequate water, sanitation, security, health care and schools. People there endure poor living and working conditions, low incomes and inadequate diets, which all add to large health burdens or premature death.

On top of these problems, the urban poor have little voice and few means to influence the policies and pressures that work against their interests.

Governments and aid agencies often fail to understand and provide for the urban poor because of the way they define and measure poverty, using systems based on the 'US$1 per day poverty line'. This greatly understates the scale and depth of urban poverty because in so many cities, non-food needs such as accommodation, water and access to toilets, schools and employment cost much more than a dollar a day. Set a poverty line too low and poverty seems to disappear, especially in high cost locations. Such simplistic measures also take no account of the full dimensions of what poverty actually means to people who live it.

"The fates of the billion-plus people who live in poverty in towns and cities worldwide will have a major impact on human development," says co-author David Satterthwaite, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development. "But until decision-makers better understand how and why urban poverty exists, their actions will only ensure that it persists."

In 2013, Mitlin and Satterthwaite will publish a follow-up book about what we know about what to do to tackle the problems that face the urban poor.

BRICS urbanisation provides lessons for economic growth and social equity

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Wed, 5 Dec 2012 06:34:55 +0000

Towns and cities across Africa, Asia and Latin America have a wealth of lessons to learn from the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – according to research published today.

The research shows how each of the BRICS nations has met difficulties as they have urbanised, especially when they have tried to resist the predictable movement of people into their cities, or have inadvertently steered people or enterprises to economically or environmentally undesirable locations.

But they also provide examples of how to seize the opportunities that urbanisation can provide.

"The route a country takes to urbanisation will have a big impact on economic growth, social equity and environmental sustainability," says Gordon McGranahan of the International Institute for Environment (IIED) and Development, which has published the research in partnership with UNPFA – the UN Population Fund. "Less industrialised nations can learn a lot from the BRICS experiences – both good and bad – and so steer their own urbanisation onto a more secure path."

In addition to the five reports on the way the BRICS nations urbanised, IIED and UNFPA will publish a synthesis report and policy brief on 5 December, and a more detailed book in 2013. The publications will be the focus of a 5-6 December meeting in Tshwane/Pretoria, South Africa.

Brazil tried in vain to resist urbanisation. The result is that social inequalities endure in what are very divided cities, where the poorest communities are still poorly served despite sustained economic growth. Today, rising urban land prices prevent action to improve infrastructure and services. On the plus side, are the social innovations that some of Brazil’s cities have pioneered in recent decades.

Russia highlights the importance of how and where urbanisation happens. While early urbanisation sparked economic growth, the Soviet Union’s break-up left Russia with poorly located cities that lack the infrastructure and economic capital to compete in the global economy. About 40 per cent of Russia’s cities are based on a single industry, and a single employer dominates in about a third of these cities. Russia faces hard decisions about whether the difficulties faced by flagging cities are inherent in their location, or reflect inappropriate governance systems or land use patterns that it can reshape.

India has not yet come to terms with its urbanisation, and there are signs that, like Brazil, India is inhibiting rather than planning for it. India’s ambivalence is a threat to its economic success, particularly for poor people who find it increasingly difficult to secure a place in India’s cities. But India is at the earliest stage of its urban transition, and will hopefully learn from the experiences of the other BRICS countries. In particular, urban development could play a stronger role in alleviating rural poverty if society accepted and promoted the accommodation of migrants in successful urban areas.

China’s story highlights the importance of taking urbanisation seriously in development strategies. Its radical shift from anti-urban policies to the aggressive pursuit of urban growth in selected areas dramatically emphasizes that urbanization can boost economic growth and reduce poverty. Yet planners must take account of the environment and social equality too. On the social side, China must address the limited rights of the third of urban dwellers who do not have permanent residence permits for the cities they live in.

South Africa’s policy of apartheid suppressed urbanisation for the country’s black majority and forced them to live at the periphery of large urban centres. The people there could serve as a cheap labour force as the country industrialised but could not enjoy the advantages that urban areas bring. More than 20 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s urban centres remain unequal and fragmented, socially and economically. The country’s prosperity depends on it adopting a more inclusive and integrated approach to planning and managing urban development.

"Despite the very different characters of the BRIC countries, their experiences combine to confirm the immense importance of finding efficient and equitable ways of accommodating urbanisation," says McGranahan. "Several of the BRICS still bear heavy burdens from past failures to accommodate urban growth equitably and efficiently. Their histories highlight the need for pro-active planning."

Download the new briefing paper

Download the new discussion paper

Contacts for interviews:

Gordon McGranahan, IIED gordon.mcgranahan@iied.org

Ivan Turok, Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa) iturok@hsrc.ac.za

Does development assistance have a future?

suzanne.fisher@iied.org (Suzanne Fisher) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:28:47 +0000

No one unequivocally and wholeheartedly said development assistance worked at the debate on whether it had a future. Instead, all three panel speakers saw the need for a radical change in approach and priorities, and shared with the audience different visions for how that model could be changed or overhauled.

“What is aid for?” asked Alex Scrivener from the World Development Movement. This was the key question, said Scrivener, who was “sick” of people debating how much aid should be given, whether it be 0.7% of Gross National Product, or more or less. Is it a philanthropic process or a tool for social justice? Make it the latter, he urged, and it will have a powerful impact and be embraced with greater enthusiasm.

While there was a lot wrong with aid, he said, it has had its successes – mortality rates of infants and children (under five) had dropped by more than a third from 88 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 57 in 2010.

But, I wondered, is that the best we can do after decades of aid assistance? While 12,000 more children’s lives are now saved each day, 21,000 still die from preventable causes, and Millennium Development Goal 4, which calls for a two-thirds reduction in the mortality rates of children under five, has yet to be met.

David Satterthwaite, a Senior Fellow with IIED’s Human Settlements Group, pointed out a key problem with the aid system: its lack of accountability to its recipients. Development assistance is legitimated on the basis of poor people’s needs, yet intermediaries carrying out projects in an urban ‘slum’ aren’t accountable to the poor, but to their donors.

Satterthwaite identified two critical actors in urban development: grassroots organisations and local government authorities. Reducing urban poverty involved changing the relationship between the organisations set up by the urban poor and their governments, and assistance could potentially support the development of that relationship. But for that to happen, development assistance had to take the call for “accountability and transparency seriously” and support the urban poor’s capacity and agency.

“If you want everyone to live on an income of US$3.00 a day – you would need the resource equivalent of 15 planets,” said Andrew Simms, author of Ecological Debt and fellow at the new economics foundation. Given that we only have one Earth, what kind of development model can “square the circle of lifting people out of poverty, improving people’s livelihoods and solving energy security and climate change?” Simms asked.

For him, the answers to tackling poverty in a “climate-constrained world” lie in building the “foundations of a green energy revolution.” The problem of access to energy and poverty could be solved through a new development compact, or a “global green new deal” in which “rural regeneration and economic development is built on the foundations of a diverse range of renewable energy.” He sees this process developing the skills and capacity of those populations, which could in turn fuel economies in a green and sustainable way.

Tackling inequality was also crucial. “Equality makes other problems much easier to solve and reduces the number of ills faced by a society,” he said referring to the groundbreaking work of epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson who wrote The Spirit Level. “In an unequal world it’s much harder to lift people out of poverty – in an unequal world you have the paradox whereby to get smaller amounts of poverty reduction requires ever more overconsumption by the consumer, so inequality makes everything else harder to achieve” said Simms.

When Camilla Toulmin, Director of IIED, asked the audience to vote for or against aid assistance, most voted for it – albeit reluctantly, judging from some of the faces.

It seems most don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but, at present, the baby is getting wrinkly and tired (and might even need to be put to bed).

Rethinking finance for development in city ‘slums’

david.satterthwaite@iied.org (David Satterthwaite) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:23:21 +0100

Very little aid is actually available to low-income urban groups and grassroots organizations. If it is, it is subject to the conditions and priorities established by the aid-provider. The Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA) is challenging this funding model by providing small grants to low-income communities for the initiatives they choose and supporting these communities to work together and work with their local governments.

Around one in seven of the world’s population live in informal settlements in urban areas. City economies would collapse without their labour and the goods and services from informal enterprises – yet city governments often ignore them or see them only as a problem. In the absence of support from local governments, aid agencies or development banks, they have had to manage by themselves. They’ve built a high proportion of all new housing in informal settlements with insecure tenure because they cannot get land legally and have often built on land ill-suited to housing because they were not allowed to settle on good quality land. They struggle to cope with problems such as regular flooding, and face high levels of fire risk (caused by widespread use of candles, kerosene lamps and stoves in houses constructed from flammable materials located very close together). They face the constant threat of eviction – or actual eviction. The Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA) sees these people, and the grassroots organizations they form, as the basis for urban development.

Since 2009, ACCA has developed a working finance system in which urban poor organizations have the power to choose what they will undertake. ACCA has provided small grants to 950 community-initiatives to upgrade ‘slums’ or informal settlements in 165 cities in 19 nations. Up to (US) $3,000 of grant finance is available, and communities use this to, for example, construct or improve their water supply systems or toilets, drains, roads, paths or bridges, community centres, household waste management, playgrounds or parks. Up to $40,000 has been available for larger initiatives at the city scale. These sums seem very small in relation to the scale of the problems they seek to address. They are. But the funding is available quickly for what a community identifies as their key priority and what they themselves will undertake.

There is not enough development money to fund everything that needs to be done in all informal settlements sufficiently. But as the organizers of ACCA explain, this insufficient funding catalyses new ways of using finance – people have to think harder about what resources they can contribute, what additional support they can negotiate, and who they can work with. This can lead to the forging of new partnerships to address other needs. As the funding is sufficient for several communities in a city to undertake an initiative, these communities frequently visit each other to learn from others’ experience.

These small grants can lead to important changes within the city. The efficacy of the grassroots groups may be recognised for the first time. When a community constructs some public amenity that is meant to be provided by the local government, it gets noticed by that local government. The improvements are visible evidence of what communities can accomplish on their own.

This often leads to local government support – and the development of a city-wide platform in which representatives from grassroots organizations sit as equals with local government officials and other stakeholders. It often leads to the development of a City Development Fund in which all the active community organizations have a financial stake by pooling their resources and to which city government or external agencies can contribute. ACCA has supported the setting up of 107 City Development Funds across the countries where ACCA works and has also financed 100 larger housing-related initiatives

ACCA initiatives are planned and undertaken by the residents of informal settlements as collective processes:

collective information collection (settlement mapping, city-wide surveys),
collective definition of problems and a search for shared solutions,
collective funding systems managed by networks of savings groups (the City Development Funds),
new collective relations, as linkages are built between those living in informal settlements and local governments.

These ACCA initiatives are assessed by their peers – other urban poor groups. Perhaps surprisingly, this is unusual. Development projects that are meant to benefit urban poor groups are generally not assessed by their peers (community groups and NGO supporters) but by outside (usually foreign) professionals who visit the project briefly and who have no expertise in living in informal settlements with very inadequate incomes.

A new paradigm for development funding?

Perhaps it’s too early to suggest that this shows a new trend or (to use a much over-used word) even a new paradigm in development. But there are certain features ACCA shares with other successful development initiatives. First, it makes funding available direct to low-income groups. But many forms of social protection now do this. Second, unlike social protection initiatives that provide income-supplements to individual families, it funds collective initiatives chosen by grassroots organizations. This encourages organized networks of the urban poor to plan and act collectively and, as noted above, to bring this planning to the city level by engaging with local governments. This often leads to city or national funds being set up that can continue, widening and increasing support for community initiatives. The Urban Poor Fund International is another example of a finance system that makes funding available to grassroots organizations and federations for collective initiatives that they choose. It too has supported hundreds of community initiatives where the use of funding is determined by the federations of slum or shack dwellers.

Can aid agencies and development banks effectively help the urban poor?

Official aid agencies and development banks were not set up to work directly with low-income communities. They were set up to work with and fund national governments. Bilateral aid agencies have to be accountable to the government that funds them (and beyond this to the voters who put the government into office). Multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank and the Asian, African and Inter-American Development Banks have to be accountable to the governments that sit on their boards – especially those that provide them with funding. These funding agencies have no direct accountability to low-income groups, even though these groups’ (unfulfilled) needs are what justifies these agencies’ work and funding.

Initially, it was assumed that international funding agencies would support national (recipient) governments to address these unfulfilled needs. It was also believed that stronger economies would lead, through increased incomes and larger government capacity, to, in turn, providing the basics – secure housing, water, sanitation, health care, education, the rule of law and political systems that were accountable and democratic. But this has not happened for a large and often growing number of urban dwellers. Perhaps aid agencies and development banks have actually inadvertently inhibited this process because national or city governments are focussed on maintaining links to their donors, international agencies, and not on being accountable to their own population.

If large, centralized development assistance agencies cannot work directly with urban poor groups and their community organizations, can they learn to work with and through intermediary institutions, which are on the ground financing, working with and accountable to urban poor groups?

ACCA sees these people and the grassroots organizations they form as the basis for urban development. The collective initiatives that it has supported draw on their ingenuity, their capacities and their contacts (that help leverage additional local support). Over time these initiatives support the growth of their collective political power to change both how city and local governments work, and how governments work with them.

The October 2012 issue of the journal Environment and Urbanization has papers examining different aspects the ACCA Programme – including how it evolved, how it uses finance to unlock potentials of community action and engagement with local government, what it supports on the ground and how this contributes to larger-scale social change.

Find out more about the Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA) programme.

Basic service provision shouldn’t just be a money maker

diana.mitlin@iied.org (Diana Mitlin) — Mon, 8 Oct 2012 13:56:44 +0100

As both public and private utility companies claim more of the scarce income painstakingly saved by low-income households, leading to reduced expenditure on food and other necessities, are they forgetting that their core function is to provide services and not just make money?

Everyone should have adequate supplies of clean water, a safe toilet, and other essentials for their health and well-being. These rights are clearly recognised within the Millennium Development Goals, even if they haven’t been achieved. Ensuring universal access to basic services requires governments in the global South and North to not only shift from Millennium Development Goal targets that only seek to address half of those in need as discussed in my previous blog, but also an understanding that basic services can’t be accessed if they’re not affordable.

For many decades, most local authorities in the Global South resisted providing services to informal neighbourhoods in towns and cities where much of the low-income population lived. They feared that allowing access to piped water, sanitation, refuse collection and drainage would recognise and consolidate the hold that residents had on the land, and make their eviction more difficult.

Given local government resistance to providing even the most basic of services – such as piped water – a range of informal suppliers moved in. They drove water tankers into informal settlements from which water could be bought by the bucket, or went as water vendors selling door-to-door. This addressed some needs, but added to the difficulties that residents faced, as they had to buy water on the informal market, at prices many times those paid by much wealthier citizens in formal areas who had water piped to their homes.

However, in many nations, attitudes to informal urban settlements have begun to change. Water utilities and municipal governments alike are realising that their interests are better served by formalising service delivery to residents of informal settlements, irrespective of whether or not secure tenure is on offer. But this hasn’t resolved all the problems facing the cash-strapped residents.

Utility companies (whether public or private) are now providing piped water supplies to those living in informal settlements, but at prices that make buying adequate supplies of water unaffordable – whether through tankers, water kiosks or direct to the household. They may also provide “pay per use” public toilets which, as the name suggests, charge individuals each time they use a toilet. They often get charged more for defecation than for urination.

The geographer David Harvey talks about ‘accumulation by dispossession’ to describe processes like the eviction of low-income residents from informal settlements, and the subsequent money (‘capital accumulation’) made through the redevelopment of such sites in his recent book Rebel Cities: from the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. However as people are drawn into paying for services, often for the benefit of the same elites who made money off re-developing the area, this process might be referred to as ‘accumulation through market integration.’

The costs paid by residents who once lived in Sanjay Ghandi National Park in Mumbai, India for basic services were recently quantified; they are paying more to the state utility than they were to an illegal electricity provider when living in the Park (Vaquier 2010). The residents, who have now been relocated into formal housing, are now paying Rps 450 a month to secure basic utilities (about US $ 9) whereas before they paid Rps 350 (US $ 7). This difference may seem small but for households managing on very low incomes it is significant.

During a recent trip to southern Africa, I found that in low-income neighbourhoods in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, residents are being charged US $28 each month by the city council for water, sanitation and waste disposal. The water doesn’t run in the pipes and the waste isn’t collected– but even if the services did exist, these costs are excessive. To put these costs in context, the government’s legal minimum monthly wage for live-out domestic workers is the equivalent of (US) $80. Someone on that wage would be spending more than a quarter of each month’s salary on water, sanitation and waste collection, without even beginning to cover their other essential costs, such as food and rent.

In Walvis Bay, Namibia I met residents who are being charged N$200 a month by a mutual fund for a housing loan on a two-room property, but are paying N$400 a month for water and N$800 a month for electricity.

Using the World Health Organization standard for acceptable water costs (which is that water should cost no more than 5% of household income) to determine affordability, a study in Zambia found that 40% of the urban population in Lusaka, the country’s capital, couldn’t afford sufficient water (Dagdeviren 2008). Using the more exacting UK standard of no more than 3% of income would mean that 60% of households couldn’t afford adequate access.

Such examples show that providing the urban poor with services can be a money earner. And, the high costs suggest that, rather than being concerned about managing these services to improve household well-being and extending basic services access to lower-income households, local authorities and water utilities are focussed on making money.

High basic service costs leave the lowest-income households with few options. They are forced to use surface water (shallow wells and water courses), practice open defecation, if there is no affordable alternative, and risk the dangers of illegal electrical hook ups, or manage without. Development should not ignore the realities faced by the urban and rural poor, particularly their lack of income.

Service payments can help capture income from informal labour markets

Behind these costs lies another reality. Entrepreneurs have long made money from investments in industries and commercial services: that is the system of capitalism. This system has provided increased opportunities for many. It has helped urban centres to grow strong, and in many cases prosperous. In recent years, growing informality in labour markets has helped to reduce production costs and increase profitability.

But this growing informal economy comes at a cost for the formal sector. Both informal employment and informal housing means that not much of the urban poor’s income is spent on formally-produced goods and services. Service payments can provide a way for the formal system to ‘capture’ the incomes of people living and working informally.

Of course companies have to be viable organizations. It is fair that people pay for services; most households want legal basic service connections and believe that they should be paying their share. But prices have to be affordable for most people most of the time if people’s rights to basic services are to be achieved, and their basic needs met.

Urban Poverty in the Global South: Scale and Nature, a book Diana Mitlin has co-authored with David Satterthwaite, will be published by Routledge on 12 December 2012.

6th World Urban Forum: will the agenda of slum and shack dwellers ever get considered?

david.satterthwaite@iied.org (David Satterthwaite) — Fri, 7 Sep 2012 10:39:47 +0100

David Satterthwaite asks why representatives from the federations and networks of slum or shack dwellers were absent from almost all the official events and wonders when their priorities will get the attention they deserve.

After decades of discussion on participation and listening to the ‘voices’ of urban poor groups, large forums and conferences on urban issues can still be organized without the involvement of the urban poor themselves – even as these events are justified by their apparent importance for addressing the needs of the urban poor.

The 6^th World Urban Forum was held in Naples this week; its theme was The Urban Future. Organized by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat), it included an official programme of events and space for over 150 ‘networking’ and other events organized mostly by academic institutions, NGOs, national government agencies, professional associations and international funding agencies and foundations.

Focus on local governments

One innovation that UN Habitat has pioneered is a strong focus on the importance of local governments in development and environmental management and this has included the involvement of mayors. This is never easy in that all UN agencies are accountable to national governments who may not support the policies and practices of some local governments. But many of the speakers at the official events were city mayors, along with representatives from national governments and international funding agencies, academics and a few NGOs. This gave a much needed focus on the role of local governments in the urban future. But there were hardly any representatives from the billion people who live in informal settlements – or slums or shacks. It’s as if they were thought to have no role in defining the urban future.

Some side events included slum/shack dwellers

One possible excuse for this could be that they weren't present (although this would raise the issue as to why they were not invited and supported to come). But there were many representatives and leaders of national federations or networks of slum/shack dwellers at the side events. And, perhaps surprisingly, these side events often included presentations, not only by federation leaders, but also by local government or national government staff that work with them.

For example, in a session on potential alternatives to evictions organized by Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), the Mayor of Iloilo in the Philippines (Jed Patrick Mabilog) talked about the importance of his government’s partnership with the Philippines Homeless People’s Federation, which was then confirmed by Sonia Fadrigo, a representative from the Federation itself.

The Mayor of Harare (Muchadei Masunda) spoke of his commitment to stopping evictions and the value of the partnership between the city government and the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and the NGO supporting its work, Dialogue on Shelter. This was confirmed by Davious Muvindhi from the Zimbabwe Federation.

Ernest Sonnenberg from the government of Cape Town talked about how they are supporting community-based slum upgrading, and this was endorsed by Siku Nkhoma from SDI and Alina Mofokeng from the South African Homeless People’s Federation.

The importance of working partnerships between grassroots organizations and local governments was also evident in a session on community-driven enumeration and mapping based on the latest issue of IIED’s journal, Environment and Urbanization. This included presentations by Sara Nandudu from the Uganda Homeless People’s Federation, Shaikh Parveennisa Razi Ahmed from Mahila Milan (the India-wide federation of women slum dweller savings groups) and Edith Mabanga, from the Namibia Homeless People’s Federation on their collaboration with local government in mapping and enumerating informal settlements. This provides the data and maps needed for installing infrastructure and services and regularizing tenure. Dozens of cities have completed community-driven enumerations and mapping for all informal settlements and these are guiding government-supported improvements including provision for piped water and toilets (referred to as ‘upgrading’ in the sector).

A session organized by the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) revealed the scale of the city-wide upgrading initiatives taking place all over Asia, driven by community organization and action. The session included short presentations by many community leaders and local government politicians and civil servants about their partnerships.

All three of these sessions were packed with people standing at the back and crowding the doorways. The insights and commentaries of two SDI leaders, Rose Molokoane and Jockin Arputham were heard at these and other sessions. The federation members had also organized a celebratory march around the exhibition hall singing songs – almost as a way of making their voice heard and reminding everyone of their relevance, despite the small space allocated to them.

Anyone who listened to the presentations of these and other federation members and leaders during the World Urban Forum were reminded of how clear they are about their needs and priorities, the challenges they face in getting these addressed, and how often these differ from our assumptions about their needs.

The Mayor of Iloilo ensures that there are representatives of the Homeless People’s Federation of the Philippines on key committees within his government, including those allocating funds and those determining infrastructure priorities. Why weren’t representatives of urban poor organizations, federations and networks on the committees organising this and previous World Urban Forums?

Why are the powerful global institutions so reluctant to engage the urban poor directly? When the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were formulated, they weren’t consulted; if the UN had done so, the MDGs would have had a much more ambitious and relevant target for improving slum conditions.

The preparations for the post MDG 2015 global development framework should involve the representative organizations of slum/shack dwellers – and other relevant groups, such as waste picker networks. If not, it risks assuming that their priorities get represented by professional groups or NGOs. This has to change. As Adnan Aliani from UN ESCAP commented at the World Urban Forum, in so many countries it is no longer an issue of people needing to participate in government programmes, it is an issue of governments learning to participate in and support people’s programmes.

Find more details of the work of the federations.

To receive a summary of the special issue of Environment and Urbanization on Mapping, enumerating and surveying informal settlements and cities e-mail humans@iied.org and specify whether you want the electronic copy or printed copy (for which we will need a postal address).

Study identifies political leadership as No. 1 issue in managing disaster risk

mike.shanahan@iied.org (Mike Shanahan) — Tue, 4 Sep 2012 11:01:07 +0100

A new study of a major urban safety campaign launched by the UN two years ago has found that political leadership is more important than a city’s wealth when it comes to protecting the lives and economic assets of cities and towns from disasters.

The "Making Cities Resilient Report 2012" [PDF] provides a global snapshot of how local governments reduce disaster risk and was undertaken by a team from the International Institute for Environment and Development led by Senior Fellow, Dr David Satterthwaite.

Dr Satterthwaite said: "The Making Cities Resilient campaign is proving that despite a rise in extreme weather events and the threats posed by climate change, urbanization does not have to lead to an increase in risk. Where city and local governments demonstrate leadership and competence in working with low-income populations living in informal settlements flood impacts can be reduced and the threats from other natural hazards minimised."

"Cities which understand how to prevent recurring losses will thrive and the campaign is motivating over 1,000 cities and towns to get a better handle on how to reduce their risk and avoid loss of life and damages."

The Making Cities Resilient Campaign was launched by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) after it was announced that for the first time in human history over 50% of the world’s population now live in cities and urban areas. The majority of the 200 million people affected by floods, earthquakes and other natural hazards each year are urban dwellers.

The campaign now has 1,050 members ranging from major metropolises such as San Francisco, Copenhagen, Cape Town and Mumbai to small towns in countries such as Austria and Pakistan.

The campaign asks members to sign up to Ten Essentials for urban disaster risk reduction. The new study includes interviews with mayors and city managers from around the world and finds that for the majority the most important "essential"is putting in place the organisation and coordination to understand and reduce risk.

The UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, launching the report today at the World Urban Forum in Naples, said: “Economic losses to disasters have averaged at least US$100 billion annually over the last twenty years. Most of this damage can be avoided through better risk management and investment in social and structural infrastructure.

"The 40-plus cities profiled in this report were able to leverage whatever resources they had including the creativity of their citizens to reduce the impact of disaster events on their communities. Six months after joining the campaign the local government of Siquirres in Costa Rica took action on flood protection and in February 2012 the usual annual flooding was avoided. There are many cities like Siquirres which are proving that if you manage your risks, you build your resilience to disasters and avoid unnecessary disruption in the home and the workplace."

Report author, Dr Cassidy Johnson, of University College, London, said: "The straightforward simplicity of the Campaign's Ten Essentials is a key strength of the Campaign. These guidelines provide local leaders with a strategic framework to prioritise areas and approaches to disaster risk reduction and to chart progress."

UNISDR Campaign Director, Helena Molin-Valdes, said: "The Campaign provides a critical forum for local authorities to raise awareness, learn about disaster risk reduction, share ideas and identify solutions. The association with an UN-affiliated global Campaign gives local authorities a sense of empowerment which usually translates into tangible actions and policies."

Across all the cities analysed in this report, the five types of activities occurring most frequently are:

1. Taking disaster risk reduction into account in new urban planning regulations, plans and development activities;

2. Establishing councils/committees/disaster management structures dedicated to disaster risk reduction;

3. Constructing hazard-resistant infrastructure or improving existing facilities;

4. Establishing education/awareness/training programs;

5. Citizen participation/ multi-stakeholder dialogues.

Another important trend is the extent to which cities are integrating disaster risk reduction into other local government activities, including education, livelihoods, health, environment, and planning, either by incorporating risk considerations into existing activities or initiating projects that address multiple issues simultaneously.

Download the report [PDF]

The real issue is universal access to affordable basic services

diana.mitlin@iied.org (Diana Mitlin) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:58:28 +0100

Why have global leaders endorsed partial Millennium Development Goal targets, asks Diana Mitlin, leaving millions without water, sanitation or healthcare?

As global institutions and official development assistance agencies reflect on what should follow the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), this is an opportunity to recognise their critical flaw — global leaders have endorsed partial MDG targets.

Halving the proportion of people with inadequate incomes, halving the numbers who suffer from hunger and halving the proportion of people without safe water and basic sanitation are just some of the MDG targets set for achievement between 1990 and 2015. Would these global leaders offer piped water to only one child in a family or two? Or, if extending piped water to an informal settlement, offer it to only half the residents – say those to the right of the water mains?

Significantly improving the lives of 100 million people living in slums – only around 10% of those living in urban areas in need of assistance – by 2020 would mean that this MDG goal would be achieved on paper. But what about the lives of the other 90% of slum dwellers?

Of course, setting global targets which offer to reach only some of those in need in a distant boardroom might not feel difficult, because they are less acute and less personal to the goal setters. They aren’t parents selecting which of their children should receive healthcare to treat diarrhoea, and which will have to go without. But the need for good quality water and sanitation that isn’t too costly is so important that its absence means that many will die young, or are likely to suffer from diseases that will blight their lives and their development.

Astonishing deficiencies

Despite all the promises, commitments and declarations made by governments and international agencies over that past four decades, the scale of the deficiencies in provision for water and sanitation in rural and urban areas is astonishing. In most sub-Saharan African nations and many Asian nations, less than a quarter of their urban population has water piped to their premises – see figure 1. Most cities in sub-Saharan Africa and many in Asia have no sewers and no storm drains. This includes many large cities with more than a million inhabitants. For many of the large cities that do have sewers and storm drains, these only serve 5-20% of their population.

For example, in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, approximately 60% of the 20 million inhabitants live in informal settlements (“slums”); three-quarters of these people do not have access to the city’s sewers and drainage system. Informal settlements may be provided with standpipes, although the supply of water from these standpipes is often irregular and not of drinking quality. Due to this lack of access, households in the city began connecting directly to the mains water supply– albeit illegally. Interestingly, this subterfuge brought about results: the city has responded with a programme to provide household water connections.

Around the world sanitation remains in crisis; at present there are 50 people to one toilet seat. Nairobi’s informal settlements are home to at least 30% of the city’s population. On average, 71 people share each toilet. And only 12% of the toilets that do exist have a formal connection to a sewer.

Factoring in high population densities

In a low-density rural settlement, the local eco-system can process human waste, just as it would the wastes from animals in the vicinity, but this natural process can’t occur in most cities. The negative health impacts created from a lack of water and basic sanitation facilities in many of the world’s cities are made worse by high population densities. The number of immediate neighbours, as well as the quality of water and sanitation services received all dramatically impact on people’s health. It’s perplexing then that population density is often forgotten when assessing basic sanitation service requirements.

Recipe for disaster

There are hundreds of millions of families living in one or two rented rooms within a plot of land in an informal settlement. They might share the plot with eight or twelve other families, with very limited open space. In most cases, the best toilet provision they can hope for is a single pit latrine, shared between all the households. But with so many sharing the toilet, it quickly fills up.

When the latrine fills up there is no space to dig another pit. Even if there is a service to empty latrines, these are expensive and it is often difficult to get the equipment close enough to the latrine within dense informal settlements. For those who rent accommodation, landlords often save money by not providing this service.

With so many sharing each toilet, it is difficult to get access to it. So it is common in such settlements for residents to defecate in the open or into plastic bags or waste paper that is then thrown away – but there is usually no waste-collection service to remove this waste either.

Informal settlements are frequently built on flood-prone land that no one else wants – the inhabitants would likely be evicted if they chose better quality sites. Because these sites are illegal, local governments have rarely installed drains. When flooding occurs pit latrines often spread their contents all over the settlement. Such inadequate provision for sanitation will usually mean that all those people using shallow wells may also end up with their potable water contaminated with faecal matter.

What is human progress if it does not involve the acceptance that every child and adult is able to secure the basic needs required for good health? It is extraordinary that, in this age of prosperity, such basic values seem to have been forgotten. As the significance of inequality is documented and discussed among both government and development agency staff alike, surely a critical first step is a universal standard to provide safe and sufficient water, sanitation and drainage that reduces the risk of faecal contamination, and health care and emergency services for all.

Find out more about the work of the Human Settlements group