Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population, Poverty & SDGs

DEVELOPMENT: Strategies for Achieving Sustainable Cities

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 29 2005 (IPS) - The mainstreaming of environmental planning and management as an integral part of public policies seems to be the only solution for a world where the population is becoming ever more concentrated in increasingly larger, poorer and more unmanageable cities.

For Ricardo Sánchez, director of the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/ROLAC), cities are the engine of development, "but they do not exist in a vacuum."

"The demand for natural resources for large urban centres goes far beyond the space they occupy," Sánchez noted at the 2005 Global Meeting of Partners of the Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) and Localizing Agenda 21 Programme (LA21), taking place this Monday through Friday in Havana.

Urban areas import the food, water and energy they require, export much of their waste to rural areas, and emit more than 80 percent of the greenhouse gases produced in the world, he added.

Latin America and the Caribbean are the region with the highest degree of urbanisation. Around 75 percent of the region’s inhabitants live in cities, and this proportion is expected to grow by another 10 percent in the next 25 years.

The trend towards growing urbanisation is also apparent in Asia and Africa.

And in global terms, the proportion of the world’s population living in cities has risen from one third in 1950 to one half today, and is expected to climb to two thirds – meaning a total of six billion people – by the year 2050.

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) considers the growth of urban poverty and slums to be the most "alarming" aspect of global urbanisation.

There are around one billion people living in slums around the world today, most of them in Asia (554 million), followed by Africa (187 million) and Latin America and the Caribbean (128 million), according to the U.N. agency.

UN-Habitat has pledged to assist the U.N. member countries in achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, which is one of the targets established as part of the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the international community in 2000.

Improving the lives of slum dwellers does not merely imply providing better housing conditions or greater access to basic services, but also ensuring that they have the same opportunities as people living in other urban areas.

In pursuit of this goal, authorities and experts from 35 countries, international organisations and donor agencies have gathered in Havana this week for the meeting jointly sponsored by UN-Habitat, UNEP, the Cuban government and the city of Havana.

The meeting is aimed at providing the opportunity to advance collective know-how, exchange experiences, and discuss how to mainstream environmental planning and management into local, national and global policies.

In Latin America, there is a broad movement that advocates the use of master plans that go beyond merely logistical and spatial considerations, as a means of promoting sustainable growth with the participation of a range of different actors, said Jorge Gavidia, director general of the UN-Habitat regional office for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Around 100 cities in 32 countries are involved in the Sustainable Cities-Localizing Agenda 21 Programme, jointly coordinated by UN-Habitat and UNEP to promote integration at the national level of best local practices in urban environmental planning and management.

These include 18 cities in Sri Lanka, 13 in Tanzania, seven in Senegal, six in Morocco and six in Thailand.

The programme, which is being carried out over a five-year period from 2003 to 2007, has already begun to produce visible results.

Motor vehicle pollution testing in the Peruvian city of Arequipa led to the drafting of a bill to establish national legislation. In Sri Lanka, the Supreme Court has ordered local authorities in 11 cities to submit solid waste management plans.

For its part, Cuba has developed a national action plan entitled "Improving the management of our cities and the environment of our homes", which will be implemented in four urban centres in the country’s central and eastern regions.

Faced with a housing deficit of half a million units, Cuba will be stepping up efforts this year to confront this social problem, announced Economy Minister José Luis Rodríguez.

The Cuban strategy is aimed at significantly improving the quality of life in 50 percent of housing in deteriorated urban areas, through community-level initiatives.

The participants in this week’s meeting will be addressing a wide range of topics, including urban services, sustainable mobility, and the benefits of combating climate change, protecting biodiversity and curbing coastal pollution.