A couple wait on an overturned garbage bin to be rescued by boat during the Chennai flooding of December 2015. Credit: R. Samuel/IPS

By Jency Samuel
CHENNAI, India, Oct 19 2016 (IPS)

“The rain was our nemesis as well as our saviour,” says Kanniappan, recalling the first week of December 2015 when Chennai was flooded.

“Kind neighbours let us stay in the upper floors of their houses as the water levels rose. The rainwater was also our only source of drinking water,” he added.“Urban planners value land, not water.” -- Sushmita Sengupta of the Centre for Science and Environment

Kalavathy, another resident, isn’t very familiar with the links between extreme weather events and climate change. All she knows is that in December, her house was completely submerged in 15 feet of water. Now, after working night shifts, she gets up at 4am to pump water, supplied by the administration during fixed timings.

The simple lives of Kalavathy and her neighbours, who live in row houses behind the 15-foot-high wall built on the embankment of Adyar River, seem to revolve around water. Either too much or too little.

Chennai, the capital city of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, literally became an island in December 2015. The airport was inundated. Trains and flights had to be cancelled, cutting off the city for a few days from the rest of India.

The Chennai floods claimed more than 500 lives and economic losses were pegged at 7.4 billion dollars, with similar figures for all flood-affected Indian cities.

Urban flooding in India and other countries is one of the issues being discussed at the Habitat III meeting in Quito, Ecuador this week. The Indian government has also released a draft for indicators of what a “Smart City” would look like.

Extreme weather events

Incessant rains also left Chennai  inundated in November. “The average rainfall for Chennai in November is 407.4 mm, but in 2015 it was 1218.6 mm. For December, the average rainfall is 191 mm, whereas in December 2015 it was 542 mm, breaking a 100-year-old rainfall record,” said G.P. Sharma of Skymet Weather Services Pvt Ltd.

While the extreme rainfall that Chennai experienced was attributed to El Nino, scientists predict that with climate change, extreme weather events will increase. “There will be more rain spread over fewer days, as happened in Chennai in 2015, Kashmir in 2014, Uttarakhand in 2013,” says Sushmita Sengupta of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based research and advocacy organisation. This concurs with the IPCC fifth assessment report that predicts that India’s rainfall intensity will increase.

Poor urban planning and urban flooding

According to India’s National Institute of Disaster Management, floods are the most recurrent of all disasters, affecting large numbers of people and areas. The Ministry of Home Affairs has identified 23 of the 35 Indian states as flood-prone. It was only after the Mumbai floods of 2005 that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), a government body, distinguished urban floods as different from riverine floods. The cause of each is different and hence each needs a different control strategy.

The Chennai city administration was ill-prepared to cope with the freak weather, in spite of forecast warnings from Indian Meteorological Department. Jammu & Kashmir had neither a system for forecasting floods nor an exclusive department for disaster management when it was hit by floods in 2014. While a different reason can be attributed for the flooding and its aftermath for each of the Indian cities, the common thread that connects  them is extremely poor urban planning.

As per a report by Bengaluru-based Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), in 1951, there were only five Indian cities with a population of more than one million. In 2011, this number rose to 53. To cater to the increasing population, the built-up area increased, roads were paved and open spaces dwindled.

But an IIHS analysis shows that the built-up area has been increasing disproportionately compared to population growth. Between 2000 and 2010, Kolkata’s population grew by about 7 percent, but its built area by 48 percent. In the same period, Bengaluru’s built area doubled compared to its population, indicating the commercial infrastructural development.

Disappearing urban sponges

The open spaces that disappeared, giving way to concrete structures, are primarily water bodies that act as sponges, soaking up the rainwater. Increasing population also led to increased waste and the cities’ water bodies turned into dumping grounds for municipal solid waste, as was the case with Chennai’s Pallikaranai marshland. They also became sewage carriers like the River Bharalu that flows through Guwahati, Assam.

“Urban planners value land, not water,” says Sengupta.

A 1909 map of Chennai shows a four-mile-long lake in the centre of the city. It exists now only in street names such as Tank Bund Road and Tank View Road. T.K. Ramkumar, a member of the Expert Committee on Pallikaranai appointed by the Madras High Court, told IPS that in the 1970s, the government filled up lakes within the city and developed housing plots under ‘eri schemes’, eri in Tamil meaning lakes.

In fact eris are a series of cascading tanks, where water overflowing from a tank flows to the next and so on till the excess water reaches the Bay of Bengal. But the marsh and the feeder channels have been blocked by buildings, leading to frequent floods. NDMA suggests that urbanisation of watersheds causes increased flow of water in natural drains and hence the drains should be periodically widened. Not only are the water courses not widened, but heavily encroached upon.

Encroachment of water bodies is a pan-India problem. The water spread of all its cities have been declining rapidly over the years. “Of the 262 lakes recorded in Bengaluru in the 1960s, only ten have water. 65 of Ahmedabad’s 137 lakes have made way for buildings,” says Chandra Bhushan of CSE. Statistics reveal that the more a city’s water spread loss, the more the number of floods it has experienced.

Way forward

After the Chennai floods, the government-appointed Parliamentary Standing Committee demanded strict action against encroachments. It directed the Tamil Nadu administration to clear channels and river beds to enable water to flow, to improve drainage networks and to develop vulnerability indices by creating a calamity map. The Committee’s direction applies equally well to all the cities.

The Indian government has allocated 164 million dollars to restore 63 water bodies under its Lakes and Wetlands Conservation Program. But urban flood statistics reveal that the efforts need to be speeded up.

Yet in the Draft Indian Standard for Smart Cities Indicator, there is no indicator to measure the disaster preparedness and resilience of a city.

“Catchment areas and feeder channels should be declared ecologically sensitive and should be protected by stringent laws,” says Sengupta.

As for Chennai, “The retention capacity of Pallikaranai should be enhanced by suitable methods after hydrological and hydrogeological studies says,” said Dr. Indumathi M. Nambi of the Indian Institute of Technology.

She adds that the Buckingham Canal should be connected to the sea to facilitate discharge during floods. Plans are afoot to demonstrate this with the cooperation of industries and NGOs.

The plans are sure to work as Jaipur has created a successful public-private partnership model. Mansagar Lake, which had turned into a repository of sewage, received 70 percent funding from the central government for restoration. The state government raised the balance with the help of the tourism industry by allocating space for entertainment and hospitality spots, successfully restoring the lake.

The restoration of water bodies and flood mitigation measures will need to be site-specific, taking the extent and topographical conditions of catchment area, existing and proposed storm water drains, status of embankments and bunds of water bodies and permeability of soil conditions into account. But with such measures and political will, experts believe the safety of inhabitants and urban resilience can be accomplished.

Panama City, one of the fastest growing metropolises in Latin America. The Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) will be held in Quito in October and will adopt the New Urban Agenda. Credit: Emilo Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 30 2016 (IPS)

The declaration that will be presented for approval at the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in October has again sparked conflict between the opposing positions taken by the industrial North and the developing South.

The aim of the conference, to be held in Quito, Ecuador from October 17-20,  is to reinvigorate the global commitment to sustainable urban development with a “New Urban Agenda,” the outcome strategy of Habitat III.

Developing countries want the declaration to include the right to the city, financing for  the New Urban Agenda that will be agreed at the meeting, and restructuring of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) to implement the agreed commitments. “Long term goals must be put in place that will generate management indicators that can be measured by governments and civil society. Experience related to the social production of habitat should be taken into account, (like that of) people living in informal settlements who have built cities with their capabilities and skills.” - Juan Duhalde

Another bloc, headed by the United States, Japan and the countries of the European Union, is striving to minimise these issues.

In the view of representatives of civil society organisations, these issues should be incorporated into the “Quito Declaration on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements for All,” the draft of which is currently being debated by member states in a several rounds of preparatory meetings.

Juan Duhalde, head of the Social Research Centre at Un Techo para mi País (A Roof for my Country), a Santiago-based international non governmental organisation, told IPS that these are “key” issues and must be included as part of the discussion and be reflected in a concrete action plan.

“They are the general guidelines that will inform national public policies. The only way forward is for these commitments to be translated into long term agreements for the future. Right now discussions are mainly political and may fall short when it comes to bringing about the progress that is required,” said Duhalde.

The Chilean researcher stressed that “the right to the city goes hand in hand with achieving a paradigm shift away from the present situation, which is biased in favour of profitability for an elite rather than collective welfare for all.”

Stark North-South differences were plainly to be seen at the first round of informal intergovernmental talks held May 16-20 in New York. They will continue to fuel the debate at further informal sessions, the first of which will last three days and is due to end on Friday, July 1.

In the run-up to Habitat III, to be hosted by Quito in October, Ecuador and France are co-chairing the preliminary negotiations. The Philippines and Mexico are acting as co- facilitators.

Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico lead a bloc promoting the right to the city. Together with defined mechanisms to follow up the declaration, funding for the New Urban Agenda and implementation measures, the right to the city is major irritant at the talks. Among implementation measures is the creation of a fund to strengthen capabilities in developing countries.

The right to the city, a term coined by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) in his 1968 book of the same title, refers to a number of simultaneously exercised rights of urban dwellers, such as the rights to food and housing, migration, health and education, a healthy environment, public spaces, political participation and non discrimination.

Household possessions dumped on the pavement: a family was evicted from the historic centre of Mexico City. The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) will address the right to the city and the problems faced by people living in informal settlements. Credit: Courtesy of Emilio Godoy

Lorena Zárate, head of the non governmental Habitat International Coalition (HIC) which has regional headquarters in Mexico City, advocates the inclusion of social production of habitat in the declaration. However, it is not explicitly mentioned in the draft declaration.

“We want it to be included, as otherwise it would mean turning a blind eye to half or one-third of what has been constructed in the world. But there is little room to negotiate new additions, because they are afraid of acknowledgeing them, and consensuses have to be built,” said the Argentine-born Zárate, who is participating in the New York meetings.

The concept recognises all those processes that lead to the creation of habitable spaces, urban components and housing, carried out as the initiatives of self-builders and other not-for-profit social agents.

The most recent version of the draft declaration, dated June 18, bases its vision “on the concept of “cities for all” recognises that in some some countries this is “understood as the Right to the City, seeking to ensure that all inhabitants, of present and future generations, are able to inhabit, use, and produce just, inclusive, accessible and sustainable cities, which exist as a common good essential to quality of life.”

States party to the declaration emphasise “the need to carry out the follow-up and review of the New Urban Agenda in order to ensure its effective and timely implementation and progressive impact, as well as its inclusiveness, legitimacy and accountability.”

Moreover they stress the importance of strengthening the Agenda and its monitoring process, and invite the U.N. General Assembly to “guarantee stable, adequate and reliable financial resources, and enhance the capability of developing nations” for designing, planning and implementing and sustainably managing urban and other settlements.

They also request that UN-Habitat prepare a periodic progress report on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, to provide quantitative and qualitative analysis of the progress achieved.

The process of report preparation should incorporate the views of national, sub-national and local governments, as well as the United Nations System, including regional commissions, stakeholders from multilateral organizations, civil society, the private sector, communities, and other groups and non-state actors, the draft declaration says.

A building being renovated in Havana, Cuba. Developing countries want the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to provide the necessary funding to promote the New Urban Agenda, to be adopted by UN-Habitat. Credit: Courtesy of Emilio Godoy

The outline of the draft declaration report has section headings on sustainable and inclusive urban prosperity and opportunities for all; sustainable urban development for social inclusion and the eradication of poverty; environmentally sound and resilient urban development; planning and managing urban spatial development; means of implementation and review.

“It’s (like) a soap opera saga. Right now we are trying to contribute ideas to strengthen the proposal for the right to the city. In the draft, this issue is diluted out; we do not want it to be further diluted,” a Latin American official participating in the negotiations told IPS.

“The United States and China do not want the text to contain references to human rights,” the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It is expected that the draft declaration will be finalised at the meeting of the Habitat III preparatory committee (PrepCom3) to be held July 25-27 in Indonesia, and be presented for approval by U.N. member states at the full Habitat III conference in Quito.

To avoid a repetition of the sequels to the 1976 Vancouver Habitat I conference and the 1996 Habitat II conference in Istanbul, which were not evaluated afterwards, Duhalde and Zárate both wish to see a comprehensive review and follow-up programme established.

“Long term goals must be included and management indicators must be created that can be measured by governments and social actors. The experience in social production of habitat acquired by people living in informal settlements who have built cities with their capabilities and skills must be taken into account,” said Duhalde.

“We are keen to see the generation of evidence and promotion of research into real problems on the ground, in order to generate practical solutions,” he said.

In Zárate’s view, progress cannot be made in debating a new agenda without having evaluated fulfillment of the previous programme goals.

“There must be a means of discerning what is new and what is still ongoing, what has been successfully done and what has not been achieved, why some things were done and why some were not, and what actors have been involved. There have never been clear mechanisms for review monitoring nor for prioritisation,” she said.

“We are adamant that this should not happen again. But they are not going to include goals or indicators, and there is not much clarity about review and monitoring mechanisms,” she said.

The Latin American official consulted by IPS downplayed the likely achievements of the summit. “Habitat III will only be a reference point. There will be no major changes overnight after October 21. National governments will do whatever they intend to do, with their own resources, their own political and social forces, and their own governance,” he predicted.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez. Translated by Valerie Dee.

Part of the Nordelta gated community in the Paraná river delta, which led the new trend of building private neighbourhoods on the rivers and canals of Greater Buenos Aires. The community is made up of 11 neighbourhoods and is dubbed a “city-ville”. Credit: Elinmobiliario.com

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 24 2014 (IPS)

The construction of gated communities on wetlands and floodplains in Greater Buenos Aires has modified fragile ecosystems and water cycles and has aggravated flooding, especially in poor surrounding neighourhoods.

In the 1990s a high-end property boom led to the construction of private neighbourhoods in vital ecosystems, and the emergence of barriers – actual walls – between social classes in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

In the first week of November, the “sudestada” or strong southeast wind left 19 municipalities in and around Buenos Aires under water.“But in the last five years we have seen a new phenomenon: flooding from rainfall, and it’s no coincidence that it happens mainly in neighbourhoods located next to gated communities built over the last decade.” -- Martín Gianella

The sudestada is a phenomenon that affects the Rio de la Plata basin. It consists of a sudden rotation of cold southern winds to the southeast, bringing strong winds and heavy rain. In the first week of November the wind gusts reached over 70 km an hour and more rain fell in two days than the total forecast for two months. Rivers overflowed their banks, large areas were flooded and cut off, and more than 5,000 people were evacuated.

Jorge Capitanich, President Cristina Fernández’s cabinet chief, attributed the floods to “a combination of sudestada, heavy rains, and the saturation of the water basins.”

But Patricia Pintos of the University de la Plata’s Centre of Geographic Research said this confluence of factors was aggravated by the growing urbanisation and the proliferation of “barrios náuticos” – closed private neighbourhoods built on the water.

These gated communities are built near or on artificial or natural bodies of water, Pintos, a geographer who is co-author of the book ”La privatopía sacrílega. Efectos del urbanismo privado en la cuenca baja del río Luján” (Sacrilegious privatopia: Effects of private urbanism on the lower Luján river basin), told Tierramérica.

Many of these wealthy private neighbourhoods have been built on floodplains and wetlands, ecosystems that are vital to water drainage.

The new urban developments have advanced on areas that play a crucial role in managing floods, she said.

“Wetlands are getting stopped up by housing developments that ironically promote a lifestyle associated with enjoying water and nature,” Laila Robledo, an urban planner at the General Sarmiento National University, told Tierramérica.

Four of the municipalities in the lower stretch of the Luján river basin most affected by the growth of high-end neighbourhoods on floodplains and wetlands are Pilar, Campana, Escobar and Tigre, which cover more than 7,000 hectares.

Traditional houses on stilts in Tigre along the Arias canal in the Paraná river delta. These traditional neighbourhoods have suffered the environmental and social impacts of the construction of gated communities for the wealthy that are built on land prone to flooding. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“The emergence of 65 housing developments of this kind modified the terrain at the mouth of the river and blocked drainage during weather events like the ones we experienced this month,” Pintos said.

These neighbourhoods, which the expert described as “polderised closed housing developments” – a reference to polders or low-lying tracts of land enclosed by dikes – “entail major modifications of the natural topographical characteristics, not only to raise the level of the ground in order to build housing but also to create new bodies of water.”

That involves, for example, excavating to build artificial lakes and using the dirt to fill in low-lying areas.

And because these housing developments are in flood-prone areas, embankments six to 10 metres high are built around them to keep water out.

“They protect these developments but they work as dikes that contribute to flooding in surrounding neighbourhoods…What protects them hurts those who are outside,” Pintos said.

Ten percent of the 350,000 inhabitants of Tigre live in gated communities, which cover half of the municipality’s land area, Martín Gianella, the municipal general secretary, told Tierramérica.

“This is what we call a model of socio-territorial segregation,” he said. “Walls are dividing the territory and society.”

Gianella said that Tigre, on the north side of Greater Buenos Aires, has historically suffered from flooding during the sudestadas.

“But in the last five years we have seen a new phenomenon: flooding from rainfall, and it’s no coincidence that it happens mainly in neighbourhoods located next to gated communities built over the last decade,” he added.

The official urged the municipal government to oversee and regulate the construction of private neighbourhoods “and to levy a special tax on these mega-developments, to invest in the necessary hydrological works.”

Robledo, the urban planner, stressed that changes in the hydrologic regimes don’t only affect the areas near the gated communities, because Buenos Aires was built on a plain crisscrossed by rivers.

“The city is part of an urban metabolism – what happens in one place affects the rest,” she explained. That is why solutions must be “interjurisdictional,” she added.

According to Robledo, the construction of these gated communities “favours the privatisation of the city and real estate speculation, to the detriment of the rest of the population.”

Driven by the profit motive, “the companies buy up historically cheap land prone to flooding, fill it in to make it inhabitable, and earn extraordinary profits,” she said.

Pintos said “this is the result of the growth of a model of urban development followed by municipalities that are prone to favouring big investment flows.”

Pintos and Robledo agreed that while regulations and maps of socio-environmental risks posed by this kind of housing development exist, they are not enforced.

Big real estate entrepreneurs in the province of Buenos Aires, like Gonzalo Monarca, the president of the Grupo Monarca, deny that they are responsible for the problems, which they blame on climate change.

“That’s a fallacious argument,” Robledo said. “Climate change is happening at a global level, but the consequences are stronger or weaker depending on the way cities have been built and inhabited.”

“If we build in a drainage basin that receives overflow when the water level in the river goes up, it’s obvious that the water is going to run off into other areas,” she said.

Robledo stated that if this kind of housing development is not banned or regulated, cities will be flooded more frequently and for longer periods of time, even when the rainfall is not particularly heavy.

Pintos went even further, calling for solutions that are “not very popular” in political terms, and which may be complex and burdensome, but which she said should not be ruled out if the problem continues to grow.

As an example, she cited the relocation of families from the banks of the Mississippi river in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Other intermediate solutions, she said, would be to prohibit the construction of new private neighbourhoods in fragile ecosystems, and a review of the permits already granted.

She also said companies should assume the costs of remediation of environmental problems, although such works would be a “bandaid in the face of a critical situation that could have been avoided if rationality had prevailed.”

Leandro Silva, the head of environment at the Defensoría del Pueblo de la Nación – Argentina’s ombudsperson’s office – pointed out to Tierramérica that in 2010 his office warned the municipalities of Zárate, Campana, Escobar, Tigre and San Fernando about the risks posed by the expansion of gated communities in the ecosystem of the Paraná river delta, and urged them to respect environmental impact studies and to impose strict controls.

“The recurrent flooding and the impact on the most vulnerable segments of society make it necessary to reinforce these mechanisms and proactively exercise prevention, implementing in the watersheds all of the environmental management instruments required by our legislation: environmental impact assessments, citizen participation, environmental zoning and access to public information,” he said.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The main street of Añelo, a remote town in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region which is set to become the country’s shale oil capital. In 15 years the population will have climbed to 25,000, 10 times what it was just two years ago. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
AÑELO, Argentina, Oct 23 2014 (IPS)

This small town in southern Argentina is nearly a century old, but the unconventional fossil fuel boom is forcing it to basically start over, from scratch. The wave of outsiders drawn by the shale fuel fever has pushed the town to its limits, while the plan to turn it into a “sustainable city of the future” is still only on paper.

The motto of this small town in the province of Neuquén is upbeat and premonitory: “The future found its place.”

But for now the town’s roads, most of which are unpaved and throw up clouds of dust from the heavy traffic of trucks and luxury cars driven by oil company executives, contradict that slogan.

“Many eyes around the world are on Añelo, but unfortunately we don’t have a good showcase, to put us on display,” the director of the town’s health centre, Rubén Bautista, told IPS.

“We are living on top of black gold, they take riches out of our soil, but they leave practically nothing to the local population,” added the doctor who, along with three other colleagues, covers the health needs of a population that doubled, from 2,500 to 5,000, in just two years.According to conservative projections, Añelo will have a population of 25,000 in 15 years, including people directly employed by the oil industry, indirect workers, and their families, who have begun to pour into the new mecca for Argentina’s energy self-sufficiency plans.

Añelo, a bleak town on the banks of the Neuquén river surrounded by fruit trees, goats and vineyards, is the town closest to the Loma Campana shale oil field, which is being worked by Argentina’s state oil company YPF and the U.S.-based Chevron.

It is only eight km from the oil field, which is part of new riches that hold out the biggest promise for revenue to fuel the country’s development: Vaca Muerta, a 30,000-sq km geological reserve that is rich in shale oil and gas and has made this country the second in the world after the United States in production of unconventional fossil fuels.

But the black gold is not shining yet in Añelo – which means forgotten place in the Mapuche indigenous language – located some 100 km north of Neuquén, the provincial capital.

The health centre, which refers serious cases to hospitals in the provincial capital, has just two ambulances, while 117 companies from across the planet are setting up shop in and around the town.

According to conservative projections, Añelo will have a population of 25,000 in 15 years, including people directly employed by the oil industry, indirect workers, and their families, who have begun to pour into the new mecca for Argentina’s energy self-sufficiency plans.

“They are people who come to Añelo with the idea of finding a better future…thinking about what unconventional fossil fuels could mean in their lives,” YPF Neuquén’s communications manager, Federico Calífano, told IPS.

YPF alone has 720 employees in the area. The workers come from nearby towns as well as other provinces, and from abroad, brought in by international companies in the construction, chemistry, hotel, transportation and services industries.

The town’s only hotel is full, and camps spring up on any flat area, with containers turned into comfortable temporary lodgings for the workers. Rent for a small apartment is five times what people pay in the most expensive neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires.

“We are building a city from scratch,” Añelo Mayor Darío Díaz told IPS, although he pointed out that even before the shale boom the town was “a strategic waypoint.”

YPF has been exploiting unconventional fossil fuels in the region since the 1980s, but “when their work was done they would leave,” Díaz explained. “This is much more intensive; there will be a lot of work over the next 30 years.”

“The town has infrastructure for around 2,500 inhabitants. It is too small now given the new demand for basic services like water, electricity, roads, and dust emission,” the province’s environment secretary, Ricardo Esquivel, told IPS.

The sound of hammering and pounding is constant. Two workers, who make the 120-km commute back and forth every day from Cipolletti, in the neighbouring province of Río Negro, are working on a new sidewalk. “It’s spectacular.There’s a lot of work here for everyone. More people are needed. The problem is housing,” construction worker Esteban Aries told IPS.

The YPF Foundation carried out an “urban footprint” study which gave rise to the Añelo Local Development Plan. The plan has the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and its Emerging Sustainable Cities Initiative.

Carried out together with the local and provincial governments, the plan outlines different growth scenarios with the aim of assessing the risks and vulnerabilities of the area.

It addresses, among other aspects, “what surface area the city should have, how the urban planning process should start, what the diagram should look like, what services are needed – what Añelo is going to need today and in two, three, or five years,” Calífano said.

YPF reported that the work had already begun, including an expansion of the sanitation system, construction of homes for doctors, and a vocational training centre, linked to the needs of the oil industry. Primary healthcare clinics were set up in two trailer trucks – although Dr. Bautista said that’s not enough.

The economic growth has brought heavy traffic. The government is planning a two-lane highway to Vaca Muerta, on the so-called “oil route”, to keep the trucks out of the town.

“The steadily growing number of accidents is overwhelming,” Bautista said. The average has increased from 10 traffic and work-related accidents a month two years ago to 17 today.

“You have to keep in mind that most of the activity has been going on for a year,” said Pablo Bizzotto, YPF’s regional manager of unconventional fuels in Loma Campana, where some 20 wells are drilled every month, which has driven production up from 3,000 to 21,000 barrels per day of oil.

“There are things that we will obviously work out together with the authorities, as we go. This is all very new,” he said.

Agricultural engineer Eduardo Tomada left everything behind in Buenos Aires and invested his savings to open up a restaurant in Añelo, which is now packed with workers.

His cook, local resident Norma Olate, said she was happy because she’s earning more. But she nostalgically remembers when her town was “practically a sand dune.”

Development has brought work, “but also bad things,” the 60-year-old Olate told IPS. “There have been armed robberies, which we didn’t see here before.”

Olate, who has young, single daughters, said she is also worried about “the invasion of men.”

“So many men!” she said, laughing. “I’m not interested anymore, but the girls…there are guys who come and deceive them, a lot of them end up pregnant….that’s bad for the town too.”

Provincial lawmaker Raúl Dobrusín of the opposition Popular Unity party denounced the rise in prostitution, drug trafficking and use, alcoholism and corruption.

“We say the only things modernised in Añelo were the casino and the brothel,” he said ironically.

Dobrusín complained about the government’s lack of “planning” and “control” over these and other problems, such as real estate speculation and prices that are now unaffordable for many people in the town.

Nevertheless, for Mayor Díaz the balance is positive. “We have to take advantage of this opportunity for Añelo to develop as a town and improve the living standards of our people. What worries me is whether we will make the necessary investments quickly enough,” he said.

The province is preparing a “strategic development plan” for Añelo, along with nearby “oil micro-cities”, which will include the construction of an industrial park, schools, hospitals, roads and housing, and increased security.

“We’re not going to build an oil camp in Añelo without a city,” the mayor summed up.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Protesters gather in Taksim Square in Istanbul, not far from Gezi Park, where protests were sparked last week against the government's most recent urban redevelopment project. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ISTANBUL, Jun 6 2013 (IPS)

Few imagined that the symbolic act of standing in front of bulldozers in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in an effort to block a development project near the city’s central square would have caused the reaction it did.

The defiant act – and the Turkish police’s violent response – pushed thousands of Turks out into streets across the country over the last week to decry their government’s increasingly authoritarian controls, lack of public accountability, police violence and numerous urban development projects that are irreversibly changing the face of the country.

For many, the plans to uproot trees in Gezi Park are just the latest in a long string of urban projects that ignore the cultural and historic heritage of Istanbul. More over, these projects are built at the expense of the poor and fail to consider residents’ input.

“The poorer people are being driven out of the centre of the city and pushed to the edges,” explained Kevin Robins, an Istanbul-based urban planning researcher. “On the other hand, [there is] the taking over of more and more inner-city areas for the young, affluent middle-class.”

“The mixture…of classes that existed in Istanbul is now being eroded quite dramatically,” Robins told IPS, describing the phenomenon as “polarisation”."The mixture...of classes that existed in Istanbul is now being eroded quite dramatically."
-- Kevin Robins

“There’s a general feeling that there’s an attack on the way of life,” he added.

According to a report last year in The Guardian, redevelopment projects are slated for some 50 neighbourhoods in Istanbul, and in 2012 alone, 7.5 billion Turkish liras were allocated to urban renewal across the city.

Last week, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister and head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), unveiled his controversial plan to build a third bridge – a 1,275-metre suspension bridge, with an expected price tag of six billion dollars – across the Bosphorus, linking the European and Asian sides of Istanbul.

Opponents to the plan say the bridge will destroy some of the only remaining green areas in the city and have condemned the government’s lack of consultation with local community groups.

Erdogan has also pushed for building a shipping canal across the Bosphorus, calling it “a project of such immense size that it can’t be compared to the Panama or Suez canals”. In May, the government signed a contract to develop a third airport in Istanbul, with a capacity of 150 million passengers.

In recent years, residents of many Istanbul neighbourhoods, especially those home to impoverished, minority groups, like the Tarlabaşı or Sulukule areas, have also been pushed out to make way for real estate developers and luxury housing projects.

So-called gecekondu neighbourhoods – unlicensed shantytowns established decades ago by migrants from eastern Anatolia who moved to Istanbul for work opportunities – are particularly vulnerable to being displaced for the sake of development, with the government and its agencies not only confiscating land but also evicting and sometimes relocating residents to the city’s outskirts.

According to political scientist Mine Eder, the rapid pace at which the Turkish government has launched these urban redevelopment projects is what sets gentrification in Turkey apart from other developing countries around the world.

“There’s a deliberate demolishing to create more money, and really, to create this exclusionary zone for the rich. There is a whole re-appropriation, re-definition, and privatisation of the public space,” explained Eder, who teaches at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University and specialises in the impact of gentrification on minority groups in Istanbul.

“[Erdogan’s] vision is driven by this sort of obsession with tourism and Istanbul becoming this big, giant, commercial centre,” Eder told IPS. “That vision is behind that unquestionable bulldozer construction. ‘Bulldozer neo-liberalism’ is a term that sort of encapsulates the whole thing.”

Nor is the government’s aggressive push for urban development projects limited to Istanbul.

On the road leading from the airport to Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, tall apartment blocks are being erected on numerous hilltops, construction cranes pepper the skyline, and huge billboards, sponsored by the government’s housing authority, TOKI, aim to entice potential homeowners.

“It’s happening everywhere. You see quite dramatic changes going on in Anatolian cities now, making them unrecognisable. Istanbul is clearly the dominant focus, but Ankara also has huge expansions, huge developments, and huge middle-class housing areas,” Robins said.

By 2023, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish republic, Turkey hopes to be among the top ten economies of the world and reach a gross domestic product (GDP) of two trillion dollars and 500 billion dollars in exports annually.

According to Eder, the protests in Gezi Park signal a historic moment in the reign of the current AKP government, forming the strongest and most unified opposition movement in recent years to these unsustainable economic and urban development projects.

“Until now, there was absolutely no one who could actually sit, metaphorically, in front of that bulldozer, and say you can’t go in here,” she said. “Now, they’ve done it.”

Greater integration of public passenger transport is a major challenge facing the next government of the Mexican capital, one of the most traffic-congested cities in the world, if it wants to guarantee people the right to mobility.

The authorities of the Mexico City Federal District have invested billions in collective transport, but have failed to create a balanced, multi-modal transportation system.

“Part of integration is physical – making it much easier to move from one system to another,” said Bernardo Baranda, the director for Latin America of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

“It also has to do with the design of stations, and improving the integration of multimodal transport,” Baranda, whose office is based in Mexico City, told IPS.

ITDP, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that provides technical assistance to cities on sustainable transportation development throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas, advises the Mexico City government.

The Metrobus system carries 800,000 passengers a day in Mexico City. Mariana Gil/ EMBARQ Brasil/CC BY 2.0

In the metropolitan area of Mexico City, made up of the Federal District and several municipalities in the surrounding Mexico state, there are 49 million daily trips, of which 53 percent are carried out on public transport and 17 percent in private vehicles, according to the Centre for Sustainable Transport for Mexico City (CTS-Mexico).

The transport system in this area of over 20 million people is made up of buses, minibuses, the Metro Collective Transport System and the Metrobus, which are often disconnected from each other. They transport 14.8 million people a day.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), in office since 1997, will be succeeded on Dec. 5 by his PRD colleague Miguel Mancera.

The metro system, with a network of 11 lines totalling 201 kilometres, moves five million passengers a day, a number only surpassed by the 6.8 million people who travel in private cars, according to figures from the road and transport secretariat.
The Metrobus, with four routes and a total of 95 kilometres, transports some 800,000 passengers a day.

Among the main factors contributing to the lack of integration in the expanding public transport system is the proliferation of shanty towns on the outskirts of Mexico City, according to experts, who are offering the next city administration different formulas for creating a more humanised mass transit system.

“A major concern is the lack of public policies for controlled urban development,” Daniel Zamudio, an expert with El Poder Ciudadano (Citizen Power), told IPS.

“Continual housing development means journeys are getting longer and longer, less safe and more costly,” said Zamudio, the public transport coordinator for the NGO.

In its comprehensive transport and mobility programme for 2007-2012, the government of the capital promised to create 10 routes for Metrobus and a bus rapid transit (BRT) system with pre-paid cards, exclusive lanes and articulated vehicles.

But only four Metrobus routes were built, and the authorities opted instead to build the 12th line of the metro, 24 kilometres long, at a cost of two billion dollars, to link the west and east sides of Mexico City. It is about to be inaugurated.

Ebrard also chose to build new stretches of elevated highway, which promote the use of private cars, according to critics of this move.

Total public and private investment in transport infrastructure has amounted to 4.7 billion dollars over Ebrard’s six-year term.

Even so, some of the plans for 2007-2012 remain pending for the Mancera administration to complete.

“We must ask the incoming government to be more aggressive in expanding Metrobus and improving current operations. The priority has got to be quality public transport. Work must begin in the most underprivileged areas, like the east of the city,” Baranda said.

On Tuesday Oct. 23, ITDP presented a plan titled “Perspectivas de crecimiento de la red de Metrobus y transporte integrado del Distrito Federal a 2018” (Prospects for growth in the Metrobus network and integrated transport in the Federal District to 2018), which proposes annual growth in the system of between 25 and 30 kilometres and the addition of 10 new routes by 2018, benefiting two million additional passengers.

The report estimates an annual investment of 117 million dollars. In 2013 a network linking the east and south of the capital could be built, a project that the city government has already planned.

The 10 new routes would save 290,000 hours a day in commuting time; signify a reduction in emissions of 11,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming; and reduce traffic accidents by 30 percent.

“It is necessary to create additional routes that feed into the Metrobus system, so that more people will start using mass public transport. Furthermore, bus stops and metro stations must be restructured to make them accessible and promote the right to mobility,” Zamudio said.

Since Oct. 17, commuters have been able to purchase the Federal District card and use it to ride both the metro and Metrobus. In future, it will also be possible to use the card to pay for bus transport, taxis and parking meters, as well as to rent bicycles.

Mancera has already been given the “Acuerdos para la Movilidad” (Agreements on Mobility) drawn up by “Citizens with a Vision,” made up of six civil society organisations that suggest expanding, modernising and integrating a quality public transport network.

They also point out the need to consolidate a legal and institutional framework for better public transport.

In terms of mobility, the group recommends articulating urban development and mobility policies; moving towards a more compact and orderly city; and achieving efficient and sustainable public investment in transport.

The measures proposed by ITDP would improve public spaces and passenger safety, reduce transit times, expand coverage by the mass transport network, decongest saturated transport corridors and improve the connectivity of the network.

“Mobility problems are solved by prioritising public transport. A good transport system serves the needs of the people,” Baranda said.

Karachi is prone to floods. Credit: Muhammad Arshad/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Sep 6 2012 (IPS)

Climate proofing this bustling port city is a daunting task for planners who must consider factors ranging from proneness to flooding and administrative malaise to the fact that 60 percent of its 18 million people live in slums.

The Economist Intelligence Unit in its latest global survey of living conditions released in August rated Karachi as the seventh least liveable city, placing it 134th in the world out of a list of 140 countries.

Farhan Anwar, an engineer and urban planner, argues that the recently notified Climate Change Policy for Pakistan directs attention mostly to agriculture, forestry and water resources and glosses over the special needs of urban settlements.

Anwar, lead author of the report, ‘Karachi city climate change adaptation strategy: A roadmap’, published in April, warns that if urgent action is not taken Karachi may turn into a cauldron of “social and ethnic tensions”.

Anwar believes that climate change preparedness for Karachi starts with an understanding of its political economy, its vulnerable and threatened communities, assets and biodiversity. This would require a detailed and comprehensive mapping of land use and ownership, utilities, transport networks and constructions.

“Unresolved political conflicts and turf battles over control of city assets and services that lead to, among other things, fragmentation and decay in terms of legitimacy, credibility and functional effectiveness of the critical institutions of governance such as city government, land control agencies, civic utilities” are some of the ills that have befallen Karachi, Anwar tells IPS.

Although the city’s management infrastructure is teetering and its over-stretched civic services are at breaking point, Karachi accounts for 95 percent of Pakistan’s foreign trade and contributes to 30 percent of the national industrial production.

Karachi, the report said, is prone to flooding, thanks to overflowing rivers, rainwater and choked sewers. Except for a 12-mile embankment along Malir river, most of the city remains defenceless against inundation.

According to an Asian Development Bank report, ‘Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific’, released in March, Karachi is at high risk from sea-level rise, prolonged cyclonic activity, and salt-water intrusion.

In 1977, severe floods occurred in the flood plains of the Malir and Lyari rivers, resulting in 267 deaths with more than 30,000 people made homeless and 100,000 temporarily dislocated, according to Karachi Development Authority records.

Despite the known dangers, no effective policy exists to prevent settlements in the riverbeds and encroachments on drainage channels, and already this is adversely impacting flood prevention and management.

It is not just the poor and vulnerable squatting in flood prone zones and Karachi’s fishing communities that suffer. “Sensitive national installations are exposed to tidal flooding,” Anwar’s report said.

There is no provision to store the flood waters and no effort has been made to promote water conservation, waste-water recycling or rainwater harvesting practices, the report says.

Karachi also has no effective policy in place to deal with disasters and there are critical gaps and shortcomings in emergency response systems such as trauma facilities, fire services, law and order, evacuation plans and facilities.

Anwar says city planners and managers must have a “focused plan” within the context of a ‘climate change adaptation strategy’ that can act as a planning framework.

“However,” he tells IPS, “in the long run, climate change related policies and plans” would have to be embedded within the internal working of relevant institutions to give sustainability to the process.

Part of the problem why this sprawling urban metropolis has such poor governance is because of highly decentralised administration when it comes to control over land and provision of services.

Karachi’s squatters not only live on land they do not own but also steal water from the mainline through suction pumps run on power tapped illegally while the city police looks the other way.

At the upper end of the social strata, the affluent of Karachi have found a way around collapsing urban infrastructure by paying extra for water, electricity and security.

With just seven percent of vegetation cover; factories and vehicles spewing thick, black smoke; heaps of unmanaged garbage piling up and rivers turning into sewage disposal channels, Karachi is rapidly turning sick.

“In order to borrow from the Asian Development Bank, our city planners build, neglect and rebuild,” said Arif Pervaiz, a Karachi-based environmental specialist who has worked extensively on climate change. “They try to fix management problems through brick and mortar solutions.”

“For example, to address traffic congestion,” said Pervaiz, “flyovers and underpasses are built, but what is not considered is the broader traffic management issue.”

“I think one major unified authority that coordinates the running of the city is imperative,” said Pervaiz, who finds Anwar’s report a timely reminder to policy makers of the urgent need to implement climate change adaptation plans.

“It’s frustrating. Residents of Karachi do not know which government department to approach for redressal of civic problems in their area,” he said. “Sometimes, even officials in a particular department do not know where its jurisdiction begins and ends.”

While terming Anwar’s report “hugely important,” Ali Tauqir Sheikh, Climate Development and Knowledge Network’s Asia director, told IPS that it fails to “build upon the Karachi city government’s capacity and experience.”

“I am also not sure about the usability and benefit of the report unless the city government’s institutions and other stakeholders are consulted,” commented Sheikh who heads Leadership for Environment and Development, a prominent non-government organisation in Pakistan.

Residents of the Paga Hill Settlement in Port Moresby are living under tarpaulin shelters following an attempted eviction on May 12, 2012. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT MORESBY, Jun 4 2012 (IPS)

Informal settlers on prime land in Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, are now living under tarpaulin shelters amid the debris of their homes after two attempted evictions to make way for a luxury waterfront development. Undefeated, residents are now preparing a court case to challenge the legality of a lease issued to a commercial developer on land designated as a National Park.

Paga Hill overlooks Moresby Harbour in the central business district of Port Moresby, a city of 450,000 people on the south coast of Papua New Guinea.  The hill features bush land, historic Second World War relics and an informal settlement of 3000 people, comprising four generations of rural migrants.  Most of the settlers migrated from the Gulf Province in search of work in the early twentieth century.

Informal settlements have grown in the capital as urbanisation has placed stress on the city’s housing and service infrastructure. The nation’s urban population, an estimated 12.6 percent of the total population, is predicted to rise to 35 percent, or 3.5 million people, by 2030.

Fifty-four percent of settlers on Paga Hill are formally employed, but their only residential option is a settlement because of limited land availability, low incomes and the absence of affordable housing.  According to the United Nations Economic and Social Committee for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), throughout urban centres of the South Pacific “the formal housing market caters to upper income groups because of the cost and access to long term loans.  Those without access to affordable housing are left to their own initiative.”

In 1987, 13.1 hectares on Paga Hill were classified as a National Park for future generations.  Ten years later, the Department of Lands and Physical Planning granted an Urban Development Lease over this state land to the Paga Hill Land Holding Company, and, in 2000, granted a Business Lease to Paga Hill Development Company (PHDC), a foreign and domestic business venture.

After fifteen years, during which no development occurred on Paga Hill, the settlement was notified of impending eviction this year. The chief community leader of the settlement unilaterally accepted monetary payment from the company and signed an agreement giving his consent without consulting the community and those who were preparing a challenge to the eviction.

Joe Avapura Moses, of Paga Hill Heritage Association, claims he subsequently notified PHDC that he was appointing a lawyer to respond to relocation plans the company had proposed, but discussions ceased when a first eviction was attempted in April.

A contingent of over 150 armed police then arrived on May 12 with earth moving equipment.

A spokesperson for the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary said the police received a court order requesting their assistance in the eviction exercise and claiming the settlement had been given adequate notice.

“Policemen with guns demanded residents pull their houses down,” said Moses. “They drove a backhoe straight at my house to demolish it while my two children were underneath the house worshipping.”

Moses and his family lost their home and possessions.  Within four hours a total of 20 dwellings had been destroyed leaving over 120 homeless families.

Police stopped the demolition when lawyers representing the settlers arrived with a court stay order on humanitarian grounds. A Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary spokesperson said he believed police had behaved appropriately under difficult circumstances.

The Paga Hill Development Company could not be contacted for comment.

The Red Cross responded to the humanitarian crisis by pledging tents, mosquito nets, blankets, water tanks and first aid supplies.

Member of Parliament for Moresby South, Dame Carol Kidu, who visited the eviction scene, said the human rights of the settlers and the legality of the development lease held by PHDC had to be addressed.

According to a Public Accounts Committee Report to Parliament in 2009 following an Inquiry into the Department of Lands and Physical Planning, “The (Paga Hill) land was a gazetted National Park and could not be granted away to private hands. How the land came to be given to private speculators is a good illustration of the failings and corrupt conduct of the Department of Lands and Physical Planning.” It is believed the land became vulnerable to speculators following the disbanding of the National Parks Board in 1995.

The land was later rezoned as ‘part commercial’ in 2000, but there is insufficient documentary evidence of how and why this was done.

The Inquiry reported the company did not comply with conditions of the development lease, which included providing improvements on the land to the value of 300 million kina (about 142 million dollars) during the first five years, and failed to pay the correct land rental.

Kidu is also concerned there are no detailed development plans for public scrutiny, nor is there available evidence of the funds to be provided by the foreign investor.

The company, whose website promotes a development comprising exclusive residential apartments, marina, waterfront restaurants, retail outlets and a hotel resort, claimed in a recent media release that “Investigations by both the Ombudsman Commission and Public Accounts Committee have found no wrongdoing on the part of PHDC or the associated government entities in issuing the leases over the site.”

In Papua New Guinea, land grabbing, or controversial acquisitions of large areas of land in developing countries by foreign and domestic corporate interests, has been mainly associated with agricultural and forested land.  Research by the Australian National University reveals that between July 2003 and January 2011 almost 11 percent of PNG’s total land area has passed into the hands of national and foreign corporate entities through leasing schemes.

But the phenomenon is also occurring in urban areas.  This year, the Motu-Koitabu Association, which represents traditional landowners in and around Port Moresby, called on the government to implement a moratorium on applications for freehold title, special agriculture and business leases until allegations of illegal land grabs had been investigated.

Meanwhile at Paga Hill, settlers are preparing a court appeal against their eviction on human rights grounds and a legal challenge to the land acquisition by PHDC.

“It must be stated in a court room that this is a fraudulent title,” Kidu declared. Nevertheless, in the long term, she said the settlement will have to move.

“They (Paga Hill settlers) are marked for relocation, as are other settlements, even ones that are legal, but it has to be done properly. It is essential to plan new communities with areas for gardens, community facilities, clean water, sanitation and electricity.”

(END)