Showing posts from category land.
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A Return to Rural Unrest in Nepal?
›July 27, 2010 // By Russell SticklorIn the four years since the end of Nepal’s civil war, political progress in creating a multi-party unity government in Kathmandu has moved in fits and starts. While the effort to bring the Maoists into the fold has made some headway since 2006, continuing environmental and economic troubles in the Nepalese countryside threaten to undermine these tentative steps.
In recent months, a new threat to political stability has emerged: the Sapta Kosi Multipurpose Project, a massive, India-backed hydropower scheme in eastern Nepal currently in the early stages of development. Once operational, the controversial dam—slated to reach a height of nearly 270 meters, making it one of the tallest dams in the world—is projected to generate 3,300 megawatts of electricity.
A proposed barrage and series of canals round out the project, enabling new irrigation and flood-control infrastructure in both eastern Nepal and the Indian state of Bihar, immediately to the south. But the potential environmental impacts of the mega-project have already sparked significant backlash among some Maoist-linked ethnic groups in the region, where the reach and influence of Nepal’s fledgling unity government is tenuous at best.
“Strong” Protests Threatened Over India-Backed Mega-Dam
In June, a network of 15 groups sympathetic to the Nepalese government’s Maoist wing warned of “strong” protests if survey work on the dam continued and “the voice of the indigenous people was not heard.” A memo released by the group dismissed the Sapta Kosi project as “anti-people.”
Specific criticisms of the project have ranged from safety concerns (the dam would be built in a seismically active region) to population displacement. Maoist leaders in the region have alleged that many villages—as well as important local religious sites and valuable agricultural land—could be flooded if the project goes forward. Other Maoists say the project should be delayed until Nepal is reorganized as a federal republic, at which point the states directly impacted by Sapta Kosi could be given greater control over the project.
Meanwhile, some objections to the project have targeted Nepal’s partnership with India. According to ShanghaiNews.net, members of the Maoist opposition have insinuated that hydropower from Sapta Kosi will not be consumed domestically, but rather exported to meet the needs of energy-hungry India.
A number of prominent Nepalese and Indian environmental activists have also spoken against the project, including Medha Patkar, a well-known activist who has played a major role in many past Indian anti-dam protests. Patkar warns the project will not mitigate but instead worsen seasonal flooding, calling plans for the joint India-Nepalese dam project “inauspicious from [an] environmental, cultural and religious point of view,” according to the Water & Energy Users’ Federation-Nepal.
As Nepal Pledges Security for Dam Project, India Pushes Forward
In the past, threats against the Sapta Kosi project have caused surveillance work in the area to be suspended repeatedly. But after the latest round of warnings, the Nepalese government adopted a different tactic, pledging heightened security in the region to ensure the safety of Indian officials doing fieldwork.
In doing so, Nepal’s coalition government is throwing its limited weight around, and—to a degree—staking its reputation on its ability to prevent an outbreak of violence. Historically, Nepal’s government has been largely bypassed or ignored in matters of hydroelectric development. As Nepal Water Conservation Foundation Director Dipak Gyawali told International Rivers in a June 2010 interview:The main players are private investors, with state entities and civil society unable to stand up to them….In Nepal, we just saw local politicians burn down the office of an international hydropower company even after the project was sanctioned by their leaders in the central government.
Gyawali added that during the Nepalese civil war (1996-2006), private developers were able to build “small hydropower projects even while a Maoist insurgency was raging because they did not ride roughshod over local concerns.” Regarding Sapta Kosi, Gyawali said the government should adopt a similar approach, and “start listening to the marginalized voices.” Otherwise, he warned, the Indian-Nepalese team spearheading the project “will be faced with delays, impasse, and intractable political problems,” including the potential for Maoist violence in the region. (As noted earlier this month in New Security Beat, the Indian government has also struggled with Maoist-linked violence in recent years, as New Delhi struggles to pacify a Naxalite insurgency in eastern and central India.)
Rural Nepal’s Troubles Far Bigger Than Sapta Kosi
Maoists may be wielding Sapta Kosi as a weapon to gain political leverage both in the countryside and Kathmandu, but the proposed dam is far from the only environmental issue impacting rural lives and threatening to undermine support for the central government.
In a country where firewood still accounts for 87 percent of annual domestic energy production, deforestation has been hugely problematic across rural Nepal. As of 2010, less than 30 percent of the country’s original forest-cover now remains. The rapid removal of forest cover has reduced soil quality, exacerbated seasonal flooding, and caused degraded water quality due to high sedimentation levels.
Further, as the country’s population grows at an annual rate of 2 percent, low soil productivity and unsustainable farming practices have turned Nepal’s effort to feed itself into a constant uphill struggle. According to the World Bank, the country sports one of the world’s highest ratios of population to available arable land, paving the way for potential further food shortages.
Sustainable energy development in Nepal perhaps represents one way of slowly restoring environmental health to the country. By investing in a more reliable national power grid, the central government could reduce rural dependence on firewood for fuel, allowing the country’s forests, soil, and waters to recover even as population increases. Further, hydroelectric projects like Sapta Kosi—implemented with greater involvement from local communities—could play an important role in moving the country forward. With an estimated untapped hydroelectric potential of 43,000 megawatts, Nepal could not only meet its own energy needs by developing its waterways, but profit from hydroelectric energy exports as well.
On the other hand, the Nepalese government could—at its own peril—continue to overlook rural populations’ grievances, and the environmental degradation unfolding outside Kathmandu. If left unchecked, however, these conditions could once again make the Maoist insurgency an appealing movement, potentially reviving grassroots support for anti-government extremism.
Sources: CIA, eKantipur.com (Nepal), International Rivers, Kathmandu Post, NepalNews.com, New York Times, ShanghaiNews.net, South Asia News Agency, Taragana.com, Thaindian News, Times of India, U.S. Energy Information Administration, WaterAid, Water & Energy Users Federation-Nepal, World Bank, World Wildlife Fund.
Photo Credit: “Neither in Nepal Nor India,” courtesy of Flickr user bodhithaj. -
India’s Maoists: South Asia’s “Other” Insurgency
›July 7, 2010 // By Schuyler Null
The Indian government’s battle with Maoist and tribal rebels – which affects 22 of India’s 35 states and territories, according to Foreign Policy and in 2009 killed more people than any year since 1971 – has been largely ignored in the West. That should change, as South Asia’s “other” insurgency, fomenting in the world’s largest democracy and a key U.S. partner, offers valuable lessons about the role of resource management and stable development in preventing conflict.
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Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
›The European Union’s biofuel goal for 2020 “is a good example of setting a target…without really thinking through [the] secondary, third, or fourth order consequences,” said Alexander Carius, co-founder and managing director of Adelphi Research and Adelphi Consult. While the 2007-2008 global food crisis demonstrated that the growth of crops for fuels has “tremendous effects” in the developing world, analysis of these threats are underdeveloped and are not incorporated into climate change policies, he said. [Video Below]
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Urbanization, Climate Change, and Indigenous Populations: Finding USAID’s Comparative Advantage
›May 26, 2010 // By Kayly Ober“Part of the outflow of migrants from rural areas of many Latin American countries has settled in remote rural areas, pushing the agricultural frontier further into the forest,” writes David López-Carr in a recent article in Population & Environment, “The population, agriculture, and environment nexus in Latin America.” In a May 4 presentation at the LAC Economic Growth and Environment Strategic Planning Workshop in Panama City, Panama, he discussed how to integrate family planning and environmental services in rural Latin America.
Latin America is one of the most highly urbanized continents in the world, with an average of 75 percent of the population living in cities. However, “there are two Latin Americas,” said López-Carr at the workshop, which was sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and Brazil Institute, as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development. Largely developed countries like Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay are close to 90 percent urbanized, while Guatemala, Ecuador, and Bolivia are about 50 percent. In less urbanized countries, rural-rural migrants in search of agricultural land remain a major driving force behind forest conversion, he said.
Between 1961 and 2001, Central America’s rural population increased by 59 percent, said Lopez-Carr. The increasing density of the rural population had a negative impact on forest reserves: a 15 percent increase in deforestation totaling some 13 million hectares.
“Rural areas of Latin America still have high fertility rates but (unlike much of rural Africa, for example) also have a high unmet demand for contraception, meaning that improved contraceptive availability would likely result in a rapid and cost-effective means to reduce population pressures in priority conservation areas,” he said. Additionally, remote rural areas with high population growth rates tend to be associated with indigenous populations located in close proximity to protected forests.
For example, in Guatemala, communities surrounding Sierra de Lacandon National Park have, since 1990, grown by 10 percent each year, with birthrates averaging eight children per woman. Larger communities and larger households have led to agricultural expansion, which infringes on the park and accelerates deforestation in one of the most biologically diverse biospheres in the world, said López-Carr.
Based on these demographic and environmental trends, López-Carr suggested USAID’s work in the region should focus on rural maternal and child health, and education – especially for girls. Not only does USAID already invest in such programs, but they only cost pennies per capita and could reduce the number of rural poor living in Latin American cities by tens of millions.
Given the strong links between population density and deforestation in Latin America, expanding access to family planning would also be a smart investment in forest conservation and climate mitigation, López-Carr concluded.
Source: Population Reference Bureau.
Photo Credit: Dave Hawxhurst, Woodrow Wilson Center. -
Challenges Found in ‘The Places We Live’
›May 18, 2010 // By Julien KatchinoffThe work of photographer Jonas Bendicksen provided the inspiration for a research paper competition organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project, the Cities Alliance, the International Housing Coalition, USAID, and the World Bank. At “The Places We Live: Slums and Urban Poverty in the Developing World,” four of the winning papers (out of 200 entries) were critiqued by urbanization policy experts. The authors focused on critical issues facing the world’s rapidly urbanizing centers, including service delivery, the challenge of political cleavages, redevelopment mechanisms, sanitation, and citizen participation in urban development.
The competition was established to “tap into the academic community and encourage … a younger generation of academics…to think about the challenges of rapid urbanization and the needs of slum dwellers and what we can do about it,” said USAID’s Jessica Tulodo. “It is the central issue that we are going to be grappling with for the coming decades and beyond. How do we not just address the challenges, but harness the opportunities of urban growth and how do we ensure that the larger population of urban poor can benefit and participate?”
“This is an effort to rekindle a stronger debate between the academic community and policymakers. I think that’s desperately absent, particularly in this field,” said Christopher Williams, the U.S. Representative of UN-HABITAT.
All Politics Are Local: Urban Services in Zambia
In her case study of the shanty compounds on the periphery of Lusaka, Zambia, Danielle Resnick investigates how the ruling government — through “development initiatives” — suppresses political opposition and controls weaker economic and political factions. The difficult relationship between local service delivery and inter-party politics is endemic in many African countries, where local municipalities are often run by opposition parties.
Christopher Williams, in his review, praised Resnick’s work for capturing the intricacies and complexity of rapid urbanization in Zambia and beyond, noting that it offered a “scathing” critique of direct budget assistance by foreign donors.
“Land Sharing”: A New Approach for Slums in Southeast Asia
Paul Rabe’s “Land Sharing in Phnom Penh and Bangkok: Lessons From Four Decades of Innovative Slum Redevelopment Projects in Two Southeast Asian ‘Boom Towns'” examines the emerging issue of land conflict in redeveloping urban areas and innovative solutions such as land sharing. Sometimes called a “win-win-win,” land sharing through multi-use agreements based on maximized utility can help to mediate the needs of slum dwellers, private developers, and municipal governments.
Rabe found that land sharing has several limitations, including programmatic delays, muted benefits for stakeholders, and limited deployments. “In retrospect,” he said, “the institutional setting [for land sharing] is not mature enough to accommodate a fairly complex redevelopment procedure.”
If donors and civil society groups are willing to brave a complex and highly politicized environment, land sharing may be an innovative option for those looking to quell redevelopment conflict. Robin Rajack of the World Bank said it was critical for the future sustainability of growing urbanization, as improving the ability of the urban poor to navigate difficult land tenure changes may foster urban economic growth.
Maintaining Sanitation, Building Community in India
In “Desired Outcomes, Unexpected Processes: Two Stories of Sanitation Maintenance in Erode Tenements, India,” Sai Balakrishnan asks why, “within the same municipality, are residents of some tenements more willing to contribute towards septic tank maintenance than others?” Her analysis of two communities in the state of Tamil Nadu in Southern India finds that asset ownership, embedded and accessible politicians, and political patronage did not improve maintenance of sanitation infrastructure. Instead, the critical factors were the spatial proximity of infrastructure, bundling of water and sanitation services, and “street-level bureaucrats.”
Reviewer Bob Buckley of the Rockefeller Foundation asked if future research could incorporate empirical data on the costs of sanitation problems for communities, “beyond the visuals,” which could provide a deeper understanding of the difficulty of delivering services in urban slums.
Gaming Community Participation in Argentina
Josh Lerner’s “What Games Can Teach Us about Community Participation: Participatory Urban Development in Rosario’s Villas” reveals the results of his six months of fieldwork in the slums of Rosario, Argentina. Although urban redevelopment can produce conflict–especially when combined with vast inequities in economic and political power–Lerner found that taking a game theory approach to difficult land-use decisions helped to “enhance the quality of community participation, by making it more attractive, active, and effective, and making decisions fairer and more transparent.”
William Corbett of Cities Alliance warned that if developing countries cannot effectively deal with the chaotic informality of land tenure and urban development, “gangs with guns will do it for you”– particularly when urban change and resource or land scarcity provokes competition for limited resources.
Photo Credits: “Christopher Williams, Danielle Resnick; Moynahan Boardroom” courtesy of David Hawxhurst.
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As Somalia Sinks, Neighbors Face a Fight to Stay Afloat
›May 14, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe week before the international Istanbul conference on aid to Somalia, the UN’s embattled envoy to the country, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, warned the Security Council that if the global community “did not take the right action in Somalia now, the situation will, sooner or later, force us to act and at a much higher price.”
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) also issued strong warnings this week. Deputy High Commissioner Alexander Aleinikoff said in Geneva, “The displacement crisis is worsening with the deterioration of the situation inside Somalia and we need to prepare fast for new and possibly large-scale displacement.”
But the danger is not limited to Somalia. The war-torn country’s cascading set of problems – criminal, health, humanitarian, food, and environmental – threaten to spill over into neighboring countries.
A Horrendous Humanitarian Crisis
The UN- and U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) controls only parts of Mogadishu and small portions of central Somalia, while insurgent group Al Shabab controls nearly the entire south. The northern area is divided into semi-autonomous Somaliland and Puntland, which also fall outside of the transitional government’s control.
But the civil war is only one part of what Ould-Abdallah called a “horrendous” humanitarian crisis.
According to the UN, 3.2 million Somalis rely on foreign assistance for food – 43 percent of the population – and 1.4 million have been internally displaced by war. Another UN-backed study finds that approximately 50 percent of women and 60 percent of children under five are anemic. Most distressing, the UN Security Council reported in March that up to half of all food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from people in need by militants and corrupt officials, including UN and government employees.
Because of the country’s large youth bulge – 45 percent of Somalia’s population is under the age of 15 – food and health conditions are expected to get much worse before they get better. In the 2009 Failed States Index, Somalia ranks as the least stable state in the world and, along with Zimbabwe, has the highest demographic pressures.
Islamic Militants and the Battle for the High Seas
Yet the West continues to focus on the sensational pirate attacks on Somalia’s coast. The root cause of these attacks is not simply lawlessness say Somali officials, instead, they began partly as desperate attempts to stop foreign commercial fleets from depleting Somalia’s tuna-rich, lawless shores. A 2006 High Seas Task Force reported that at any given time, “some 700 foreign-owned vessels are engaged in unlicensed and unregulated fishing in Somali waters, exploiting high value species such as tuna, shark, lobster and deep-water shrimp.”
The transitional government opposes the fishermen-turned-pirates, but can do little to stop them. Al Shabab has thus far allowed pirates to operate freely in their territory. Their tacit approval may be tied to reports that the group has received portions of ransoms in the past.
Another hardline Islamist group, Hizbul Islam, recently took over the pirate safe haven of Haradhere, allegedly in response to local pleas for better security, but the move may simply have been part of an ongoing struggle with Al Shabab for control of pirate ransoms and port taxes – one of the few sectors of the economy that has remained lucrative.
“I can say to you, they are not different from pirates — they also want money,” Yusuf Mohamed Siad, defense minister with Somalia’s TFG, told Time Magazine.
A Toxic ThreatInitially the pirates claimed one of their goals was to ward off “mysterious European ships” that were allegedly dumping barrels of toxic waste offshore. UN envoy Ould-Abdallah told Johann Hari of The Independent in 2009 that “somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” After the 2005 tsunami, “hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died,” Hari reports.
Finnish Minister of Parliament Pekka Haavisto, speaking to ECSP last year, urged UN investigation of the claims. “If there are rumors, we should go check them out,” said the former head of the UN Environment Program’s Post-Conflict Assessment Unit:I think it is possible to send an international scientific assessment team in to take samples and find out whether there are environmental contamination and health threats. Residents of these communities, including the pirate villages, want to know if they are being poisoned, just like any other community would.
To date, there has been no action to address these claims.
Drought, Deforestation, and Migration
While foreign entities may have been exploiting Somalia’s oceans, the climate has played havoc with the rest of the country. Reuters and IRIN report that the worst drought in a decade has stricken some parts of the interior, while others parts of the country face heavy flooding from rainfall further upstream in Ethiopia.
Land management has also broken down. A 2006 Academy for Peace and Development study estimated that the province of Somaliland alone consumes up 2.5 million trees each year for charcoal, which is used as a cheaper alternative to gas for cooking and heating. A 2004 Somaliland ministry study on charcoal called the issue of deforestation for charcoal production “the most critical issue that might lead to a national environmental disaster.”
West of Mogadishu, Al Shabab has begun playing the role of environmental steward, instituting a strict ban on all tree-cutting – a remarkable decree from a group best known for their brutal application of Sharia law rather than sound governance.
The result of this turmoil is an ever-increasing flow of displaced people – nearly 170,000 alone so far this year, according to the Washington Post – driven by war, poverty, and environmental problems. The burden is beginning to weigh on Somalia’s neighbors, says the UNHCR.
The Neighborhood Effect
One of the largest flows of displaced Somalis is into the Arabian peninsula country of Yemen – itself a failing state, with 3.4 million in need of food aid, 35 percent unemployment, a massive youth bulge, dwindling water and oil resources, and a burgeoning Al Qaeda presence.
In testimony on Yemen earlier this year, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman said that the country’s demographics were simply unsustainable:Water resources are fast being depleted. With over half of its people living in poverty and the population growing at an unsustainable 3.2 percent per year, economic conditions threaten to worsen and further tax the government’s already limited capacity to ensure basic levels of support and opportunity for its citizens.
Other neighboring countries face similar crises of drought, food shortage, and overpopulation – Ethiopia has 12 million short of food, Kenya, 3.5 million, says Reuters. UNHCR reports that in Djibouti, a common first choice for fleeing Somalis, the number of new arrivals has more than doubled since last year, and the country’s main refugee camp is facing a serious water crisis.
A Case Study in Collapse
The ballooning crises of Somalia encompass a worst-case scenario for the intersection of environmental, demographic, and conventional security concerns. Civil war, rapid population growth, drought, and resource depletion have not only contributed to the complete collapse of a sovereign state, but could also lead to similar problems for Somalia’s neighbors – threatening a domino effect of destabilization that no military force alone will be able to prevent.
Speaking at a naval conference in Abu Dhabi this week, Australian Vice Admiral Russell Crane told ASD News that, “The symptoms (piracy) we’re seeing now off Somalia, in the Gulf of Aden, are clearly an outcome of what’s going on on the ground there. As sailors, we’re really just treating the symptoms.”
Sources: Academy for Peace and Development, AP, ASD News, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, High Seas Task Force, Independent, IRIN, New York Times, Population Action, Population Reference Bureau, Reuters, Telegraph, Time, UN, US State Department, War is Boring, Washington Post.
Photo Credits: “Don’t Swim in Somalia (It’s Toxic)” courtesy of Flickr user craynol and “Somalia map states regions districts” courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. -
Food Security Comes to Capitol Hill, Part Two: Women’s Edition
›April 30, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe focus on food security on Capitol Hill continued with Wednesday’s House Hunger Caucus panel, “Feeding a Community, Country and Continent: The Role of Women in Food Security.” According to panel organizers Women Thrive Worldwide, “over half the food in developing countries – and up to 80 percent in sub-Saharan Africa – is grown by women farmers, who also account for seven in ten of the world’s hungry.”
The panel illuminated some of the inequities routinely faced by female farmers that often prevent them from using the same inputs as men (tools, fertilizer, etc.), bar their access to credit, and force them onto less productive land.
“Women around the world face unique economic and social barriers in farming and food production,” said Nora O’Connell of Women Thrive Worldwide. “But they are key to increasing food security and ending hunger, and all international programs must take their needs into account.”
Panelist David Kauck of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) cited the State Department’s Consultation Document on the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative: “Economic output could be increased by 15-40 percent and under-nutrition reduced by 15 million children simply by providing women with assets equal to those of men.”
According to the 2008 ICRW report, A Significant Shift: Women, Food Security, and Agriculture in a Global Marketplace:Women also are more likely than men to spend their income on the well-being of their families, including more nutritious foods, school fees for children and health care. Yet agricultural investments do not reflect these facts. Women in forestry, fishing and agriculture received just 7 percent of total aid for all sectors.
One of the most fundamental problems faced by women in developing countries is a lack of basic education leading to illiteracy and innumeracy, making it difficult for women to understand agricultural policy or the fair market values of their products. Therefore, men are much more likely to control valuable markets.
In addition, women are less likely to learn about and adopt new agricultural technologies and best practices. Lydia Sasu, director of the Development Action Association, said that when she attended agricultural school in Ghana she was one of only three women, compared to more than 40 men, in her class.
Women in developing countries rarely own the land they farm, which can make it difficult to apply for credit and extension services without collateral. According to the ICRW report:In Uganda, women account for approximately three out of four agricultural laborers and nine out of 10 food-producing laborers, yet they own only a fraction of the land. Women in Cameroon provide more than 75 percent of agricultural labor yet own just 10 percent of land. A 1990 study of credit schemes in Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Zimbabwe found that women received less than 10 percent of the credit for smallholders and only 1 percent of total credit to agriculture. Women receive only 5 percent of extension services worldwide, and women in Africa access only 1 percent of available credit in the agricultural sector.
“The fundamental barrier to women in agriculture,” said USAID’s Kristy Cook, “is access to assets.” Cheryl Morden of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said we have reached the “tipping point,” where action on this issue seems inevitable on the international policy level. However, she questions how quickly that momentum can translate to change on the ground.
The State Department has made improving women’s lives an important part of both their Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative and the Global Health Initiative. ”Investing in the health of women, adolescents, and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in January.
Reproductive health and family planning services will be key to both initiatives. A policy brief by ICRW’s Margaret Greene argues that poor reproductive health can have negative effects on women’s educational and economic opportunities. As Secretary Clinton said, “When women and girls have the tools to stay healthy and the opportunity to contribute to their families’ well-being, they flourish and so do the people around them.”
Photo Credit: “Transplanting at rainfed lowland rice in Madagascar,” courtesy of flickr user IRRI Images. -
Sustainable Urbanization: Strategies For Resilience
›April 19, 2010 // By Julien KatchinoffUrbanization is both an opportunity and a challenge,” argued Christopher Williams from UN-HABITAT during a panel discussion at American University’s School of International Service. “Sustainable Cities: A discussion on the social, economic, and environmental strategies contributing to urban resilience” brought together sustainability experts to discuss innovative strategies for urban resilience in the face of the 21st century’s looming challenges.
Urbanization “is an opportunity in the sense that there’s a tremendous amount of innovation that’s going to take place with a concentration of ideas and economies and cultures in these urban spaces,” said Williams. “It’s a challenge in the sense that many of these cities are ill-equipped to handle this large influx of population.”
Williams outlined the principal challenges of an urbanizing world:
Land and shelter: New policies are needed for creating affordable housing for new urban citizens, securing land tenure, and limiting forced evictions of future urban dwellers.
Infrastructure: Finding solutions for fragile water, transportation, and sanitation systems requires thoughtful planning, solid investment, and demand management. Investors must be cognizant that many cities have limited resources and institutional capacity.
Municipal planning, management, and governance: Managing decentralization and interfacing with communities and the private sector are critical to success.
Innovative finance: Future sources of investment will increasingly be limited to private funds and community savings. Official Development Assistance (ODA) will have to be used in strategic ways to trigger such investments.
Williams noted that existing conceptions of urban challenges–that they are “messy, complex, interlinked”–paint an unflattering picture for policymakers, dramatically reducing their willingness to engage with these environments. The implied heavy transaction costs of operating in urban areas can discourage investors. Development agencies often look for opportunities where they can get in and out quickly; historically, most aid has focused on rural areas, usually with relatively short planning windows (5-10 years).
Today, decisions regarding the movement of urban populations are linked to extremely contentious power relations. Williams posited that by couching programs within the frame of adaptation and resilience, mayors and municipal governments may be able to tackle issues of social inequality that have plagued some cities for years.
Citing a 2008 seminar on community resilience, the Wilson Center’s Blair Ruble argued that the world’s increasing attention to urban challenges holds the risk of creating programs and institutions that are blind to the rich complexity of these systems. Although the theme of last month’s World Urban Forum 5 in Rio de Janeiro was “The Right to the City,” he said that many organizations were redefining “resilience” in top-down terms, silencing the variety of vulnerable voices that make up urban centers.
The visible commitment by the United States delegation to the World Urban Forum was noteworthy, said Williams, as it represents a dramatic departure from status quo. American foreign policy and development assistance have predominantly focused on agricultural policy, with varying degrees of interest on water and sanitation. Surprisingly, little attention has been paid to land tenure issues, and even less to urban issues.
This shift, Williams said, may be due to a change in perspective under the Obama administration. For the first time, many staffers have experience working on urban issues. The newly created Office of Urban Affairs, within the Domestic Policy Council, is headed by Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. This new high-level engagement and issue integration demonstrates that urban issues are important to the White House, which has trickled down to the EPA, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of State.
Domestic urban centers have received new initiatives and funding through the Reinvestment Act, spurring the creation of projects targeting transportation, urban planning, and regional economic growth. Many observers hope, however, that this newfound engagement will translate into solid action internationally, as many urban and rapidly urbanizing centers cope to adapt to the future.
Photo Credit: “Favela no de Rio,” courtesy flickr user kevin.j.
