SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PREPARATORY MEETING FOCUSES ON WAYS TO IMPROVE LIVES OF SLUM DWELLERS, URBAN POOR

UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Preparatory Meeting, March 4, 2005

 

A representative of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme
(UN-HABITAT) said the key challenge was access to housing finances for the
urban poor. While domestically generated capital remained the major source
of funding for human settlements development, including water and
sanitation, international finances, driven by foreign investment or
public/private partnerships, were equally essential. He encouraged
governments to promote or scale up microfinance schemes and provide
finance institutions with a regulatory environment conducive to the
growth, efficiency and sustainability of that sector.

In addition, he said that focusing on the urban context of the debate was
critical to meeting all the relevant Millennium Development Goals, as well
as the commitments agreed at the Johannesburg Word Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD).

If the rapid and ongoing urbanization of poverty was not directly
addressed, it would be impossible to meet those goals. Improving the lives
of slum dwellers should involve combating HIV, improving environmental
sustainability, and addressing gender inequality in the most efficient
manner. He also said that it was time to upgrade the slums target set at
the Millennium Summit, which had called for improving substantially, by
2020, the lives of 100 million slum dwellers. Estimates had since revealed
that the worldwide population of slum dwellers in the next decade would
skyrocket to perhaps 1 billion people, so meeting the millennium target
would only address one tenth of the problem.

Nigeria's representative agreed that the Millennium Goals, as they stood,
appeared to leave perhaps 900 million slum dwellers without relief. The
international community, in cooperation with local authorities, must shift
the focus to radical and speedy policy change in the areas of urban
poverty to address that deficit. Turning to his country's experience, he
said that in 1976, when Nigeria moved its capital from Lagos to Abuja,
authorities had had to tackle the entire range of settlement and
resettlement issues. Nigeria had quickly become aware of the rapid
urbanization trend, as well as its attendant increase in slums and
informal settlements.

Nigeria had learned that governments could not address all the needs of
slum dwellers alone, he continued, adding that his country was also like
many poor nations, where the private sector was not sufficiently developed
to ramp up effective participatory partnerships in the housing sector. The
economies of those countries were not fully developed either, and depended
on unique commodities, which in turn were susceptible to fluctuations in
the global marketplace. So, one of the keys was to scale up domestic, as
well as global, environments for the mobilization of resources. There must
also be greater policy coherence on critical debt issues so that heavily
indebted poor countries could meet their Millennium Goals. He added that
local governments could do their part, by, among other things, "opening
the way" between urban and rural areas by upgrading roads, schools, basic
services and other facilities.

Luxembourg's representative, speaking on behalf of the European Union,
called for social inclusion policies and actions that promoted
individuals' opportunities for housing improvements, empowering local
authorities, promoting public/private partnerships, and prioritizing the
creation of sound policies on secure tenure, particularly for women.

Pro-poor management was necessary to make the poor visible as citizens,
particularly to urban planners, she added.

The representative of Norway was among the many speakers who stressed the
importance of drawing on the inherent cultural and creative energy of
cities to help tackle housing challenges. Cities were the world's cultural
crossroads and were well suited to be engines of change for development
and generating innovative ideas, he said. By 2013, half the world's
population would live in cities, and the urban poor would shortly become
the most important agents for social and economic change. Norway saw the
women and youth among the urban poor as most well placed to drive change,
he said, calling for a people-centred approach to housing policies and
investment options.

Calling attention to what she called a "glaring error" in the final report
on human settlements from CSD-12 that was serving as one of the guides for
the Meeting this week, a representative of non-governmental organizations
expressed disappointment that the document omitted any reference to human
rights. Progressive promotion and protection of fundamental rights -- to
housing, access to land and secure tenure, among others -- was critical to
achieving sustainable human settlements, adequate shelter and basic
services, she said. States must be challenged to ensure those rights in
national laws, regulations and implementation plans. The final report for
CSD-13 should add a separate section on each of the thematic areas, she
suggested.

Offering a host of policy options and practical measures that could
advance progress towards internationally agreed housing objectives, the
representative of the United States suggested improving knowledge and
technical skills of administrators responsible for medium- and long-term
city development, and attracting people into the formal economy through
home ownership. Secure land tenure and home ownership had strong
socio-economic and environmental impacts, he said. He also suggested
mobilizing local financial resources, through tax policy or reducing
regulatory barriers, to attract local investment, and encouraging private
banks to work with community organizations.

Interactive Panel Discussion - Human Settlements (PM)

In the afternoon, the Preparatory Meeting continued its interactive
discussion on policy options and actions for human settlements, with a
focus on creating jobs and promoting entrepreneurship to improve the
livelihoods of the urban and rural poor.

Commission Vice-Chair HUSNIYYA MAMMADOVA (Azerbaijan) said that many
developing countries were facing challenges as they tried to devise
strategies to increase their cities' productivity while supporting
pro-poor economic growth. Policy and regulatory instruments that promoted
new business start-ups and the development of small enterprises were
crucial to the response.

She cited several relevant country-level initiatives included, among
others, adoption of labour intensive measures in construction and
infrastructure development, which could contribute to the provision of
necessary services while providing employment opportunities and building
the skills of the lower-skilled urban workforce. The combination of
labour-intensive methods with community contracting -- involving
small-scale service providers -- presented advantages in terms of
community empowerment, job creation, income generation and
capacity-building.

A representative of women's groups said grass-roots organization had been
using microfinancing schemes to help upscale small businesses in poor
urban areas. With dwindling resources, women's groups, particularly those
that were headquartered in slum areas, were doing their best to promote
education and better health. Nevertheless, such groups would call for an
increase in partnership opportunities and initiatives, which would
increase their outreach abilities. A representative of workers and trade
unions added that job creation could be made part of infrastructure
investment programmes, but that such jobs must be "good quality" jobs.

Moreover, municipal authorities should be charged with putting together
plans on a stakeholder basis.

As she cited a host of successful small-scale initiatives under way to
improve the living conditions of slums, Lesotho's representative echoed
the sentiment of other speakers who had told the Meeting that they were
struggling to keep up with the driving force of rapid urbanization and
expanding informal settlements. Tackling that challenge required more
focused long-term urban planning, which recognized local authorities and
took on board the expertise of slum dwellers themselves.

Australia's representative supported the view that persistent poverty in
rural areas continued to drive rural-to-urban migration and, therefore,
had to be addressed urgently. He suggested a two-pronged approach that
supported and promoted broad-based economic growth, as well as the
rehabilitation of institutions at the community level in order to improve
delivery of basic services. He said that Australia also recognized that
"one size would not fit all" in the area of human settlements and called
for targeted, flexible policies.

Local economic development could not be overemphasized, said the
representative of South Africa. It provided cheaper labour and materials,
and often drove public-private partnerships at the micro-level. The
representative of Cote d'Ivoire added, however, that local economic
development plans needed to be bolstered by international resources,
otherwise many good intentions would fall by the wayside.

The representative of the United States suggested promoting programmes
which matched skills, training and apprenticeships for urban youth to
access jobs in local labour markets. He also recommended the mobilization
of domestic capital markets to invest in human settlements using
appropriate risk-sharing mechanisms to reduce lending costs in slum
communities. He also said that it was necessary to prevent and combat
exploitative child labour and to provide children with education and
rehabilitation, and their families with viable economic alternatives.

The representative of Chile said new and innovative ideas and responses
were necessary, as were coordinated actions to solve the problems of the
urban poor. Chile had focused its efforts on the most vulnerable segments
of its society, which he believed was the case for most countries. But
this engendered certain tensions between and among municipalities and
communities, particularly over land rights and use. That tension, he said,
needed to be acknowledged and addressed.

Making headway required integration, consistency and coherence. His
Government had initiated a programme which pooled the resources and
expertise of neighbouring municipalities.

A representative of non-governmental organizations read out the statement
of the Human Settlements Caucus, which had earlier agreed that sustainable
human settlements and adequate services for all were goals that could only
be achieved through progressive policies that realized the universal right
of housing, access to land, secure tenure and provision of
infrastructure.Interactive Discussion - Water (PM)

This afternoon's discussion on water focused on strengthening monitoring
and evaluation programmes, and on ways and means to secure finance for
water-related investments. There was an urgent need to monitor progress
towards national and international goals and targets on water, providing a
solid foundation for rational policy-making at the national and local
levels. Policy options might range from rehabilitating existing monitoring
networks, to developing new data collection systems using new
technologies, to coordinating national and international efforts in data
collection.

Funding in the water sector in developing countries needed to be doubled
from its current level if internationally agreed water-related goals were
to be met. In most developing countries, issues relating to the water
sector had been absent in poverty-reduction strategies despite the
increased recognition of the importance of water to poverty reduction.

The policy options being pursued included domestic resource mobilization,
development assistance, partnerships with the private sector and civil
society, and use of domestic capital markets.

Among the questions to be addressed in the area of monitoring, said
Commission Chairperson DAGMARA BERBALK (Germany), was what to do about
monitoring at the global level, and the interrelationship between local
processes and national programmes. Also, she hoped delegations would
address how to strengthen the UNICEF/WMO Joint Monitoring Programme and
make greater use of it.

The state of freshwater monitoring was completely inadequate at the global
level, said a representative of the scientific and technological
communities, making it difficult to assess progress towards national and
international targets.

Information on water use and water engineering were practically
non-existent. There were new techniques that made it possible to identify
chemicals in freshwater systems, but what was needed was universal
application of such techniques to determine long-term impacts.
International collaboration for data collection, he added, should be used
to resuscitate the debilitated information networks.

Limited information existed on water quality and quantity because some
countries lacked the tools to gather such information, noted Canada's
representative. Poor water quality, coupled with poor hygiene, was a major
cause of ill-health. The primary strategy in that regard was the use of
science for elaborating quality standards. Understanding the state of
surface and groundwater was vital. He would like to see CSD-13 to
highlight the importance of awareness-raising. It was Japan's view that
every country establish drinking water standards by referring to the WHO's
guidelines for drinking water quality. Also, it was necessary to enhance
capacity-building for monitoring drinking water quality.

While some delegations felt there was a need to establish new mechanisms
for monitoring, Norway's representative was among several that did not
share that belief, and called for strengthening existing mechanisms. The
UNICEF/WMO Joint Monitoring Programme must be strengthened as the key
global mechanism to monitor access to water supply. Also, bilateral
agencies should provide more funding and avoid setting up parallel
structures.

Further, she felt "UN Water" - the United Nations inter-agency mechanism
for follow-up on water-related decisions reached at the World Summit for
Sustainable Development and water-related Millennium Development Goals --
should be mandated to report regularly on progress on water resource
development and management, including on strategies for integrated water
resources management. The representative of Egypt added that introducing
new mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation would only make things more
complicated and make the process more difficult for developing countries.

The representative of Kenya said it was necessary to ask which United
Nations would coordinate work on water quality and quantity monitoring. He
called for collaboration at the regional level, particularly at the river
basin level. River basin organizations needed to be involved in monitoring
and data transmission. What was lacking at the national level was
capacity-building, including in the areas of equipment, resuscitating
information networks and data management.

He also stressed the need to elaborate a set of common indicators, a point
that was picked up and supported by a representative of non-governmental
organizations, who said that sanitation in schools was one such indicator
that was vitally necessary. The availability of water, as well as its
equitable distribution, must be monitored, he added.

Monitoring also needed to be regular so as to institute a sense of
urgency. It was important that governments publish the data that they
collected, which would promote participation in planning and hold
governments to account.

When delegations turned their attention to the issue of financing, the
representative of Spain noted that cost recovery, in terms of operation
and maintenance, was an essential aspect in most financing options for
leveraging domestic resources. There were in all countries possibilities
for subvention as part of the tariff systems.

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Luxembourg's representative said
that financing strategies for water should be elaborated within national
action plans for achieving the Millennium Goals. The implementation of the
Monterrey Consensus was crucial for increasing effective financing. The
effectiveness of aid through existing mechanisms and simplification of the
granting of aid, among other things, should be considered.

Providing an example of new strategies for financing water and sanitation,
the representative of the European Commission described the European Union
Water Initiative, which aimed to increase the priority given to water and
sanitation by developing countries, and improve efficiency of European
Union assistance. In addition to the Initiative, there was also the
European Union Water Facility for African, Caribbean and Pacific
countries, which aimed to create conditions for attracting funds, other
than official development assistance (ODA), for water and sanitation. The
amount requested so far from countries was some 2.5 billion euros, which
suggested that there were projects ready and waiting to be catalysed.

The Water Facility, representing a shift in project funding, provided a
complementary mechanism to the traditional use of ODA.

The representative of Mauritius emphasized the importance of ODA flows to
developing countries, particularly small island developing States, so that
they could meet their water challenges. The grant financing element was
also very important, without which the cost of water might be very high,
making it inaccessible to the poorest of the poor. In many small islands,
the availability of water was not so much a problem as was its storage and
distribution, which cost a lot of money. Applying the cost recovery
principle in developing countries would result in rising production and
living costs, which was detrimental to developing countries, particularly
small islands. The scarce availability of water in those countries was
also affected by poor treatment, an area in which a lot of investment was
required.

Most African countries, noted the representative of South Africa, had
become heavily indebted over the past four decades and would not be able
to meet the targets contained in the Millennium Goals or the Johannesburg
Plan of Implementation without some form of debt relief. For Africa to
achieve those targets, more funding was urgently needed. Funding to Africa
should, among other things: be easily accessible; be based on the
principle of learning by doing; be accessible for the poor; be provided to
the budget of African governments to empower them to deliver services; and
not be a prerequisite for new mechanisms, as existing mechanisms were in
place, such as the African Water Facility.

Several speakers supported public/private partnerships, which they felt
held promise for improving the performance of water and sanitation service
providers. The representative of the United States, for example, felt that
a greater role for the private sector would be crucial for meeting many of
the internationally agreed targets. Revolving funds, he added, would also
be a sound policy option.

The representative of workers and trade unions felt there was a need to
look at the impact of "off-book accounting", long-term concessions, the
risks to municipalities of new sub-sovereign lending mechanisms, and the
lack of financial support for developing human resources. He noted that,
although it was widely agreed that donors, international financial
institutions and national development agencies should not make
privatization a condition for loans, that was not always the case in
practice.