REGIONAL PLAN OF ACTION FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENTS AGREED AT ECLAC HEADQUARTERS IN SANTIAGO
Press Release
HAB/100
ECLAC/339
REGIONAL PLAN OF ACTION FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENTS AGREED AT ECLAC HEADQUARTERS IN SANTIAGO
19951120 SANTIAGO, 17 November (ECLAC) -- Ministers, vice-ministers and high ranking authorities in charge of housing and urban development from throughout Latin america and the Caribbean today approved a Regional Plan of Action for Human Settlements. The agreement came at the end of the five-day Regional Meeting Preparatory to the United Nations conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), which will take place in June 1996 in Istanbul, Turkey.The Plan is intended both as an aid to regional governments in bringing up to date their housing and urban development policies and as the region's contribution to the World Plan of Action to be agreed at Habitat II. It consists of five thematic areas, and its main objective is to achieve authentic development strategies that can ensure social equity, economic growth, environmental sustainability and the realization of human potential within a democratic framework.
I. "Achieving social equity and alleviating urban poverty". The Plan states that statistics on the spread of poverty, which is now rooted mainly in the region's cities, make it urgent for human settlement policies to be geared decisively to improve the quality of life, particularly for lower-income households. At the same time, it emphasizes that the countries of the region have made significant progress towards overcoming their shortages of housing and urban services.
However, to remedy the serious lack of basic services and housing from which the population still suffers, the delegates to the Regional Meeting agreed, among other points, to emphasize the goal of overcoming poverty and indigence in their territorial, urban and housing policies and to link that goal with broader strategies and mechanisms for social development at the national and local levels.
It was also agreed to increase housing solutions substantially, in order to cope with the lack of shelter, especially for lower-income families; expand programmes to provide sanitation, shelter and regularization of tenure; establish programmes to maintain and upgrade the existing housing stock; and
implement clear mechanisms for transparent and effective subsidies that can provide the region's inhabitants with genuine access to urban goods and services and housing.
II. "The productivity of human settlements for improving the quality of life". It was agreed to strengthen linkages between economic development policies and their physical application at all levels.
In addition, the Plan declares that Latin American and Caribbean national governments, together with local governments and the private sector, should implement measures to achieve a better balance in the future in the distribution of opportunities for economic, social and environmental progress, and to develop their cities' comparative advantages. These measures should include: ensuring that regional, subregional and national development agencies attach due importance to human settlements in national and regional development strategies; taking advantage of complementarity and specialization among cities at the national and regional level; strengthening integrated territorial and urban management and urban systems; and giving top priority to the upgrading, expansion and modernization of urban and productive infrastructure.
III. "Improving the environment in human settlements". Here the Plan underlines the need to control and direct urban growth in order to avoid an irreparable loss of sustainable development factors.
It also agrees to carry out measures to prevent and manage urban environmental problems, with special emphasis on metropolitan areas, medium- sized and small urban centres, towns and villages and rural ares surrounding cities. These should include: updating the regulatory and legal framework that governs property and the urban land market; urgently addressing the problem of traffic congestion generated by the steady increase in the stock of automobiles; ensuring access by the entire population to quality drinking water and waste disposal services; and creating mechanisms to ensure full and effective participation by the community.
IV. "Governability and participation". In this area, the challenges facing human settlements call for adjustment of the institutional and regulatory framework to allow cities to be administered adequately. It was agreed, among other measures, to set up coordinating mechanisms between the sectoral agencies and levels of government that deal with housing and urban development and the local governments, so that the responsibilities and resources of the former in the field of human settlements can be effectively and gradually decentralized and transferred to the latter; define mechanisms of coordination for metropolitan areas, medium-sized and small cities, and towns and villages; strengthen the administrative, technical and financial capacities of local governments at all levels; and set up programmes of
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intervention aimed at the spatial and social integration of the urban territory and the revitalization of urban spaces and symbols that are shared by the majority of the inhabitants.
V. "Policy and management efficiency". In order to link the different levels of habitat, that is, the territory with its urban systems, cities, neighbourhoods and dwellings, the Plan proposes that the administration of the system of territorial management, urban development and housing should be integrated, so that policies at each level take into account the costs and benefits that their implementation will entail at other levels. It was also decided to establish a clear and stable framework for the creation of markets and the regulation of competition in the production and operation of urban services and housing. In addition, delegates agreed to establish and reinforce, at the regional, national and local levels, reliable and comparable systems and channels of statistics and indicators in order to optimize planning, allocation of benefits and evaluation in the field of human settlements. In this regard, the Plan argues, special attention should be paid to coming population and housing censuses.
In response to a proposal by the Jamaican delegation, the Meeting also agreed that regional representatives at Habitat II would go there resolved to implement the following specific and authentic development strategies, aimed at:
(i) Promoting appropriate land and land use policies;
(ii) Conserving the region's environmental, historical and cultural resources;
(III) Generating high levels of economic and social investments, growth and development;
(iv) Creating or strengthening the legal framework to ensure the constitutional rights of shelter (land, housing) for the region's peoples;
(v) To ensure the goals of social equity, environmental sustainability and the realization of full human potential and quality of life within a democratic framework for shelter for all by the year 2025.
The Ministerial stage of the Regional Preparatory Meeting was opened on 15 November by ECLAC Executive Secretary Gert Rosenthal, who said its specific objective was to evaluate the evolution of human settlements in the region, taking into account its urbanization patterns and housing situation, as well as changes of the past two decades.
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The Ministerial stage was preceded by a technical stage, which ended with the elaboration of a number of proposals for the Regional Plan of Action.
The Meeting opened on 13 November with the participation of representatives of ECLAC member countries, international organizations, the United Nations system, the public and private sectors, academic institutions and non-governmental organizations.
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