PRESS CONFERENCE BY UN-HABITAT on climate change impact on world’s cities

The year 2007 would witness the decisive transformation of human beings into an urban species, with homo sapiens becoming homo urbanus, Anna Tibaijuka, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), said at Headquarters today.

During a press conference where she briefed on the effects of climate change on the world’s cities, she said people were increasingly living in cities and towns.  About one third of the urban poor were “environmental refugees” as a result of climate change in places like Africa, where pastoral systems were no longer economically viable.  Many of the continents conflicts were linked to failing environmental systems and energy consumption.

Noting that the public domain was not following such issues closely, she said policies had also failed, in large part, to keep pace with the challenges of supplying energy and containing climate change.  Africa was the fastest urbanizing region, with about 37 per cent of its people already living in cities and towns.  By 2030, it would cease to be a rural continent.  Given that 72 per cent of the African urban population now lived in slums, supplying energy -- not to mention water and sanitation –- became very challenging.  The Millennium Development Goals would not be achieved without a focus on, and understanding of, the spatial dimensions of development and how people lived.

Cities offered the best opportunities for industrial growth and production, and city governments were the key drivers of industrialization, she said.  However, in many urban areas, industrialization had not been growing in the way it should.  Excessive unemployment and environmental damage were the outcome.

She went on to say that, with increasing urbanization, most cities and mega-cities were threatened by rising sea levels, particularly coastal cities like New York, Mumbai and Shanghai.  However, it was crucial to recognize that cities and urban residents must not be mere victims of climate change.  They must shape the phenomenon and prepare themselves for the eventual challenges and disasters emanating from climate change.  Urban governance and city planning could well be a solution.  Sustainable urbanization was the key, without which sustainable development could well prove elusive.

In response to a question about the spread of slum dwellers in Africa, she said that, out of the world’s 3 billion urban residents, about one third lived in slums or informal settlements.  Africa had the deepest problem, with 72 per cent of its unseen population being in slums, for Asia it was 46 per cent, and Latin America 32 per cent.  Northern African countries were doing better than sub-Saharan ones.  For example, the slum populations in cities like Dar es Salaam, for example, could be as much as 90 per cent.

Asked about the major challenges facing very poor slum dwellers and indigenous people in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, she said that, in terms of ethnic groups, climate change could impose challenges on their lifestyles, as in the case of East Africa’s Maasai pastoralists.  Many of them were no longer herdsmen, but were engaged in other activities in the cities, where they lived as “climate change refugees”.

One quarter of Rio de Janeiro’s people lived in hillside slums known as favelas or in flood plains, she said.  It was a difficult situation in which they had no security of tenure, and city government sometimes had no access to neighbourhoods that were run by gangs and drug lords.  It was not possible to deliver sustainable development in such cases.

Asked whether the Indian Ocean tsunami could have been a result of nuclear testing, she said the International Atomic Energy Agency was a more competent authority to answer that question.  From UN-HABITAT’s perspective, better constructed houses could have prevented considerable damage.  Practically all the Dutch colonial cottages in Banda Aceh had survived the tsunami, because they had been built in such a way as to foresee the likely danger of a tsunami.

Responding to a question about the number of cars in Asia, she emphasized the importance of changes in lifestyles, noting, however, that such change must be adopted by all.

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