| Groentje-18 |
27 juni 2007 13:29 |
Omgaan met populatiegroei
...zonder dat deze leidt tot erbarmelijke omstandigheden.
Citaat:
Urban boom may improve health for billions- 12:00 27 June 2007
- NewScientist.com news service
- Andy Coghlan
To most of us, old newspapers, cardboard boxes, plastic bottles and aluminium cans are simply garbage. But to Elizabeth Pinheiro, a mother of five in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba in the state of Paraná, they are an escape route from poverty. Rising at 6 am daily, she loads her cart with garbage and returns home to her favela of Vila Torres to sell any recyclable material, earning around $6 per day. The efforts of people like Pinheiro help the city recycle 3200 tonnes of garbage a day, 22 per cent of its total output.
She is just one woman, but Pinheiro symbolises the potential of cities to raise people out of homelessness and poverty through work that benefits both the individual and the city. Her story is one of many told in the latest official report on population trends from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).
Published on 27 June, The State of World Population 2007 predicts an unprecedented wave of expansion in urban populations, especially in Africa and Asia. Far from being a disaster, however, the report's authors see this as an opportunity to tackle poverty that would not be possible if the same number of people were dispersed in the countryside. In cities it is easier to provide people with the education, health services, jobs, shelter and family planning that could help slow population growth. The key to making it happen, according to UNFPA, will be properly preparing urban land before people move onto it, and targeting assistance to women.
The report says cities need to begin embracing these policies right now and abandon the laissez-faire approach that has allowed sprawling slums to develop. "What's absolutely clear and non-negotiable is that we can't carry on as we are," says the main author, George Martine of the Brazilian Association for Population Studies.
The biggest growth will occur in Asia and Africa, and contrary to popular belief, most of it will be due to babies born in the cities rather than migration from the countryside. The report calculates that by 2030, populations in Asian cities will have swelled to 2.64 billion from 1.36 billion in 2000. In Africa, the number of urban poor will more than double to 742 million from 294 million in 2000. By 2030, 70 per cent of the world's urban dwellers will be in Africa and Asia.
Cities must begin preparing affordable land for the poor to live on, says the report. By installing crude roads, sanitation, electrical supplies and clean water, cities can forestall the haphazard and uncontrolled growth of shanty towns that blights many urban areas today, especially the world's 20 "megacities" with populations exceeding 10 million.
“By installing infrastructure in advance, cities can forestall the haphazard and uncontrolled growth of shanty towns”
However, the authors predict that the most explosive urban growth will happen not in megacities but in much smaller cities with populations of around 500,000. It is these cities, Martine says, which have the most urban land available, yet the least money and willpower to deal with the problem. The report therefore recommends that smaller cities receive most support and aid to tackle the impending boom.
Martine argues that it is much easier and cheaper to install services beforehand on "minimally serviced land" than to retrofit existing shanty towns and slums. To make the concept a reality, he says city authorities also need strict new laws to regulate such schemes, preventing unscrupulous landlords taking advantage.
"It must be done working with organisations representing the urban poor," says David Satterthwaite, a specialist in urban population growth at the International Institute for Environmental Development at University College London. "It shouldn't be imposed by local politicians or international donors." Satterthwaite cites an example in Windhoek, Namibia, where federations of homeless people have made plots more affordable by making them smaller and opting for communal rather than private toilets.
The report also stresses the importance of targeting resources to women. "They have a much more dynamic interest in the community than men," says Martine. "Living in the city is an instrument of empowerment for them. They have more contact with other women, with new ideas, with getting their children educated and with accessing health and sanitation services."
Crucially, as far as population control is concerned, living in the town rather than the country gives them much better access to the family planning services and advice that enable them to have fewer babies. As a result, women in cities do indeed have smaller families. In Brazil, where 80 per cent of the population now live in towns and cities, the birth rate has fallen to 2.1 children per woman from 6.2 in the 1950s, when most people lived rurally.
Martine urges cities to start preparing now. If they don't, the slums will simply get worse. "At present, 1 billion people live in slums worldwide. Do we want it to increase to 3 billion in a generation?" he asks. "We need new mindsets and a revolutionary, proactive approach. The problem is not technical, it's political, and we need to deal with the poor."
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Dat lijkt me een heel goede beleidskeuze. Zo kan je de openbare diensten ten minste beter organiseren zodanig dat iedereen er gebruik van kan maken.
Het is zeker interessant als je hierdoor op termijn de populatiegroei mee kan terugdrijven (bij tenminste de mensen die in de steden leven). Het is één van de enigste haalbaren, menselijke en moreel aanvaardbare voorstellen hieromtrent die ik ooit heb gezien.
De bevolking zou idealiter nog meer in steden moeten geconcentreerd worden denk ik, zo kan het omliggend gebied gebruikt worden voor industrie, landbouw en vooral natuur. Geen versnippering meer, maar een mooi georganiseerd landgebruik waarin alles een eigen plaats heeft. |
