DEVELOPMENT: Harmonious Cities - a Social and Environmental Solution

October 23, 2008 by editor  
Filed under Brazil, Development, Report

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 23 (IPS) - Sao Paulo emits only a tenth of the greenhouse gases that San Diego produces, even though this Brazilian metropolis is four times larger than that city in California, according to a report released today by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).

Based on such comparisons, the State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009 — a report published every two years by the UN agency, which in this new edition focuses on ”Harmonious Cities” — concludes that the contribution of cities to global warming has more to do with consumption patterns and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita than it does with the level of urbanisation.

The most urbanised region in the developing world is Latin America and the Caribbean, with 77 percent of its population living in cities — a proportion expected to increase to 85 percent within the next two decades, Cecilia Martínez, UN-Habitat’s Latin America regional director, highlighted at a press conference.

The report, which contains analysis and recommendations on spatial, social and environmental harmony, was also launched in Bangkok and London. Prosperity alone does not produce harmony; cities also need equity and sustainability, said UN-Habitat Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka.

Latin America is also the region with the highest number of unequal cities. The Gini inequality index, which measures the degree of income disparity, marked a 0.55 average coefficient for a selection of 19 Latin American cities, exceeding even the levels for Africa, which has the cities with the largest number of poor people and the greatest proportion of slum communities.

UN-Habitat considers a 0.4 coefficient as the alert line, with anything above that level indicating an unacceptable level of inequality. Western Europe, with averages ranging from 0.25 to 0.30, presents the largest number of most equal cities, but the city with the highest equality level in the world is Beijing, with a Gini coefficient of 0.22.

Not only does inequality within cities or between cities, and between regions in the same country, directly affect urban harmony, it also creates more inequality by having a dampening effect on economic growth and contributing to a less favourable environment for investment, Tibaijuka pointed out at the presentation of the report.

Latin America and the Caribbean also stand out for the faster growth rate registered in many small cities, which have gone from having tens of thousands of inhabitants to populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands in just over a decade.
An example of this rapid growth is Itaquaquecetuba, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, which in the 1970s was a city of 30,000 and has since grown to 334,000, with an annual growth rate of ten percent in the last decade.

Some 70 Brazilian cities have experienced a similar phenomenon in the past 15 years, as a result of a boom in tourism in many areas, the installation of large corporations, and other factors of economic prosperity or quality-of-life enhancement, Martínez explained.

As of 2007, the world has stepped into an ”urban century,” as last year for the first time ever the number of urban dwellers in the world surpassed the number of people living in rural areas, she added.

However, there are still sharp differences from one region to another, with Asia and Africa having only 41 and 39 percent, respectively, of their populations in urban areas, while the level of urbanisation in other continents and regions is above 70 percent.

But the current trend makes it possible to forecast that by 2050 these differences will be less pronounced, with Asia, for example, bringing its urban population up to 63 percent, chiefly driven by the growth of Chinese cities, which will account for 70 percent of that country’s total population, offsetting a slower rate of urbanisation in India.

The report and several UN-Habitat officers agree that while cities are an environmental problem and one of the great causes of global warming, they are, and must be, ”part of the solution” as well.

Better planning in the use of energy-efficient means of transportation, less dependence on motorised vehicles, an increase in urban density and policies aimed at reducing waste and spatial and social inequality could work to curb carbon emissions and contribute to mitigating climate change, they say.

The disparity in the rates of greenhouse gas emissions per person that exists between the large cities of the world is more a reflection of the patterns of consumption, in particular energy use, than of the levels of income or visible pollution.

The report’s findings reveal that Mexico City generates 2.9 tonnes of carbon emissions per person per year, and that Sao Paulo produces double that amount. San Diego is at the top of the list of carbon emitters, with 11.7 tonnes per capita — more than double the amount produced by Tokyo and three times the emissions generated by Stockholm and Seoul, but followed closely in volume of emissions by Toronto and Shanghai.

With 3,351 coastal cities located in low-altitude areas — that is, under 10 metres above sea level–, and therefore threatened by the rise in sea level, there is an enormous urban population that will suffer severe consequences as a result of climate change, the report underlines.

In addition, there are human agglomerations that are facing the risk of water shortages and natural disasters, such as those caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon in the Andean region and hurricanes in the Caribbean, Martínez said.

Adapting cities to mitigate the consequences of climate change is one of UN-Habitat’s chief concerns, and, in association with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the agency is encouraging cities to ”observe the phenomena” which are taking place and implement integrated urbanisation and environmental plans to address foreseeable challenges, Martínez concluded.

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