Every third
person will be a slum dweller within 30 years, UN agency warns
Biggest study of world's cities finds 940 million
already living in squalor
John Vidal
Saturday October 4, 2003
The Guardian
One in every three people in the world will live in
slums within 30 years unless governments control unprecedented urban
growth, according to a UN report. The largest study ever made of global
urban conditions has found that 940 million people - almost one-sixth of
the world's population - already live in squalid, unhealthy areas, mostly
without water, sanitation, public services or legal security.
The report,
from the UN human settlements programme, UN-habitat, based in Nairobi,
found that urban slums were growing faster than expected, and that the
balance of global poverty was shifting rapidly from the countryside to
cities.
Africa now
has 20% of the world's slum dwellers and Latin America 14%, but the worst
urban conditions are in Asia, where more than 550 million people live in
what the UN calls unacceptable conditions.
The world's
30 richest countries are home to just 2% of slum dwellers; in contrast,
80% of the urban population of the world's 30 least developed countries
live in slums. Although the report emphasised that not all slum dwellers
are poor, the UN warned that unplanned, unsanitary settlements threaten
political stability and are creating the climate for an explosion of
social problems.
Evils
"There is a vacuum developing, because local authorities have no
access to the many slums," said Anna Tibaijuka, the director of
UN-habitat.
"Extreme
inequality and idleness lead people to anti-social behaviour. Slums are
the places where all the evils come together, where peace and security is
elusive and where young people cannot be protected."
Ms Tibaijuka
called on governments to urgently address a deteriorating situation which
potentially threatened security and would increase pressures on
immigration to rich countries. The report found that some slums were now
as large as cities. The Kibera district in Nairobi, classed as the largest
slum in the world, has as many as 600,000 people. The Dharavi area of
Mumbai and the Orangi district of Karachi have only slightly fewer people,
while the Ashaiman slum is now larger than the city of Tema in Ghana,
around which it grew.
Other cities,
such as Dhaka in Bangladesh, have several hundred small slums or squatter
settlements, which have no access to services and are liable to be moved
on at short notice. "The world is entering a significant stage,"
say the report's authors. "Over the next 30 years, the urban
population in the developing world will double to about 4 billion people,
at the rate of about 70 million a year. Rural populations will barely
increase and begin to decline after 2020."
The authors
also predicted that threequarters of the world's anticipated population
growth would take place in relatively small cities with populations of
between 1 million and 5million. The report found that the world's urban
population had increased by 36% in the 1990s, and that city authorities
had been unable or unwilling to keep up.
"Slums
are the product of failed policies, bad governance, corruption and a lack
of political will," the report says. "Very few countries have
recognised this critical situation and very little effort is going into
providing jobs or services."
But the
authors roundly blamed laissez-faire globalisation and
"neo-liberal" economic policies imposed on poor countries by
global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World
Trade Organisation for much of the damage caused to cities over the past
20 years.
The authors
say people are encouraged to move to the cities by factors including the
privatisation of public services, job losses, and the removal of subsidies
and tax breaks from key industries. Such effects, they say, increase
inequality, and make sure that those who move to the cities remain in deep
poverty.
"One of
the few direct benefits that slum dwellers have gained from globalisation
is greater access to aid agencies," the report says.
"But the
very limited advantages are outweighed by a truly formidable array of
disadvantages - so many, in fact, that some governments might be excused
for not wishing to take part at all in globalisation if they have the
welfare of the urban poor at heart."
"In a
form of colonialisation that is probably more stringent than the original,
many developing countries have become... suppliers of raw commodities to
the world, and fall further and further behind."
The authors
conclude that as "cities have become a dumping ground for people
working in unskilled, unprotected and low-wage industries and trades...
the slums of the developing world swell".
Centres of decay and
deprivation
· Phnom
Penh, Cambodia Up to 230,000 people live in dilapidated buildings which
are often flooded. Squatter settlements have grown beside railway tracks,
canals and reservoirs
· Nairobi,
Kenya Some 600,000 people live in Kibera, the world's largest slum, where
there is little running water, poor sanitary facilities and frequent
outbreaks of violence
· Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil Favelas started appearing in the 1950s, and there are now
about 700, housing a total of about 1 million people. Many have been
upgraded
· Colombo,
Sri Lanka Thousands live in deteriorating tenement blocks or derelict
houses on high land in the old city centre
· Cairo,
Egypt Slum areas have developed on desert land owned by the state. Some
began as relocation sites for rubbish collectors and the army
· Mumbai,
India Tens of thousands live in decaying slums known as chawls. These were
built by factory owners and sometimes collapse in the monsoons
