So far consideration has been given to problems in urban environmental planning and management in cities of the South in general. In this section, the focus is on the various regions for which Directorate General IB of the European Commission is responsible. A description of environmental problems in Africa is also provided, which is the responsibility of Directorate General VIII.
‘Asia' is a difficult territory to analyse: as a whole it contains three fifths of the population of the world and half of its major cities and tens of thousands of urban places. In practice it is necessary to look at subregions with major cultural differences and in practice, the EC does make various distinctions.
On the one hand the region contains countries which are among the richest in the world (Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore) which, in view of their wealth, are not of concern to EC DG IB. Even the ‘developing countries' of the region are divided between DGs, with China, containing almost half the region's population and a vital part of East Asia in political, economic and ethnic terms, is also not part of the responsibility of DG IB. Even considering just those Asian countries for which DG IB is responsible, it is possible to speak of different subcontinents in South and Southeast Asia and even within these of differences in wealth and structure which make generalisations difficult.
The overall picture of demographic change in the region is one of continued growth, but at a diminishing rate. In spite of rapid increases in life expectancy over the past 30 years, population growth has slowed from rates as high as 3% in the 1980s to rates almost universally below 2% in the mid 1990s. Whilst many countries continue to possess a predominantly young population, with progress to the year 2000 populations everywhere will become older on average.
The developing countries of Asia are almost entirely still predominantly rural; depending on how urban areas are defined, the percentage of urban population of the whole region lies in the region of 30%. A few of the smaller, more remote countries (Nepal, Bhutan, Laos) have an urban population considerably below 20% whilst some countries including Malaysia and the Philippines are approaching 50% urbanised. Prima facie, urbanisation can be expected to continue to be fuelled by rural-urban migration in the context of further economic development. However, whilst, as noted earlier in this chapter, urbanisation is expected to continue in Asia, internal growth of cities is coming to play a more important role in urban growth than migration.
Whilst there are exceptions, there is nevertheless a distinct relationship between economic development and urbanisation. Although even Asia possesses countries with weak economic growth in recent years, on the whole there is a clear contrast between the economic problems of Africa and Latin America on the one hand and the consistently high levels of economic growth in Asia (between four and six percent per year over a ten year period for the so-called ‘Asian tigers'). What is notable, however, is that economic growth within countries - and particularly the larger countries such as India and Indonesia - has been uneven.
In the first instance, the major cities in the region have been the centres of economic growth and change, generating both industrialisation and becoming major service centres. Meanwhile, whilst rural economies are certainly changing in structure, they are nevertheless neither benefiting from the economic growth of the urban areas nor themselves urbanising. Cities such as Bombay, Calcutta, Dhaka, Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila possess a different level of wealth to that found in the more distant hinterlands of these countries.
Indeed, it is evident that these cities are becoming increasingly difficult to define as cities, as urban functions spread into wide subregions including a decentralisation of modern industries. Whilst in India a number of such urban regions have developed, in some countries of the region, including Bangladesh, Thailand and the Philippines, the primacy rate is extremely high due to the capital city having grown enormously, taking in surrounding towns and countryside into the regional economy with the rural population continuing to farm but also participating, as cheap labour, in the urban economy.
Such urban regions are structurally extremely complex, comprising at least three kinds of city in one: a ‘modern' city of international middle classes with a ‘western' lifestyle, an indigenous urban middle class and a ‘rurban' poor some with continuing rural links though increasing numbers now fully urbanised, living in informal settlements lacking basic urban services and suffering multiple hazards. These divisions can be found in all the major urban regions in the developing countries of Asia with the level of economic wealth (GNP per capita) being a crude indicator of the relative sizes of these three urban components.
The structure of secondary cities in Asia varies considerably between countries. A few countries still have no major cities. In others, the new metropolitan regions dominate urban growth. In others, notably India and Indonesia but more recently also Vietnam and the Philippines, even secondary cities are expanding to contain several hundred thousand and sometimes over a million people.
When analysing cities in terms of size categories, there is no common pattern, with some countries displaying more rapid growth in the rural towns, some in the intermediate cities and some (in terms of total numbers of people rather than percentage growth) in the large metropolitan regions. It is impossible to generalise concerning the small and intermediate cities of which there are many thousands in the region. These range from very dynamic new industrial centres to very undynamic administrative centres in economically backward regions.
The provision of environmental services and provision of a pleasant environment varies between countries and between cities in individual countries. On the whole the richer countries - Malaysia and Thailand at one end (US$ 2,000+ per capita GNP) and India and Bangladesh at the other (US$ 300- per capita GNP) - provide a better urban living and working environment than the poorer countries. However, serious environmental problems can be found in the cities of all countries and these are generally more serious in the metropolitan regions than in the smaller cities.
There are few cities in the region with complete sewer systems and a proportion of the population suffers from a lack of safe water supply (the poor generally pay considerably more for water purchased from vendors than the rich who receive water from piped supplies). Solid waste collection is a problem in most cities of the region with percentages informally disposed of informally (burned, buried or thrown into waterways and onto vacant land) ranging from twenty to forty percent; final disposal is generally by open dumping without control of methane, leachate or scattering by wind. Increasing respiratory problems amongst the urban population indicates the rapidly increasing problem of air pollution, mainly from increasingly intense road traffic.
The general failure of the capacity for governments to control environmental problems is fuelling new approaches. In the past local governments have been uniformly weak, with the central government absorbing resources and making investments directly in urban infrastructure and services. This is changing, with decentralisation on the political agenda and in process of implementation in most countries of the region (notable examples are India, the Philippines and, to a lesser degree Thailand and Indonesia).
Meanwhile, as elsewhere, there is a new focus on the urban environment. In countries where economic growth has brought additional revenues, there is some focus on investment in environmental infrastructure. In many countries privatisation of some services but also a greater involvement of poor communities in their own provision accompany this. The case of Orangi in Karachi, where over 100,000 people are now served by a wastewater collector system built by the community is now well known and being emulated in other cities in South Asia. Community solid waste management is now being organised in many cities of the region. In some countries the central government is providing incentives to cities that show that they have the will to improve their performance in environmental management.
The newest development in cities of the region is the initiation of participatory environmental action planning systems either directly or indirectly inspired by Local Agenda 21. Many cities in India have started such procedures and they many other countries in the region are developing their own approaches, often with outside assistance. The EC is involved in helping to develop such systems in a selection of cities in China.
The following paragraphs are concerned with sub-Saharan Africa and the next section with North Africa together with the countries of the eastern Mediterranean. In contrast to other regions, although Africa is urbanising rapidly, it is doing so in a situation of economic stagnation and, in many countries long-term decline. In fact urbanisation is a relatively new phenomenon in Africa with an urban population in 1950, with few exceptions, below 10%. In the mid 1990s urban populations range between 20 and 50%. As yet there are few cities of over one million population.
Although the rate of population growth is declining, it is doing so slower than elsewhere and the age profile of the population of most countries in the region is one with over 50% under the age of 15. Even with a lower rate of urbanisation in the past, this indicates that urban areas are likely nevertheless to continue to grow rapidly; already natural increase of urban populations exceeds growth from immigration.
With the decline in the economies of the region from a level that was already low, cities do not have the resources to provide what elsewhere would be considered to be adequate services. Informal housing is spreading into the surrounding countryside and informal markets are taking over from a declining formal retail sector. Water supply systems, sewer systems and solid waste management systems inherited from colonial times - under which circumstances most of the cities in the region were founded - are not being extended and are seriously overloaded and inadequately maintained.
Lack of any strong industrialisation, whilst sparing the cities from industrial pollution, has contributed to the economic insecurity of the majority of urban populations. African cities are now predominantly ‘informal cities' with services provided - generally of rather poor quality - by communities themselves. This not only refers to water supply and public transport but also to food production: urban farming is an increasingly widespread phenomenon where families once occupied in industry, the public sector and even the professions are ‘returning' to farming on the edge or in the interstices of the city to supply them with food they otherwise not afford or as a means of supplementing inadequate incomes.
Meanwhile the main cities and many of the secondary cities still maintain the semblance of a modern city in or adjacent to the spreading informal city. This can still provide the goods and services expected by small foreign populations and local elites. Private services provided by cheap labour substitute for the publicly provided services to be found in cities in wealthier countries and cities.
In spite of the de facto informalisation of the cities and the inadequacy of the resources of municipalities to provide urban services, there remains in many of the countries of the region some resistance to acknowledging the situation to the degree of changing outlooks towards the facilitation of improved methods of community self-management. This is in part a legacy of colonial administrative culture and in some cases fuelled by community antagonisms. Many of the countries of the region have suffered communal strife and civil wars, which renders cooperative approaches to urban management difficult to achieve.
This region has a long history and a well-developed culture of urban living. Already in the 1950s a significant proportion of the population of the region was living in urban areas (ranging from over 20% to over 30%). By the mid 1990s the proportion living in urban areas had increased to between 45% and 55% - with the Libyan urban population having risen to over 80%. With relatively high rates of population growth in recent years, the growth of cities has been very rapid in the region.
Traditionally the region has strong trading traditions. This service economy has remained strong but is not enough in itself to support modern economies. In practice GNP per capita throughout the region puts the southern Mediterranean countries in the lower-middle income bracket. In some cases (Algeria, Libya and to some degree Egypt) this has been achieved as major exporters of oil and gas. There has also been some industrialisation of the region both through foreign and local investments - albeit not on a level with that experienced in Asia.
Links with countries of the Northern Mediterranean and, in general with Europe are important to these countries. On the one hand the tourist industry is a considerable component of the economies of these countries. However, security problems have affected the tourist industry negatively and become the subject for more general political concerns regarding relations between European countries and those of the Southern Mediterranean.
The region now possesses a number of large cities, albeit only Cairo ranks as ‘megacity' on a global scale. The urban traditions also mean that there is a spread of small and intermediate cities with a longer history (Aleppo in Syria is the longest inhabited city in the world). This contributes towards long traditions of urban management that have stood the regions cities in good stead.
Environmental problems are to be found in the cities of the region as elsewhere, but seen in the context of modest per capita income, the level of environmental services is relatively high. Most cities of the region possess sanitary sewer systems, albeit incomplete and with wastewater remaining poorly treated or not treated at all. This is becoming a problem for the contamination of regional lakes and the Mediterranean and also for scarce drinking water resources.
Although water supply is becoming a major problem throughout a region that is predominantly arid, steps have generally been taken in time to ensure that water is available to the expanding cities. With rapidly increasing volumes of solid waste in the cities, municipalities are finding it difficult to maintain and adequate service and even the well-known system of Cairo, where an ethnic minority has traditionally collected and recycled the cities solid waste is breaking down under the unmanageable volume. The dry climate of the region added to the increases in traffic is precipitating a crisis of air pollution in many of the larger cities of the region.
An important aspect of the environment of many of the cities of the region is the historic legacy, which is an important resource for attracting tourists. There has been considerable work done in the region to restore and maintain historic areas, which has been of benefit not only to tourists but also to the living conditions of the local population.
Although municipal government is relatively well-developed when compared, for instance, to much of Asia or Africa, the new approaches to urban environmental management in the format of Local Agenda 21 are not making as rapid a headway as elsewhere in spite of relatively intensive cooperation with municipalities in the northern Mediterranean. This would seem in part to the authoritarian government traditions throughout the region that do not immediately lend themselves to participatory mechanisms. There are signs that, in the context of a number of international programmes, including initiatives supported by the EC, that this is in process of changing.
Today in Latin America, three out of four inhabitants live in urban areas and, by the year 2000, an estimated 76% of the Latin American population will be urban, which constitutes the highest rate of urban population registered within the developing world (UNCHS, 1996). For many decades Latin America had the most rapid population growth rate of the world's regions, and a rate of urban population growth, particularly in large cities, to match that of other regions of the South.
Since 1980, however, there have been two notable changes, namely a slowing of population growth and smaller increases in the levels of urbanisation especially with respect to the largest cities of the region. By 1990 rural areas accounted for 28.5% of the regional population, urban areas with less than 1 million inhabitants concentrating 41.8% with the remaining 29.7% of the population living in cities of more than one million inhabitants (CELADE, 1995).
The level of urbanisation varies between countries with three broad categories. Firstly there is a group of highly urbanised countries, with more than 80% of their population living in urban areas, which includes Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela. Most countries within the region fall in a second group, including Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Nicaragua and Cuba with between 50 and 80 per cent living in urban areas. The third group, including Paraguay and most Central American countries has less than 50% of the population living in urban areas (UNCHS 1996).
The urbanisation pattern of each country within the region has to be considered in the light of specific historical and structural demographic processes. For example, the three countries of the southern cone have long been among the most urbanised nations in the world, but also the slowest growing manufacturing output in the whole region. Their high level of urbanisation is a result of the rapid European immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By contrast, in countries like Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, the fast growth of urban population is more recent and linked to rapid economic growth.
The 1980s was a decade of economic adjustment for most Latin American countries and also of rising poverty, a trend that reversed the previous economic gains. In Latin America and the Caribbean the numbers of people living in absolute poverty grew from 91 million in 1980 to 133 million people in 1989, a rise from 26% to 32% (Psacharapoulos et al, 1993). Good performance on human and social indicators was the exception rather than the rule. Adjustment policies were adopted because of major economic imbalances that developed in the early 1980s in most Latin American countries. What was originally seen as a temporary belt-tightening lasted for more than a decade, affecting not only the immediate well being of the population but also the long-term sustainable use of the environmental resources.
Despite some improvements in the recent years, economic restructuring for the decade as a whole had adverse effects on the urban poor and middle classes with falling per capita incomes, deteriorating income distribution and reduced provision of social services. The changes in economic structure over the 1980s, associated with stabilisation and adjustment policies, worked in two directions: increasing urban poverty by depressing real wages and employment, and reducing rural poverty by some improvements in the terms of trade (CEPAL 1995).
Even the most prosperous cities in economic terms, are experiencing processes of environmental degradation and social exclusion. Urban environmental degradation has different impacts on different socio-economic sectors of the population resulting in processes of spatial segregation and affecting the most vulnerable. The ‘territoriality' of poverty indicates the unequal distribution of wealth and the social division of the urban space, resulting in the emergence of different qualities of environment for different segments of the population.
The expansion of urban areas over the urban fringe without provision of services and infrastructure results in a poor quality of life and the loss of land suitable for agriculture. Also the provision of infrastructure becomes more expensive due to the low densities. On the other hand, the increasing density of areas of high environmental risk and low environmental tolerance within the urban systems results in overcrowded households vulnerable to recurrent floods and the deficit of communal services and infrastructure.
Most governments in the region still focus on economic growth at the expense of social and environmental considerations. A consultation carried out by the Earth Council (1997) in the context of Rio+5 Forum reveals that commitment and aspirations expressed at the 1992 UNCED Conference and other international meetings related to SD have been poorly disseminated and assimilated in the region. In spite of this, some countries have undertaken initiatives to integrate the different dimensions of SD into the scope
of sub-regional economic integration strategies, but as a general rule Latin American countries are still weakly engaged in the promotion of regional and local programmes for sustainability.
In this context local governments are facing new challenges. Urban development is increasingly subordinated to national macroeconomic policies and the decisions and movements of transnational capital. At the same, increasing democratisation and decentralisation have pushed local governments to abandon their traditional role as urban administrators and to assume the challenge of how to improve the living environment and social conditions of their inhabitants, enhancing local governance.
In 1994 a two-week mission by the staff of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) reviewed some of the regional Local Agenda 21 initiatives and concluded that Latin American cities are in the forefront of the world-wide initiatives in the field. However these experiences are by no means generalised throughout the region and include no more than a dozen initiatives including those of Bogota, Buga, and Manizales (Colombia), Quito (Ecuador), Cajamarca (Peru), Santos, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba (Brazil), Concepcion (Chile) and San Jose (Costa Rica). Within these countries, Brazil and Colombia are in the forefront of disseminating these experiences to other cities, while municipalities in Uruguay and Argentina still have little experience in Local Agenda 21 approaches to urban EPM.
Looking at the origin of the regional experiences fostering a sustainable urban development agenda, in most cases these rely on innovative leadership and international connections on the part of local authorities, such as in the case of the well-known experiences of Bogota and Curitiba. In a few cases including the experience of Concepcion national authorities have been involved, supporting local programmes from the beginning within a national-level decentralisation strategy. In others, as in the cases of Quito and San Jose, although the initiatives started at the local level, national authorities are becoming increasingly involved in order to tackle sensitive political issues of municipal power and decentralisation.