Better urban planning, along with policies to improve food distribution and farming inputs would go a long way towards alleviating poverty.
Economists, demographers and social scientists often argue that the earth will be unable to meet the needs of a population set to grow from 6.7bn now to 9.19bn in 2050. Historically, the basis of this argument is Thomas Malthus's 1798 essay on the Principle of Population in which he argued that population would grow faster than food supply, leading to global disaster.
This prediction has been applied in particular to the world’s urban areas, which currently host half the world’s population and which are collectively growing at the rate of five million residents every month. United Nations estimates indicate that the world’s urban population will double in the next 40 years, rising from 3.3bn in 2007 to 6.4bn in 2050. The pessimists see these “exploding urban populations” as the main cause of poverty, hunger and underdevelopment in the cities of the developing world, where the majority of the world’s people live, and which are responsible for virtually all of the world’s urban population growth.
Cities are associated with environmental degradation, squalor, poverty and crime. It is only in recent years that policymakers have begun to understand that well-planned and well-governed cities can prevent the negative consequences of urbanisation, and can actually provide an opportunity to address and mitigate urban poverty and environmental degradation.
Today's global food and energy crisis may appear to validate Malthus’s prediction, but a deeper analysis of the underlying causes of the crisis point a finger at governance rather than at scarcity. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has noted that the Bengal famine in 1943 did not result from a lack of food for everyone, but from poor governance that resulted in inequitable or inefficient food distribution systems. The current food crisis has its roots in a range of inappropriate policy decisions, the lack of investment in infrastructure, corruption and financial greed. Some analysts believe that if these things are tackled, the world would have enough food to feed twice its current population. Malawi is a good example of how investments in agriculture can avert famine; once reliant on food aid, it introduced a farm input subsidy programme in 2007 which improved maize harvests by more than 70%.
Hunger is nevertheless increasing around the world. The most recent estimates by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) put the number of hungry people in 2007 at 923m, a figure that has no doubt risen in the past year with the rising cost of food and fuel. The situation is likely to worsen in urban areas, where continuing inflation has hit food prices and other basic commodities and the cost of survival has risen dramatically, even when input costs such as those associated with fuel have gone down.
Often it is not scarcity that drives up prices, but poor distribution mechanisms and inequitable access. Famines are also more frequent in countries that are poorly governed and where corruption is rife. Recent news reports indicate that food scarcity in some African countries has been the result of corrupt practices that distort food supply chains, making food unaffordable for the majority of the people.
In Africa, poor governance is exacerbated by lack of investment in infrastructure. Only 7% of arable land in Africa benefits from irrigation, which means that the vast majority of farmers rely entirely on rain to produce crops. Less than 14% of the roads in Africa are paved, and the vast majority of the continent’s rural populations lack electricity. Poor or non-existent infrastructure makes it harder to transport food to areas where it is needed most, and makes crop production less competitive.
In countries facing famine or starvation, it is the poorest who die, not the rich. The data and analysis we have at UN-HABITAT shows that the urban poor are particularly vulnerable in times of food scarcity or inflation, not just because they are forced to spend up to 80% of their incomes on food but also because are often left out when food aid allocations are made. This is not just a reflection of their poverty but of their exclusion and the inequality that intensifies it. Most food aid ends up in remote rural areas; urban poor populations are hardly ever targeted.
Similarly, if we look at the world’s urban areas, it is clear that it is not the number of people residing in a city that determines its liveability and prosperity, but whether the city is planned and managed to deal with these populations. Beijing, one of the world’s largest cities, exhibits among the lowest levels of inequality in the world, while Nairobi, with one-third the population of Beijing, is one of the world’s most unequal cities.
In the case of Nairobi, low levels of GDP per capita, poor planning and lack of political will to address urban poverty are to blame for the large numbers of slums and excluded city dwellers. These factors, rather than the growing numbers of people in the city, have sustained inequality in access to services, which have further compounded the problem of urban poverty.
I use the Nairobi example to reaffirm Sen’s thesis – that unequal access to resources and opportunities are more important determinants of famine and underdevelopment than scarcity. Many African governments believe that if only they could keep out rural migrants from their cities, urban poverty could be stemmed. In countries such as Zimbabwe, the policy of stopping rural migrants from setting up home in urban areas has led to an increase in urban poverty levels, as those who live “illegally” in the city are denied access to services that could make them less vulnerable to poverty. In many sub-Saharan African countries, apartheid and colonial policies ensured that some benefitted from services at the expense of others. These policies continue to this day, and have exacerbated urban poverty and inequality.
High levels of inequality present a double hazard: they have a damping effect on economic growth and contribute to a less favourable environment for investment. Just as importantly, urban inequality has a direct impact on all aspects of human development, including health, nutrition, gender equality and education. UN-HABITAT data shows, for example, that women and children living in slums are more likely to die sooner or suffer poor health than those living in non-slum areas of the same city. Unequal access to opportunity and services, rather than poverty per se, have thus shown to play a critical role in determining who will survive urban life and who will not.
Many cities and countries are addressing the challenges and opportunities provided by cities by adopting innovative approaches to urban planning and management that are inclusive, pro-poor and responsive to new challenges such as climate change. From China to Colombia, and everywhere in between, national and local governments are making critical choices that promote equity and sustainability in cities. These governments recognise that cities are not just part of the problem; they are, and must be, part of the solution.
By: N. Peter Kramer
