Urban Environmental Governance: Global Experience

Abstract

This chapter is intended to present strategic approaches and an overview of urban environmental governance from global perspective. It provides a brief overview of the evolution of global environmental governance concomitantly the interface with urban transformation. The chapter briefly discusses the complex issues associated with environment from a global economic growth and urbanisation lens. This evolution is related to environmental governance in terms of practice with a broader context of sustainable development which was initially associated with developed countries and later by developing countries. Further, the chapter proceeds to highlight the nexus between ‘urbanisation’ and ‘environment’ in terms of how it has drastically changed the quality of urban life in India and argues that environmental issues are inextricably linked to urbanisation.

2.1 Introduction

The world is getting rapidly urbanised. By 2030, particularly, developing countries of Asia and Africa will have more people living in urban areas than rural (UN-HABITAT 2008). Cities are reconfiguring on a massive scale at both spatial and demographic levels in the form of clusters, urban corridors, suburban sprawl and agglomeration. Such an urban transformation drastically impacts the territorial, economic, political, sociocultural and ecological systems in terms of generating negative externalities. Similarly, cities in the Asia-Pacific region constitute not only engines of economic growth but also reflect interconnectivity between global and regional economies. Certainly, they reflect the emerging links between urbanisation and interdependence among cities of the globe besides symbolising new patterns of increased economic activities. Such global and regional convergence can trigger imbalance for urban regional development besides leading to a diffused spatial development by way of prioritising economic centres rather than environmental and ecological concerns.

2.2 Need for Urban Environmental Governance: The Global Context

The unprecedented urbanisation process is a remarkable phenomenon of the twenty-first century (UNEP 2002) as reflected in the fact that nearly 82% of the urban population live in the developing countries and that the aggregate annual population increase in the six developing countries’ cities like New Delhi and Mumbai (India), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Lagos (Nigeria), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Karachi (Pakistan) is higher than the entire population of Europe (UNHSP 2013: 25). Some of the fastest-growing cities have emerged in Asia and Africa (Bangalore, Mumbai, Seoul and Tokyo). Not only they differ in size and density, but also their urban development which is mostly unplanned and uncoordinated, hence facing severe social, environmental and ecological crisis. Thus, urban development in the developing countries is most ambivalent underlying the dynamic process of diversification, capital accumulation, specialisation and spatial expansion (Nas and Veenman 1998: 102).

The process of globalisation includes two distinct broad processes: (i) movement of commodities, capital, people and information technology through space referred to as ‘deterritorialisation ’ and (ii) spatial reconfiguration which allows these flows to happen referred to as ‘reterritorialisation’ (Brenner 1999; Marcotullio 2003: 226). Concomitantly, the cities’ physical transformation, as a part of reterritorialisation process, embarks on changes in land use pattern such as creation of (i) ‘industrial parks’ in major metropolitan cities like Singapore, Taipei, Bangkok and Seoul; (ii) urban corridors like Bangalore-Mysore corridor, Bangalore-Tumkur corridor and IT corridor in Bangalore; and (iii) building special zones or industrial enclaves like special economic zones (SEZs) around Bangalore or export process zones (SPZs) located next to the megacities (Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo). Such a territorial convergence inevitably leads to the overlapping of ecological and environmental crisis (Nas and Veenman 1998: 102) like the destruction of ecosystems, spread of diseases, pollution, concentration of energy supplies, climate change and so on. The question is how does the ‘global processes’ impact the local ecology and environment.

Post-globalisation studies have, in fact, elaborated on the relationship between environmental issues and urban development in the context of developing countries (McGranahan et al. 2001; Marcotullio 2003; UN-HABITAT 2008). As the global economic process deepens and identifies with the ‘world-city’ formation (Harvey 1985; Marcotullio 2003), such process emphasises international standard of infrastructure development. The cities, therefore, often act as administrative/financial/economic as well as cultural high points with high value-added activities (like business, communication, services, information technology, research, etc.). For instance, the table below (see Table 2.1) provides top 20 cities of the world evenly spread across Asia-Pacific, Europe and the America. These cities are ranked by Global Cities Index (GCI) based on their global engagement in five different areas, i.e. business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural exchange and political engagement.

Table 2.1 Top global cities (ranking for 2014)

For Asia-Pacific region, three cities are ranked as global cities, i.e. Mumbai (ranked 8th), Bangalore (ranked 11th) and Chennai (ranked 17th). With the emergence of such functional city system, it is clear that global cities are not uniform and well equipped with respect of ‘innovation’ and ‘competition’. Due to the functional uniqueness of global/world cities, they differ in their physical, spatial density and overlapping infrastructure. With the overlapping multilevel jurisdiction (legal, administrative, political, etc.) of the cities, the available socioeconomic opportunities further deeply influence the urban development. Arguing further on the interlinkage between urban development and urban environment, environmental problems are categorised into (i) green and (ii) brown agendas clearly suggesting a shift in the environmental problems from the local to global further threatening the ecosystem (Marcotullio 2003; UNHSP 2009). The categorisation of environmental agendas signifies (i) citizen challenges and (ii) scale of environmental problems. Certainly, the process of global integration of cities has not only increased inequalities and levels of poverty but has severely impacted on the relationship between urban development and environment (UNEP 2002). But shifts in the environmental agendas of developing countries differ from the experience of Western countries . The environmental problems are ‘sequential’ over a long period of time in Western countries, while they are overlapping and accumulating unfinished agendas in the developing countries (Marcotullio 2003). The reason is technological intervention that has changed the relationship pattern of uneven urban development and environment. Thus, the debate has shifted away from the conceptual and theoretical models of environment towards outcomes such as sustainability across a number of sectors and spatial dimensions.

2.3 Global Environmental Threats and Challenges

The Brundtland Commission report, ‘Our Common Future’, critically remarked that ‘the future will be predominantly urban and the most immediate environmental concerns of most people will be urban one’s’ (UN 1987: 255; Satterthwaite 2003: 74). Nearly two-thirds of the world population will be living in the cities¹ consuming 80–90% of the global energy for immediate use while contributing 70–80% of greenhouse gas emissions (Otto-Zimmermann 2011). Similarly, world population, now at over six billion, is expected to reach around nine billion by 2050.² Nearly half of the earth’s population is living in cities (Goffman 2005). Population growth is mostly concentrated in the developing world, particularly in Asian region which is estimated to home to more than 50% of the global urban population by 2050 (State and Outlook 2010).

Rapid urbanisation puts severe pressure on access and quality of services available to its population. For example, it is estimated that 80% of the global greenhouse gas emissions originate from cities (UNEP City Alliance Programme). The interface between cities and urban development produces and reproduces environmental and ecological impact at global, national and regional/local scale which include climate change, different kinds of pollution, loss of biodiversity and destruction of sensitive ecological systems altering not only natural features such as erosion and loss of habitat of species but also straining access to and quality of urban services like water, sanitation, land, fuel, transportation and other resources for their survival (see Table 2.4). Such phenomenon is generally referred to as ‘urban footprint ’ (UNESCAP 2005; Satterthwaite 2003). In addition, the urban sprawl has a damaging effect on environment and ecology at the local level. Lack of effective urban management and planning initiatives and incoherent urban policies accentuate the environmental problems. Governing institutions, legal systems and political will are seldom reformed to the changing urban scenario (Hardoy et al. 2001).

Such global environmental challenges are critically linked to urban poverty and sustainability of cities . This ultimately further increases the pressure on the local environment and ecosystems, especially their capacity to promote access³ to basic amenities (State and outlook 2010). Cities are often prone to various kinds of environmental and ecological disasters like earthquake, volcanic eruptions, storms, tornados and flood and storm surge (see Table 2.2). There has been considerable threat to climate in terms of 60% of degraded ecosystems, loss of 35% of mangroves and destruction of 20% of world’s precious coral reefs. Similarly, a potential threat to the loss of natural species has increased by 100%. It is estimated that each year 150,000 sq. kms of forest is lost. Similarly, one out of every four households is living in poverty especially in Asia and Africa (see Table 2.3). Nearly 65% of cities in the developing countries do not treat their waste water resulting in various environmental and ecological hazards within household, at neighbourhood level, even at workplace, at the city/municipality levels, at city region or periphery region as well as in connected linkages between city and global levels.⁴

Table 2.2 Environmental disasters across major cities of the world

Table 2.3 Global environmental issues/threats

With increasing urbanisation, cities in Asia are increasingly prone to threats from climate change. Similarly, exploring the impacts of climate change on metropolitan cities is gaining prominence due to rapid changing urban environment. Unmet demands of growing urban population in terms of lack of access to water, sanitation, energy has eventually exposed urban poor being the most exposed and hence, highly vulnerable to the present unique challenges . The impact can manifest in terms of direct or indirect physical, social, economic and health-related problems. Some include (i) rise in sea levels, (ii) tropical cyclones and (iii) heavy precipitation leading to urban floods and landslides, heavy heat islands and drought (Table 2.4).

Table 2.4 Impact of climate change upon urban areas

2.4 Evolution of Global Environmental Governance (GEG)

Broadly, ‘environmental governance’ has been defined in terms of (i) institutions and ‘processes’ and (ii) outcomes. From an institutional perspective, ‘environmental governance ’ has been defined as ‘the establishment, reaffirmation or change of institutions to resolve conflicts over environmental resources’ (Paavola 2005). Similarly, Najam et al. (2006) define global environment governance ‘to the sum of organisations, policy instruments, financing mechanism, rules, procedures and norms that regulate global environmental protection’. A study by deLoe et al. (2009) defines ‘environmental governance’ as a specific form of broader ‘governance’ and refers to processes and institutions through which societies make decisions that affect the state of environment. Thus, environmental governance has been understood as offering institutional solutions for solving environmental crisis or challenges. The institutions can be in the form of ‘policies, financial mechanisms, rules, norms, regulations, distributive and procedural justice’ which influences the governance outcomes. Diverse studies have looked into environmental governance in the context of ‘process’ issues such as community participation, participation of stakeholders including the indigenous communities and minorities in the natural resource management, access to information, capacity building, transparency, accountability and so on. Hardin’s (1968) analysis of ‘tragedy of commons’ highlights appropriation and overexploitation of natural resources due to increasing interdependence. Ostrom (1990) and Ostrom et al. (1994) highlight the successful community governance of common-pool resources (such as fisheries, pastures and groundwater reservoirs) by agreed-upon rules and regulations without government policy intervention to overcome the ‘tragedy of commons’. The study by Ostrom (2000) provides an overview of the evolution of social norms and how they enable collective action. Similarly, ‘good environmental governance’ not only leads to environmental goals, such as conservation and sustainable development, but also how decisions are taken to achieve environmental goals (Jeffrey 2005).

Through the years, Global Environmental Governance has grown both in size and scope by evolving through a number of global/international/multilevel conventions/ treaties/ agreements that guide the process of governance with regard to environmental and ecosystem decline/threats.⁵ A series of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have provided the basis for an international environmental regime and regulation. These conventions and treaties are implemented with the help of small organisations called secretariats. Major international organisations such as World Bank, UN-HABITAT, UNEP and ADB and many regional associations/organisations have made substantial efforts towards promoting sustainable development in urban areas. The collective international environmental institutions are composed of organisations/NGOs/civil society and regional organisations, including private sector, multi-national corporation and business community. Major institutional decisions on environmental policy came out during the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm 1972 conference), constituted as a part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Some of the major global environmental initiatives⁶ such as ‘The Rio Earth Summit 1992 and Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development  2002’ are considered landmark summits on the evolution of GEG system (Najam et al. 2006). Thus, the evolution of global environmental governance is located and traced within a broader context of sustainable development.

The international conventions, treaties and agreements manifest into 900 multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) (Wingqvist et al. 2012). The question of implementation of these mandates and its effectiveness is measured not simply in terms of ecology and environment but also in terms of ‘development’ and outcomes like ‘equity’ which is embedded within the concept of sustainable development (Nanjam 2005). Yet, most of the agreements and treaties are declaratory in nature. And many environmental regimes are in terms of rules and norms created by non-environmental organisations like World Trade Organization, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), lending policy safeguards of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), major private banks and so on. In addition to the agreements and treaties, multiple sources of funding through donor aid flow, international financial organisations, UN agencies and international NGOs for environmental governance were given to the national governments across developing countries (Najam et al. 2006). Too many agreements, actors and resources have inevitably led to fragmentation and inefficiency (Najam et al. 2006). Similarly, many global-level reform⁷ initiatives were undertaken for the promotion of global environmental governance, which were launched under the guidance of UN and international NGOs.

Despite the pervasive nature of GEG encompassing various dimensions of environmental governance, it is ineffective in controlling or alleviating global environmental concerns and damages. GEG is yet to get standardised and is still evolving in nature. Some of the defects identified with respect to GEG are (i) complex international regimes⁸ which lack cooperation and coordination for effective implementation or enforcement, (ii) ineffective use of resources, (iii) multiplication of civil societies and NGOs both at the national and international levels, (iv) institutional fragmentation and, (v) finally, international courts and tribunals. Such an institutional fragmentation leads to conflicting agendas, duplication of work, geographical dispersion and inconsistency in rules and norms (Najam et al. 2006). One of the strongest criticisms voiced with respect to GEG has been its high dependency on voluntary funding and a short-term implementation of projects. In addition, the signatory nations have completely failed to integrate environmental stipulations into their planning and governance processes. Therefore, a plethora of multilateral and bilateral funding and private funds coupled with a variety of financing instruments (grants, loans, guarantees, technology transfer, etc.) have inevitably led to administrative and institutional fragmentation for the recipient countries (Wingqvist et al. 2012).

2.5 Urban Environmental Governance in India: Issues and Challenges

Indian cities⁹ have for long witnessed a steady increase in urban¹⁰ population,¹¹ i.e. from 27% in 1901 to 38% in 2001 (MoEF 2011; Vishwanath et al. 2013) and, similarly, from 13% in 1900 to 49% in 2005 which is projected to escalate to 60% by 2030 (Bharath et al. 2012). There are 48 urban agglomerations/cities having a population of more than one million in India (in 2011) (ibid). Thus, urbanisation¹² in India is characterised by ‘unplanned and unmanageable growth’ leading to urban sprawl (Pandey et al. 2006) and an exponential growth of informal or slum¹³ settlements.¹⁴ Such settlements face a high risk of health hazardous such as tuberculosis, malaria, dengue, cholera, typhoid and plague adversely impacting the environment (MoEF 2011). The trends of urbanisation such as ‘agglomeration, conurbation, suburbanisation, peri-urbanisation and urban sprawl’ have adverse ramifications such as spatial and vehicular density and growing demand for energy and food. The changing land use pattern, particularly, in metropolitan cities of India has a considerable impact on local environment. Thus, since the last three decades, the interface between the ‘process’ of urbanisation and environment has seriously impacted the quality of urban (Maiti and Aggrawal 2005). Moreover, environmental governance in India suffers from poor urban planning and command-and-control type of environmental management (Pandey et al. 2006).

Environmental deterioration has been closely linked to unsustainable production and consumption patterns (MoEF 2011). Consequently, access to and quality of basic urban services are very poor and do not match the rapid economic growth scenario of India cities (ibid). Various environmental problems plague India,¹⁵ particularly metro cities (coastal), which are vulnerable to cyclones and annual monsoon floods, rapid population growth, increase in household consumption, industrialisation, poor access to infrastructure and unequal distribution of resources (Anand 2013). Most often, unplanned urbanisation in India has led to specific environmental and ecological impacts such as shortage of housing, worsening of water quality, various types of pollution, problems associated with disposal of waste and hazardous wastes most common in metro cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kanpur, Hyderabad and so on (Maiti and Aggrawal 2005; MoEF 2009; Sridhar and Kashyap 2012).

2.5.1 Major Urban Challenges in India

Indian urbanisation is often referred to as an ‘agglomeration economy ’ pushed by various external and internal factors such as urban-rural migration, concentration of industrial/IT/BT clusters, creation and implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects and creation of special economic zones (SEZs) that have eventually spurred a spatial and territorial transformation seriously posing threats to environment and ecology. Some of the challenges of Indian urbanisation include the following:

2.5.1.1 Cities as Engines of Economic Growth

More than 90% of the world’s urban population growth is taking place in the developing countries coupled with increasing number of largest cities¹⁶ (UN-HABITAT 2010: 4; UNHSP 2011: 2). It is estimated that ‘half of the world’s megacities (12 out 21) are now in Asia. Similarly, seven out of ten most populous cities of the world are now in Asia (Tokyo, New Delhi, Mumbai, Shanghai, Kolkata, Dhaka and Karachi). Irrespective of the nature of countries (high/middle/low income), cities in Asia¹⁷ have recorded the highest growth rate for the past two decades, contributing as much as 30% of the global economic output (in 2008). Asian cities are most often referred to as ‘agglomeration economies’, ‘factory of the world’ for international financial centres and ‘knowledge economies’ (ibid). In Asia two most significant reasons for registering a high economic growth are (i) migration (rural-urban or urban-urban) and (ii) reclassification of ‘rural’ to ‘urban’ (UN-HABITAT 2010). A high economic growth rate has led to an increased demand for better infrastructure and resources (physical and basic amenities) particularly land. In fact, the entire process is a defining feature of the rapid urbanisation pattern in Asia. One of the most threatening features of India’s urbanisation process is population/demographic explosion in cities¹⁸ (Maiti and Aggrawal 2005). The total urban population has increased from 26 to 285 million.¹⁹ Concomitantly, a vast majority of migrant population has settled in slums and informal settlements of India’s metro cities, such as New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai (see Table 2.5). The total slum population in India has recorded an increase of 41% in million plus cities.

Table 2.5 Growth of slum population in the four metropolitan cities in India

This unabated urbanisation has unleashed serious environmental problems in terms of inadequate housing, spatial density, lack of access to basic services,²⁰ excessive pollution, degeneration of nonrenewable resources and an increase in informal activities. Indeed, urbanisation has propelled the urban territorial restructuring in terms of ‘agglomeration, urban corridors, conurbation, special zones and suburbanisation’ instigating transition in the land use management. Besides, megacities or million plus cities do not adequately practise sustainable measures, thus grossly affecting the local environment. Therefore, the capacity of local governance in terms of planning, management and governance is part of an urban growth crisis triggering ‘negative externalities’ on environment and ecology.

2.5.1.2 Rural-Urban Migration

One of the chief characteristics of India’s urbanisation is rural-urban migration.²¹ Some of the major cities or million plus cities of India like New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore,²² Chennai and Kolkata are experiencing an increase in migration from rural to metropolitan cities. The percentage of urban population in India²³ (million plus cities) have risen from 6% in 1901 to 19% in 1951 and further to 33% in 1991 (Maiti and Aggrawal 2005: 280; Sridhar and Wan 2014). A high percentage of population (68.7%) is concentrated in Class I cities²⁴ of India leading to the deficiency of urban basic services (Kundu 2006). A vast migrant population²⁵ is attracted to urban centres in search of jobs or income-generating opportunities due to expanding infrastructure facilities and access to better basic services. They inevitably settle in temporary or informal dwellings resulting in the swelling of slums in metro cities. According to 1991 census, slum population in India swelled to 41% residing in the million plus cities (ibid: 281; MoEF 2009: 138; Khan et al. 2011). Such a dramatic increase in migrant population²⁶ has exerted an adverse impact on the environment as this increase causes varying degrees of land degradation and inappropriate land management and unsustainable practices such as land shortage, encroachment, insecure land tenure and poverty. The impact is irreversible in terms of both spatial and temporal, particularly the loss of local ecosystems (in the form of physical changes like pollution/encroachment of lakes, tanks, urban floods, urban heat islands, climate change and so on.).

2.5.1.3 Unplanned Urban Development

Urban centres constitute hub of ‘economic activities’, because of rapid industrialisation and migration resulting in a huge population. Nearly 50% of the urban population comprises migrants (MoEF 2009) who resort to excessive consumption of untapped natural resources inadvertently producing pollution and illegal waste in the process. However, such an increase in per capita resource consumption makes India highly susceptible to environmental degradation (Singh 1995). These problems are associated with unplanned development and unabated urban growth.²⁷ Such an unregulated high urban growth rate in India, particularly over the last two decades, has led to a skewed access to and quality of urban basic services.²⁸ The problem of poor management is usually associated with a contagious outgrowth of cities’ high urban spatial density and proliferation of unplanned settlements/slums²⁹ which largely do not have access to an adequate water supply, sanitation, housing, waste disposal or electricity. The problem is further compounded by inadequate resources/finances of urban local bodies to cater to the growing demand for services and infrastructure. Any combination of these factors gives rise to urban health problems and new disease patterns mainly due to unhygienic living conditions, pollution, inadequate access and malnutrition . The concentration of unplanned settlements like urban slums leads to the spread of communicable and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, dengue, malaria, pneumonia, etc. (Pandey et al. 2006: 211; Bhandari 2006; MoEF 2009).

2.5.1.4 Changing Land Use Pattern

An indiscriminate urbanisation process has a tremendous impact on the urban land use pattern. While promoting ‘world-city’ infrastructure in Indian metropolitan cities, infrastructure projects on a massive scale have been implemented (such as metrorail, urban corridors, ring-roads, IT/BT industrial zones, special economic zones (SEZs) and so on in addition to huge commercial and residential complexes bringing about tremendous changes in the land use pattern. In addition, vast tracts of vacant land are occupied or absorbed by the slums (essentially migrant population) while further getting relocated to urban peripheries or marginalised land contributing to city segmentation (Kundu 2006). For example, half of the city population in New Delhi and Mumbai lives in unauthorised areas (Toutain and Gopiprasad 2006). Such development and redevelopment projects cut across geographical boundaries in the form of continuous and discontinuous urban sprawls which pass through administrative jurisdictions of many municipalities and villages. The increasing population and competing demands for land have resulted in a significant decline in the per capita availability of land from 0.89 ha in 1951 to 0.3 ha in 2001 (MoEF 2001, 2011).

Delivery of services is also affected by the segmentation of urban areas across metropolitan cities in India more than 70% of non-notified slums do not have access to basic amenities (CSO 2011). The proliferation of multiple agencies for land use through conflicting legislations, without clear defined role complicates the protection of environment. Moreover, the emergence of master plans (such as city development plan, comprehensive development plan, JNNURM and so on) for addressing the urban issues has never prioritised local environment and ecology. Urban land is often tagged as ‘real estate value’ with a high priority given to the ‘economic’ value of land while improving their current or future infrastructure and functioning capacity but completely neglecting the environment and biodiversity of the city (Toutain and Gopiprasad 2006). The city-level zonal regulations, by-laws and norms are barely followed for all types of development projects, subsequently resulting in land encroachments or illegal occupation. There is no coherent policy addressing the issue of interlinkage of urban land use and local development which presuppose the integration with environment parameters (such as water bodies, spatial, biosphere, climate factors, power, solid waste, waste management, transport). This offers a fresh challenge to the ecosystem and nonrenewable resources in terms of disintegrating the balance between urbanisation and preservation of environment in India.

2.5.1.5 Urban Informal Economy

‘Informal economy’³⁰ has been the key feature of Asian cities (UN-HABITAT 2010: 87). In India 86% of the total workforce is employed in the informal sector (between 2004 and 2005) (Naik 2009; Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2013). The presence of the informal sector is characterised by the dynamics of urbanisation process (UN-HABITAT 2010). Particularly, the share of the informal workers is highest in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh in India (Naik 2009). The participation of women in informal jobs has increased substantially in Asian cities, particularly, in the form of ‘invisible’ jobs, i.e. menial jobs like domestic labourers, piece-rate workers and assisting to small family enterprises with low wage rates without social security to the agony of women besides contributing to the deterioration of health and poverty (Kundu 1999; Roychowdhury 2004; UN-HABITAT 2009). As informal workers³¹ do not enjoy job or income security (low income) and lack of secure property rights, as such they are excluded from or have inadequate access to basic amenities or infrastructure facilities in cities. Most of them live in extremely unhygienic conditions, and the condition has further deteriorated with the segmentation of cities into formal and informal settlements further accentuating the situation (Kundu 1999). Therefore, there is a significant correlation between informal sector employment and an increase in the incidence of urban poverty (Kundu 1999; Naik 2009; UN-HABITAT 2009).

2.5.1.6 Urban Poverty and Environment

Urban poverty ³² is one of the major problems in Asian cities³³ (UN-HABITAT 2009). It is estimated that at least a billion urban dwellers³⁴ have a very poor access daily needs, often in temporary shelters/shacks and overcrowded houses, often leading a life of very poor quality termed as ‘slums/informal settlements’ (Satterthwaite 2003; Satterthwaite et al. 2011). The conditions of slums in metropolitan cities of India are very deplorable (see Table 2.6) as these settlements generally occupy either vacant or private lands without a secured tenancy, again termed as ‘illegal’, which does not authorise them to access basic services (such as water, toilets, drainage, waste collection, electricity supply or housing) (see Table 2.6). Between 1990 and 2008, the shares of urban population in terms of access to safe drinking water³⁵ declined by between 3% and 12% in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal (UNHPS 2013: 143). A study by Sridhar and Kashyap (2012) reveals that Kolkata has the highest density of slums followed by Chennai. Although New Delhi has the highest number of slums in absolute numbers, the city of Mumbai supports large number of slum dwellers (a staggering 57.7%).

Table 2.6 Environmental conditions in urban slums of India

Studies clearly point to the fact that there exists a strong evidence to prove that the urban environmental crisis is a major contributory factor to urban poverty in Asia and African cities (Satterthwaite 2003). Although the positive role of slum or urban poor in the protection of local ecology is recognised (as waste pickers, recyclers or reclaimers of waste from domestic or commercial/industries), they suffer from multiple deprivations that include unsure jobs vs low income, unsure housing, lack of access to amenities and infrastructure and so on. Most often the urban poor residing in informal settlements face serious environmental hazards like urban floods, homelessness and health-related issues that significantly contribute to poverty. Dimensions of the urban poverty-environmental nexus include (Satterthwaite n.d.; 2003):

• (i) Inadequate access to basic amenities: Most of the urban poor living in informal settlements do not have access to drinking water and sanitation facilities; they consequently suffer from innumerable health issues and diseases such as dengue, malaria, cholera, TB and so on.

• (ii) Occupational hazards: As most of the urban poor are employed in the informal sector, they are mostly exposed to various kinds of pollution, and particularly those employed in industrial/energy or transport sectors suffer from various kinds of health problems.

• (iii) Urban vulnerability to natural disasters: Since unabsorbed populations from slums live mostly in unhygienic or congested or substandard settlements, they are often victims of natural disasters like floods, rising heat/temperatures and earthquakes and subsequently are exposed to epidemics, premature deaths and injuries due to accidents in cities.

The problem is further accentuated by global warming (Satterthwaite 2003), structural issues and apathetic institutions underpinning poverty, for instance, who fight against polluter industries, donors and sometimes government. Therefore, a range of environmental crisis faced by the urban poor in urban areas overlap socioeconomic and political factors (ibid). In addition, four kinds of environmental degradation have been identified with respect to urban development including (i) high use or waste of nonrenewable resources, (ii) high use of renewable resources, (iii) high levels of biodegradable waste generation and (iv) generation of high levels of non-biodegradable emissions (Satterthwaite 2003).

2.6 Conclusion

The obvious pressure and the resultant devastating effect on the environment are most pronounced due to unabated urbanisation in the twenty-first century not only in respect of the developed but also developing countries. The inevitable linkages between the urbanisation process and environment and ecology continue to bother the present generation as well as the generations to come. Therefore, the system of environmental governance has gained significance within a broader framework of sustainability.

Due to rapid urbanisation, the metropolitan cities of India are facing daunting task of accommodating the needs of people on the one hand and addressing the challenges posed by environmental degradation on the other. In these conditions, how do the world cities cope up with environmental crisis unleashed by urbanisation? Are there any tangible efforts made towards promoting sustainable cities? Therefore, Chap. 3 provides a glimpse of sustainable city models across the world including India (Tables 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, and 2.11).

Table 2.7 Global environmental governance: treaties/conventions/organisations

Table 2.8 Global reform initiatives on global environmental governance

Table 2.9 Environmental and ecological hazards in cities

Table 2.10 Environmental threats across different regions of the world

Table 2.11 Status of urban environment in India (Kamyotra and Bharadwaj 2011)