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Urbanising Asia unprepared for climate change - UN

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 17:28 GMT

Source: alertnet // Thin Lei Win

A construction worker carries a bucket of paint as he walks among high-rise apartment blocks in Xiangfan, Hubei province December 8, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer

By Thin Lei Win 

BANGKOK (AlertNet) – Asian cities, for all their economic growth and productivity, have paid insufficient attention to the environmental and climate change issues stoking the region’s problems with poverty, development and ecology, a United Nations report released Wednesday said.

“Making cities more sustainable in the future is one of the greatest challenges facing governments, civil society and the business sector in Asia,” said State of Asian Cities 2010/2011,” the first-ever such report. 

The report, by the U.N.’s housing agency UN-HABITAT and the regional U.N. commission UNESCAP, was launched as part of the ongoing Asia Pacific Urban Forum.

It said Asia is confronting a complex set of challenges – reducing poverty, changes in consumption and environmental pollution – in a much shorter time span than industrialised countries did earlier.

The average ecological footprint – a measure of the amount of land required to sustain one individual – is five hectares per head in most Asian cities today. This is lower than those in developed countries, but is on an upward trend and is “unsustainable,” the report added.

Experts say unchecked urbanisation combined with sudden influxes of people, lack of planning, poor infrastructure as well as inadequate waste management and drainage systems both damage the environment and increase the number of people exposed to climate-related weather events in Asia.

Climate change is expected to raise sea levels, affect monsoon and rainfall patterns and increase the frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, cyclones and heat waves in the region that is already the most disaster-prone in the world.

The impacts on Asian and Pacific cities will “affect not only the human but also the physical, economic and social environments,” the report noted.

GROWING CITIES

Asia is urbanising rapidly. In the most populous region in the world, over the last two decades the increased Asian urban population equalled the combined populations of the United States and the European Union.

“No other continent has experienced such an increase in absolute numbers in such a short span of time,” the report said.

Asia now hosts 50 percent of the global urban population, both in mega-cities with populations of 10 million or more and in small and medium-sized ones with under a million people.

Yet, despite being responsible for 80 percent of the region’s gross domestic product, growing cities have not seen a significant fall in the number of urban poor, who will bear the brunt of climate impacts.

In fact, in South Asia this population increased by close to 20 million between 1993 and 2002. Asia Pacific remains host to over half of the world’s slum population, or more than 500 million people.

“In Asia rapid urbanisation has gone hand in hand with the urbanisation of poverty,” the report said.

Many suffer from poor health, according to the report, due mainly to malnutrition, poverty, cramped living conditions, polluted air – the cause of more than half a million premature deaths a year – and contaminated water.

GROWING VULNERABILITY

In the twentieth century, Asia accounted for 91 percent of all deaths and 49 percent of all damage due to natural disasters.

Many high risk zones in Asia tend to have a large proportion of urban populations, especially poor people, living in areas highly exposed to hazards related to climate change, such as coastal floodplains, river basins and low-lying areas. The poor are less able to adapt to these risks than wealthier populations.

Disasters could also push further urbanisation by forcing farmers to move to cities and towns due to loss of agricultural land from events such as inundation and drought.

“Urban and rural areas will face the challenge of water supplies, food security and ‘eco-refugees’” as a result of climate change, the report added.

Climate change will also affect energy use and costs – a vast majority of energy usage in Asia comes from fossil fuels – as well as transportation systems and building codes.

UN-HABITAT Human Settlements Officer Bharat Dahiya, who coordinated the report, told AlertNet Asian cities face numerous obstacles in becoming resilient to climate change impacts.

These obstacles include authorities’ inadequate efforts to integrate climate change concerns into cities’ and countries’ overall policies and programmes, and a lack of city-specific strategies and action plans. 

He also cited "inadequate technical, institutional and financial capacities that impede the local-level planning and its implementation that directly addresses the vulnerabilities associated with the impacts of climate change."

The report said tackling these issues will require financial assistance from both local and international actors, as well as political will and regional coordination, collaboration and commitments.

The diverse countries, languages and economic development may pose challenges, “but they must be overcome if Asian-Pacific cities are to become more sustainable and liveable,” the report said.

 (Editing by Rebekah Curtis)