Global warming puts slum dwellers at risk of extreme weather events and severe water shortages

Despite contributing little or nothing to the world’s Green House Gas emissions, slum dwellers are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change - especially flooding, landslides and infectious diseases due to lack of clean water. 

Almost 1 billion people or 32% of the world’s urban population already lives in slums; this number is expected to rise to 1.8 billion by 2030.

Slums are defined as areas with

• Inadequate access to safe water;

• Inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure;

• Poor structural quality of housing;

• Overcrowding; and

• Insecure residential status

62% of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa are slum dwellers; ironically, many of these people have been forced off their farm land due to declining rainfall,  resulting from climate change.  All slum dwellers suffer from water shortage, which is defined as having less than 100L per person per day.

Recent computer modelling shows that 150 million people who live in mega cities such as Abidjan, Cotonou, Lagos, Beijing, Delhi, Mexico City and Tehran, currently endure perennial water shortage and by 2050, demographic growth will increase this figure to almost 1 billion people.

Furthermore, 30-50% less water will be available in Africa if there is a 3˚C temperature rise and this will cause water shortage for an additional 100 million urbanites.

According to the World Bank, world-wide demand for water is doubling every 21 years, more in some regions - this means that water supply cannot remotely keep pace with demand, as populations soar and cities explode.

How the scramble to score Millennium Goals has increased hunger and poverty in the rural areas

The world’s major donors are continuing to strive to meet the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.  The ultimate goal is to halve world poverty during this time.  DFID’s recent review confirms that the UK is targeting universal education, maternal health and child mortality in order to achieve Goals 2, 3, 4 and 5. 

Unfortunately none of the MDGs relate directly to the agricultural sector and donors have realised that it is quicker and easier to reach these goals if efforts are focussed in the overcrowded, poverty stricken, urban slums of Africa and India.  Such efforts also have the advantage of contributing to Goal 7, i.e. improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.  This narrow approach has led to the neglect of the rural poor and a massive and accelerating increase in rural to urban migration over the past decade.

It was expected that Goal 1: the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, could be achieved by creating economic growth in urban areas, leading to ‘full and productive employment and decent work for all’.

This expectation has been thwarted by the recent global economic crisis which has caused a massive rise in unemployment in developing countries.  According to the UN ‘more workers have been forced into vulnerable employment and find themselves and their families living in extreme poverty’; ‘rising food prices have meant that progress to end hunger has been stymied in most regions’.  The neglect of the agricultural sector has resulted in ‘children in rural areas being nearly twice as likely to be underweight as those in urban areas’ and almost 1 billion people, worldwide, are still suffering from chronic hunger.  

As a result, DFID has been urged to increase its funding of agricultural research in order to increase smallholder food production.

According to IFAD, global poverty remains a massive and predominantly rural phenomenon – with 70 per cent of the developing world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people living in rural areas.  Key areas of concern are Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

This means that future Development Goals should address the many factors that perpetuate the marginalisation of rural economies and lead to mass urbanisation:  Rural women, men and youth need to be able to participate in economic growth, and develop ways to better deal with risk.  Greater investment and attention are needed in infrastructure and utilities: particularly roads, electricity, water supply and renewable energy.  Also important are rural services, including education, health care, financial services, communication and information and communication technology services, which will turn rural areas from backwaters into places where the youth of today will want to live and will be able to fulfil their aspiration.

The vicious cycle of low productivity and exposure to price hikes

Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food says that the urbanisation trend can be slowed by implementing a form of sustainable, low input agriculture, known as agroecology, as this would improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and preserve healthy ecosystems for future generations.

"In the short term, lower import tariffs to let in food ensure urban populations are fed, but in the long term it is a disaster because local farmers can't compete," says de Schutter, adding that cheap food imports make the country extremely vulnerable to price hikes in the global markets – such as those we are now seeing in North Africa.

The cycle of poverty that is driving urbanisation

DFID Review defies expert advice and fails to address food security crisis

Despite the looming world food crisis and the fact that one billion people are already undernourished world-wide, DFID’s new funding priorities completely exclude all mention of the need to improve food security or support smallholder agriculture. 

The recent expert report on Food and Farming has lamented DFID’s long neglect of smallholder farmers and urged greater priority be given to rural development and agriculture as a driver of broad-based income growth, and to provide more incentives to the agricultural sector to address malnutrition and gender inequalities.  Amongst their recommendations for low and middle income countries are the revitalisation of the extension services, the facilitation of market access and the strengthening of land rights.  

Last year, a report sponsored by the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development, also criticised DFID for its poor record of funding agriculture, particularly African agriculture, which is just 0.3% of the total DFID budget.  Twenty-nine local and international experts in agriculture and food security expressed concern that DFID is not taking advantage of the considerable agricultural expertise that is present in British institutions to seize upon the opportunity to take the lead in such a vital sector for rural development. 

In his preface to the report, FAO’s goodwill ambassador said that agriculture must be put back at the top of the international development agenda because of the crisis that is stalking the small-scale farms and rural areas of the world, where 70 percent of the world’s hungry live and work. 

In recent times UK’s pubic funds have been channelled through multilateral, mainly UN institutions, such as FAO and UN Habitat, which DFID has simultaneously sought to reform. 

One of DFID’s priorities has been to support UN Habitat’s work in improving the lives of slum-dwellers in an effort to reach the poverty reduction Millennium Goal.  The UK government considers that urbanisation is positive because ‘cities are the engines of economic growth’ in a globalised world.  

This policy is now in disarray following the Coalition Government’s recent review: 

DFID will soon cut the funding of UN Habitat because it has failed to prove that it was delivering significant change on the ground.  There are also threats to cut funds to the FAO, if its performance does not improve. 

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food said recently:

‘Only by supporting small producers can we help break the vicious cycle that leads from rural poverty to the expansion of urban slums, in which poverty breeds more poverty.’

Reforming the CAP in favour of small-scale farmers

The European Common Agricultural Policy or CAP is one of the big challenges facing farmers in developing countries who want to market their produce.  This is because the CAP subsidises European farmers and allows them to export produce throughout the world at prices that are lower than the cost of production.  At the same time tariffs are imposed on produce exported to the EU, making it uncompetitive.

The European Union is currently debating reform of the CAP – this process is due to be finalised before 2013.  

However, the UK Coalition Government’s contribution to this debate does not sound promising:  According to Defra the government continues to regard food merely as a commodity and wants to drive down prices still further to ensure ‘greater market orientation and agricultural competitiveness’.  They say that this will enable European Food Processing Companies to compete more successfully in the global food market.  UK Environment Minister, Caroline Spelman has also called for the halting of food exports to be made illegal, even at times of national crisis.

These proposed CAP reforms would flood the world with junk food and do nothing to protect vulnerable farming communities from the impact of ‘low cost’ imports. 

Furthermore, preventing countries suffering from food shortages from banning the export of essential food commodities is likely to lead to increased starvation and political unrest.

A more much radical alternative to the UK government’s proposed, conservative reforms for the CAP can be found here .

This alternative European Food Declaration (or Missing Option) is calling for sustainable, family farming to be emphasised in EU food production with movement towards a food sovereignty framework, as well as changes in international trade in agricultural products according to principles of equity, social justice and ecological sustainability.  It stresses the right of all nations and regions to protect themselves from food speculators and low cost imports.

Most importantly, ‘the CAP should not harm other countries’ food and agriculture systems’.

By signing this Declaration you will be providing hope for small-scale farmers and health-conscious consumers the world over!

Can bread subsidies keep pace with urbanisation in Egypt?

Rising bread prices are said to have been a significant cause of the recent unrest in North Africa.  Egypt in particular has to import about 60% of its wheat needs each year, at a cost of $63 million at today’s price of $340 per tonne, making it the world’s largest wheat importer.  

Since one in five of Egypt’s 80 million people currently have a daily income of less than $1, their government has been forced to bear the additional cost of subsidising bread for 14.2 million poor people each day, in order to stave off widespread hunger and starvation.  This subsidy represents almost a quarter of state spending and reduces the amount available for health and education.

Egyptian farmers currently produce 8.5 million tonnes of wheat each year. However, although self-sufficiency in wheat at national level is said to be the government’s urgent goal, successive UNDP reports have criticised the Mubarak regime for neglecting the rural areas, where poverty remains rampant and migration to the city in search of work becomes the only option.

Urbanisation has been dramatic in Egypt, with the capital city, Cairo, growing from 1.5 to 6 million between 1947 and 1986.  Despite the high birth rate in Cairo’s slums, internal migration still accounts for 50% of the population growth, which has now reached 18 million in the greater Cairo region4. Unfortunately all of this urban growth has spilled into areas that are ideal for wheat production.

The deepest poverty is found in the rural areas of Upper Egypt that have a medium to high potential for wheat production:  According to UNDP Upper Egypt accommodates 36% of the country’s population and two-thirds of these people are unable to meet their basic food and non-food needs.  UNDP’s recommendations to address this problem have included:

·        increasing food productivity of small-holder farmers,

·        getting their farm products to markets,

·        empowering farmers’ associations to negotiate with market intermediaries,

·        enhancing rural credit and saving services,

·        encouraging investments in building storage facilities,

·        supporting networks of  agro-dealers,

·        expanding income-generating opportunities for the rural landless.

They have also stressed the need for increasing access to health care as well as primary and secondary education.

With the world wheat price expected to rise still further, Egypt’s new government would do well to take these recommendations much more seriously than did the previous regime.