South Africa – Informal dwellings are being built as backyard properties and not in informal settlements

More and more informal dwellings are being built as backyard properties and not in informal settlements, the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said on Tuesday.

According to a SAIRR report, between 1996 and 2007, the total number of households residing in informal dwellings grew by 24,2 percent from 1,45 million to 1,80 million.

During that period, the number of households living in backyard informal dwellings rose by 46 percent from 403 000 to 590 000.

The ratio of informal dwellings built on bare land (which might be privately owned or belong to the state) to those built in backyards declined from 1:2,7 in 1996 to 1:2 in 2007.

The institute identified a few reasons for the changing pattern in the erection of informal dwellings.

The first explanation had to do with the safety concerns of residents of these dwellings.

“Informal settlements built in backyard properties are less vulnerable to vandals and shack fires that are so prevalent in informal settlements,” said SAIRR researcher Kerwin Lebone.

The number of households living in free-standing informal dwellings grew by 16 percent in comparison, from just over one million to 1,2 million.

At the same time, backyard informal structures as a proportion of total informal dwellings grew by 18 percent while those built in informal settlements declined by seven percent.

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Tanzania – Life in the “Ghetto”

Arusha, Nov 24, 2008 (Arusha Times/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) –
When sections of Arusha are improving and featuring characteristics of a modern town, larger parts of the urban area are fast deteriorating to sprawling filthy and stinking slums.

More and more people now find themselves living in mud shacks, without toilet facilities, water, electricity or even an access road to the shacks they call homes.

A survey by the Arusha Times has found out that if the Local Government does not intervene with basic planning activities now, in the next 10 years Arusha will be nothing but a mega slum with a small neat area east of Goliondoi and Afrika Mashariki roads to show visiting dignitaries and tourists.

Areas that are already unbearable with expansive slums, the like of Kibera in Nairobi, include Unga Limited, Ngarenaro, Kijenge, Majengo, Sanawari, Mianzini, Daraja Mbili Lemara, Sinon, Sombetini, Elerai and Mbauda. Arusha with an estimated population of 400,000 is surrounded by appalling slums in all directions unlike other cities which have shanty towns only in one or two sides of the main planned areas.

The worry of many people is that the scenic hills north of the municipality would soon be a densely populated labyrinth of shacks that will pose a threat to water sources. The trend according to John Mollel of Mianzini is that “you leave for work in the early morning and when you come back in the evening you find five shacks that have been built within hours and already occupied by families of no less than six people each.” The demand for shacks is high due to heavy migration to Arusha of people from other parts of the country seeking jobs.

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Urban Health Bulletin – Sep/Oct 2008

Urban Health Bulletin, September/October 2008 (pdf, 135KB) – Environmental Health at USAID.

Anthony Kolb, USAID’s Urban Health Advisor, has selected 28 recently published urban health studies and below are titles of some of the studies in this issue.

Urban Health Analysis
1 Challenging assumptions about women’s empowerment: social and economic resources and domestic violence among young married women in urban South India.
2 Quantification of Urbanization in Relation to Chronic Diseases in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review.
3 Epidemiology and the macrosocial determinants of health.
Urban Environmental Health
12 Spatial analysis of risk factor of cholera outbreak for 2003-2004 in a peri-urban area of Lusaka, Zambia.
13 Spatial and demographic patterns of Cholera in Ashanti region – Ghana.
14 Improving access to water supply and sanitation in urban India: microfinance for water and sanitation infrastructure development.
Urban Vector Disease
21 Human population, urban settlement patterns and their impact on Plasmodium falciparum malaria endemicity.
22 Mosquito larval habitats and public health implications in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.

IIED – Climate change and urban children: impacts and implications

Climate change and urban children: impacts and implications for adaptation in low- and middle-income countries, 2008. Sheridan Bartlett. (pdf, 684KB)

This paper discusses the probable impacts for children of different ages from the increasing risk of storms, flooding, landslides, heat waves, drought and water supply constraints that climate change is likely to bring to most urban centres in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It also explores the implications for adaptation, focusing on preparedness as well as responses to extreme events and to changes in weather patterns. As is the case with many poor groups, if adaptations to climate change fail to take account of the disproportionate risks for children (who make up between a third and a half of the population in the most affected areas) they will be less than adequate in responding to the challenges.

Philippines – Filipino slums expand as population explodes

The United Nations predicts that 2 billion people worldwide will live in slums by 2030 — largely in Asia and Africa. Exacerbated by population growth and declining resources, Asia is currently home to over half of the global slum population (581 million people).

Chris Pablo is an operations officer in the World Bank infrastructure team in Manila — where the population has soared — and writes in the “East Asia & Pacific on the Rise” blog about helping to deal with slums. In the Philippines, about 20 million people live in slums.

Empowering the poor: Helping urban slums to help themselves

In a country where half of the population lives in urban areas, one would expect colonies of slums (arguably called “informal settlements”) strewn across almost every town with high population densities. The picture is not a far cry from reality, at least in the context of the Philippines, perhaps the fastest urbanizing country in Asia. But even if the country has seen incredible growth over the years, there is hope things can turn around — and the feeling is not baseless.

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Ghana – Urban project in population research launched in Ga Mashie

Nii Kojo Ababio V, Chief of Ngleshie in the Ga state, has launched a three-year research project on Population Training and Research Capacity for Development (PopTRCD) for the people of Ga Mashie and Old Fadama in Accra.

The project, which is under the auspices of the Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana, sought to produce and document knowledge about populations issues at Ga Mashie area in Accra.

Other collaborators include the University of Cape Coast, Ibadan University, Nigeria, Fourah Bay Collage, Sierra Leone and Southampton University, UK.

The project would also highlight the needs of the residents and gained an improved understanding of the structural factors that under-grid the severe urban health problems in those areas.

The European Union would fund the project. It would also research into the relationship between urban poverty and health, especially the impact on individual household members.

Speaking at the function to launch the project, Dr Nii Ardey Codjoe, Project Coordinator of PopTRCD, said the socio-economic and health related problems in the urban areas were more than that in the rural areas hence the conviction to embark on the study.

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Water scarcity and stress levels for the urban poor

Water scarcity affects emotions, study says.

Water shortages are linked to emotional distress among people living in poor urban areas, according to a study an ASU researcher collaborated on.

Amber Wutich, an assistant professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Kathleen Ragsdale, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Mississippi State University, conducted the study that examined the extent to which water-related emotional distress is linked with water insecurity. Unequal distribution of water between rich and poor people was a major factor.

In their paper titled “Water insecurity and emotional distress: Coping with supply, access and seasonal variability of water in a Bolivian squatter settlement,” published in a 2008 edition of Social Science and Medicine, the pair observed different aspects of water insecurity.

Wutich said the study examined three dimensions of water insecurity: inadequate water supply, insufficient access to water and dependence on seasonal water sources.

“Recent research suggests that insecure access to key resources is associated with negative mental health outcomes,” Wutich said. “Many of these studies focus on drought and famine in agricultural, pastoral and foraging communities.”

Wutich said her study is the first to systematically examine community patterns of water insecurity in an urban setting.

The study was conducted in 2004 and 2005 through face-to-face survey interviews with a random sample of 72 household heads in Villa Israel, a squatter settlement of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Participants were asked how they felt emotionally about the water situation and were given four options: fear, worry, anger and bother.

Interviews were conducted four times over an eight-month period to capture variation in experiences at the height of Bolivia’s wet and dry seasons, Wutich said.

At the conclusion of the research, she said, only one of the four tested variables was proven to cause emotional distress.

“We found that only inequities in the distribution of water was significantly related to emotional distress,” Wutich said.

Wutich explained that in a market system of water distribution, water is not equally dispersed amongst the community, causing many poor residents to face water shortages.

According to the World Health Organization’s Web site, 1.1 billion people throughout the world lack adequate water provisions, and 2.2 million people die as a result of water-related illnesses each year.
In their paper, Wutich and Ragsdale quote some of the people they met in Bolivia in relationship to their water shortage.

“What I dislike about living here is that there is no water, the streets are dirty and there is no sewer, all of this is very uncomfortable,’” said one Bolivian woman. “‘With more water, I could clean my house, wash the bathroom.’”

The study concluded her emotional distress was common among the urban poor.

“These results suggest that water-related emotional distress develops as a byproduct of the social and economic negotiations people employ to gain access to water distribution systems in the absence of clear procedures or established water rights, rather than as a result of water scarcity per se,” Wutich said.

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Bangladesh – Pollution takes serious turn at Kaptai Lake

Pollution at Kaptai Lake is taking a serious turn due to open defecation by the slum dwellers and unabated dumping of garbage and wastes everyday, causing waterborne diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery and jaundice.

The people in Rangamati and Kaptai may face disasters if water pollution and crisis of safe drinking water continue. It also may cause environmental disaster any time, environmentalists said.

Dumping of wastes, open defecation by the slum dwellers and the passengers of water transports are the prime causes of pollution at Kaptai Lake, sources said.

They said several lakh people living in the lake areas in Rangamati and Kaptai are facing the problem as they use water of the lake in daily household and other purposes. Many of the families, including indigenous people, used to drink lake water directly.

Rangamati unit of National NGO Forum, working on safe water and sanitation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), also found very alarming result during its survey and test on lake water.

Its officials have collected water from the most polluted areas of the lake. Total Coli Form (TCF) and Facile Form (RCF) were 800 and 300 respectively in per 100 millilitres in the Rajbari area, 500 TCF and 350 FCF at Banarupa while 600 TCF and 450 FCF in the Reserve Bazar area, according to the test. TCF and FCF level should be zero in water, said Alak Bikash Dewan, an official of the NGO Forum.

Md Anwar Hossain, environmentalist and secretary of Rangamati Environment Conservation and Development Organisation (RECDO), said immediate step is needed to save the lake from pollution. Otherwise, it may cause disastrous situation in future.

He said due to the pollution, waterborne diseases are spreading fast as many depend on the lake water for their bathing and drinking.

Following this, number of patients with waterborne diseases at the Rangamati General Hospital was also increasing, district Civil Surgeon (CS) office sources said.

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Africa – Urban-Rural Divide on Fertility Changes

FERTILITY CHANGES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. DHS COMPARATIVE REPORTS 18, 2008. (pdf, fulltext)

This MEASURE/DHS report provides an overview of major fertility trends in sub-Saharan Africa in the second half of the 20th century. It also presents the proximate determinants (factors that have a direct mechanical effect on fertility levels) and the socioeconomic correlates of these trends. The dynamics of the fertility decline were different in urban and rural areas. On average for the countries investigated, the trends in urban and rural areas started to split in approximately 1960.

The date of onset of the fertility decline varied greatly by region and country, ranging from the early 1960s in the first urban areas to the late 1990s in the last rural areas. A few rural communities had not started the transition at the time covered by the last available survey. The speed of the fertility decline, approximately 1 child per decade, also varied markedly among countries, from 1.5 children per decade to less than 0.5 children per decade. In addition, a stall in fertility decline occurred in six of the countries investigated (Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar [urban areas], Nigeria, Rwanda-rural, Tanzania [rural areas]); in five of these countries, this stall occurred in 1995-2005.

The pattern of the fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa did not appear to be very different from that of many other countries in the world. However, the fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa seems to have been somewhat more influenced by changing nuptiality patterns than elsewhere, and its relationship with socioeconomic correlates was somewhat less influenced by income levels and trends than other countries.

India – Needs to build 78 toilets a minute to meet target

New Delhi: India’s rural development ministry, which has to build 78 toilets a minute to meet its sanitation goal under the UN Millennium Development Goals, or MDG, by 2012, is confident of meeting the target.

An official in the ministry of rural development, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said: “We expect the new target (100% sanitation access in rural areas by 2012) to be achieved.”

Only by building 112,300 toilets every day can India ensure access to toilets for every household, the ministry’s website said.

According to Ishaprasad Bhagwat, director, programme operations, WaterAid India, the local arm of an international organization that works in the area of drinking water and sanitation, while India would “most definitely” achieve the target, it would do so “by 2015” and not “2012 as has been announced by the government of India”.

One of the government’s flagship programmes, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) aims to eradicate open defecation by 2010.

According to the ministry of health and family welfare, poor sanitation and diseases caused by this result in an annual loss of 180 million man-days and an economic loss of Rs1,200 crore in India. According to a Unicef/WHO (United Nations Children’s Fund/World Health Organization) joint study on the country’s progress on sanitation goals, India has a little more than half the 1.2 billion people worldwide who defecate in the open.

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