book four.. shd and society interactive

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CONTENTS

Cities and Slums........................... 14

Getting Rid of Slums................... 16

Liveable Cities.............................. 18

Environment.................................. 22

Lowering Population................... 24

Consumption andPopulation..................................... 27

Youth Action................................. 28

Glossary......................................... 31

Population Trends...................... 4

Problems of High Population 6

Hunger................................... .. 8

Industrial Agriculture......... .. 10

Alternative Agriculture............. 12

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Lead author/editor:Steven Heywood

Designer: Romain Oria

Contributions:Green Patriots Posters, Vanessa Champagne,Rosey Simonds,David Woolcombe

With thanks to:Eric Benson, Artem KolyukaDiama Ndiaye Diop,Edward Morris,Michelle Myers and her family,Loubna Sadiki,

Hindowa E Saidu



f o r e w o r dA Future Worth Choosing….

The UN’s Global Sustainability Panel was charged with formulating a “new vision for sustainable

growth and prosperity, along with mechanisms for achieving it.” It’s report introduces 56

recommendations ( http://www.un.org/gsp ) with the following thoughts:

“Today our planet and world society are experiencing the best of times: unprecedentedprosperity, and the worst of times: unprecedented environmental stress. Social inequalitybetween the world’s rich and poor is growing, and more than a billion people still live in poverty.So our long-term vision must be to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality and make growthinclusive, and production and consumption more sustainable, while combating climate changeand respecting a range of other planetary boundaries.” The question is: How? “As the global population grows from 7 billion to almost 9 billion by 2040, and the number ofmiddle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, by 2030, the world willneed at least 50 per cent more food, 45 per cent more energy and 30 per cent more water —all at a time when environmental boundaries are throwing up new limits to supply. Our current

global development model is unsustainable: we can no longer assume that our collectiveactions will not trigger tipping points and cause irreversible damage to both ecosystemsand human communities. But the dilemma of sustainable human development is that suchthresholds should not be used to impose arbitrary growth ceilings on developing countrieswhich seek to lift their people out of poverty. Indeed, if we fail to resolve that dilemma, werun the risk of condemning up to 3 billion members of our human family to a life of endemicpoverty”. “A quarter of a century ago, the Brundtland Report argued that sustainable human developmentcould be achieved by an integrated policy framework embracing three pillars: economic growth,

social equality and environmental sustainability. It was right then and its right today. Theproblem is that, 25 years later, sustainable human development remains a concept not a reality.Why? Two answers:1. There are few incentives to put it into practice when the policy dividend of sustainablehuman development is long-term, but politics and institutions disproportionately reward theshort term.2. We have failed to incorporate the concept of sustainable development into mainstreamnational and international economic policy.

“It is this second area that the Panel addresses with real passion: economists, social activists

and environmental scientists simply talk past each other. That is why the Panel argues that theinternational community needs “a new political economy” for sustainable human development– one that would mean that international agencies, national Governments and privatecorporations would report annually on their sustainable development performance againstagreed sustainability measures”. “The Panel recognizes that this is a core challenge for politics itself. The political economyof sustainable development must bring sustainablehuman development from the margins to themainstream of the global economic debate and makethe cost of action and the cost of inaction transparent

to all. Only then will the political process be able tosummon both the arguments and the political willnecessary to act for a sustainable future”.

UN’s Global Sustainability Panel

http://www.un.org/gsp

http://www.un.org/gsp



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ne of the many problems that we often hear is facing us is the

‘population timebomb’ – the idea that there are too many people

on the earth already, that the population is continuing to grow at an

unsustainable rate, and that this will only increase our environmental

problems, as well as social problems like hunger and inequality. But how many people are there on the earth today, and how many will there be in the future?

Population Trends

In the year 1AD, the entire population of the world was only around 300 millionpeople – the same size as the USA today. Wars, famines, and infectious diseaseslike the plague, combined with poor sanitation and hygiene meant that worldpopulation grew very slowly for hundreds and hundreds of years. It took untilaround 1800 to reach the 1 billion people mark. However, from this point onwardstechnology began to improve rapidly, and as war and diseases began to fadeinto the past in the developed world, and these advances were exported to thedeveloping world we reached 6 billion people in 1999 .

The United Nations predicts that by 2050 the world population will grow to 9 billionpeople, before levelling off and starting to fall slightly in the second half of thecentury as improved education, health and life expectancies make big families lessnecessary.

A Short Story of Population

The tables on these pages give a picture of howthe population is developing around the world,

and we can see that in many cases it is thepoorest developing countries, and theones with the lowest life expectancy, thatare growing the fastest. Many people in

these countries have large families to helpwith agricultural work, their mainmeans of making money and food,and to compensate for the effects

of early deaths, or even the

deaths of children.



Slow Growth in rich countries...and here it is clear that the ve richest countries in the world have long life

expectancies and very slow population growth...Country Population growth per year Life expectancy

USA 0.90% 78.3 years

UK 0.60% 80 years

France 0.60% 81.1 years

Japan 0.00% 82.2 years

Germany -0.10% 80 years

Fast, Slow and Zero GrowthHigh Population Growth, Low Life ExpectancyHere we see that four of the ve fastest growing countries have very low life

expectancies... Country Population growth per

yearLife Expectancy

Liberia 4.50% 57 years

Singapore 3.50% 82.1 years

Niger 3.50% 53.4 years

Uganda 3.20% 53.2 years

Western Sahara 3.70% 61.1 years

Eastern Europe losing is population...while countries in eastern Europe are actually shrinking in population size quite quickly,despite their relatively high life expectancies – a large part of this is due to immigration towestern Europe, where jobs have been more easy to nd recently.

Country Population growth per year Life expectancy

Moldova -1.10% 71.3 years

Bulgaria -0.60% 73.6 years

Georgia -0.60% 77.1 yearsUkraine -0.60% 68.6 years

Belarus -0.50% 71.2 year

C h i n a - 1 . 3 4 B i l l i o n s

U S A - 3 1 0 M

i l l i o n s

I n d i a - 1 . 2 2

B i l l i o n s

I n d o n e s i a -

2 3 9 M i l l i o n s

B r a z i l - 1 9 4

M i l l i o n sMost

Populous

Countries



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ur growing human population is usually seen as a bad

thing, leading to hunger, overcrowding, and environmental

problems. Here we introduce those problems, and in the rest

of this booklet we examine how much of these problems is really down to population.

Hunger

The most famous person to put forward this idea wasthe English Doctor Thomas Malthus. In the 18th centuryhe predicted that the population would soon be growing

faster than food production could keep up, and therewould be a mass starvation which would reduce thepopulation back to ‘sustainable’ levels. Malthus hasso far proved to be wrong, at least in the developingworld, where agricultural technology and innovation hasseen food production continually increase. But massivefamines have hit large parts of the developing world inrecent decades – did population have a part to play inthose disasters? Or is it something else?

Overcrowding

Our high population also seems to have led to aproblem with overcrowding and poverty – thereare simply too many people with not enough jobs,housing or money to look after them all. The result isthat megacities have sprung up around the world, withtens of millions of people living in places like Rio deJaneiro, Lagos and Manila, with huge shanty townsand slums of poverty-stricken people, desperate forwork, growing up on their outskirts. This problem ofovercrowding has affected the developed world too,with cities like Los Angeles, Tokyo and London growingto huge sizes and containing massive inequalities ofwealth and living standards. Later in the booklet we look into whether these problems

can be overcome.

The Problems of High Population



Environmental problems

Population growth has also been blamed for theenvironmental problems we face. More people

means more fuel is consumed, more products aremade and bought, more emissions are released. Itseems logical that the most reliable way to reduceour emissions and avoid catastrophic climatechange would be to stop the population growing,and even to encourage a population reduction overthe coming decades. At the end of the booklet, weexplore whether population is really to blame forour environmental woes, or whether it is unequalconsumption that is more to blame.

‘Every additional person increasescarbon emissions, the rich more thanthe poor; and increases the number ofclimate change victims, the poor more

than the rich.’ Population Matters



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lmost one in six people on earth do not have enough to eat,

and are at risk of illness and death as a result. Many people

suggest this is down to the size of the population, but on

these pages we explore other possible explanations for thisterrible crisis.

Hunger is said to affect anyone who is getting less than 2,100 calories per day – ifwe eat less than this our bodies start to weaken and slow down, both physicallyand mentally, making it difcult for adults to work or schoolchildren to learn, and theimmune system breaks down, making it easier for diseases to attack us.

The total number of hungry people worldwide is 925 million, around 16% of

everyone on earth. The number of hungry people is actually growing, and was only791 million in 1997. Hunger affects more people than diseases like malaria,tuberculosis and AIDS combined, and children are particularly badly affected – 146million of the hungry are children, and if women do not get enough to eat whilepregnant they can give birth to underweight children who start life with a much lowerchance of survival.

Despite this, the UN World Food Programme admits that “In purely quantitativeterms, there is enough food available to feed the entire global population of 7 billion”.

So, if we have enough food for everyone, why are people going hungry? Thereare a number of other factors involved...

Hunger



Unfair DistributionIf there is enough food in the world but people are going hungry, to some extent theproblem must be that the food is not being distributed fairly. For example, while manypeople in the developing world are starving to death, Europe purposefully produces moremilk and butter than it can consume in order to keep its farmers in a job.

As a BBC story on rising food prices says “to put it bluntly, rich people eat more thanpoor people” , even if a lot of the food that is bought in rich countries is wasted. As morepeople in countries like China, India and Brazil become richer, this is going to make itmore difcult for poor people to get the food they need.

Despite these facts, it takes just 25 cents a day to feed a hungry child, but this moneyis not being made available by rich countries that already have all the food they need –another example of unequal distribution, this time of wealth.

SpeculationOne of the biggest problems is nancial speculation on food prices. The price of wheat

rose by 70% at the end of 2010, and the average cost of all food by 32%, despite therebeing just as much food as before. The reason was speculation, which is quite acomplex thing to explain: at the beginning of the year farmers can sell their grain beforeit is grown using something called a futures contract. This protects both the farmer andthe buyer from the effects of the price of food going up or down during the year.However, the trader who buys the grain from the farmer for $100 can then sell thecontract to someone else, like a bank, for $120 to make a prot. The bank can sell it tomore banks, and so on, with the price rising each time. This means that by the time

the grain is actually grown, harvested, and reaches the market, its price is muchhigher that it was originally and it costs more for people to buy .Recently the rising price of food has become a big problem, with many people indeveloping countries nding it harder and harder to afford enough basic food to avoidhunger. It doesn’t matter how much food there is if people won’t sell it for a reasonableprice.

War Many of the countries with the greatest levels of hunger are also ones that have had a largeamount of conict in recent history, such as DR Congo and Angola, and this is no coincidence. Inwar times, food is often taken to be given to troops, destroyed as a punishment, or farmers arekilled or enlisted to ght.

Climate Change As climate change gets stronger and stronger we are seeing more oods, storms anddroughts that can destroy huge amounts of crops very quickly – and parts of the worldwith many hungry people and lots of small farmers who grow food for themselves and theirfamilies, like Africa and Asia, are often the most vulnerable to these disasters.



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ndustrialised agriculture is the system of food production

that has enabled us to grow so much food and avoid mass

starvation, at least in developed countries. However, while

it has had many positive impacts, it has also contributed toenvironmental problems and the inequality that sees so many

people remain hungry. We need to decide if the positives of

industrial agirculture outweigh the negatives.

Industrial agriculture has developed over the past century in much the same way thatthe industrial revolution in factories and technology developed from the 19th centuryonwards – whereas hundreds of years ago people owned small amounts of land forfarming, and used natural materials to do so, farms are now much larger and owned

by a much smaller group of businesses, and a large amount of chemical fertilisers areused to increase the amount of crops that can be grown. Also, where farming usedto involve growing a diversity of crops, many farms now grow huge amounts of singlecrops like rice, wheat or corn.Some of the positive effects of this have been great – for example, India’s wheatproduction grew from 10 million tonnes to 73 million tonnes between 1968 and 2006.However, some of its effects have been less good for some of the world’s poorestpeople.

Environmental ImpactIn its current form, farming creates between 17% and 32% of the world’s greenhouse gasemissions, which mainly come from raising animals for meat and dairy, and using articialfertilisers for growing crops. Natural fertilisers are made from animal manure, which isfull of nutrients, but cheap articial fertilisers are made from fossil fuels – each tonne ofarticial fertiliser uses one tonne of oil and 108 tonnes of water to produce, and releases 7tonnes of CO2 and a lot of nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas.Meanwhile, the huge amount of animals we keep for meat and dairy produce up to 40% ofthe world’s methane, a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 . This comes froma process that’s scientically called ‘enteric fermentation’, but to you and me is simply

called ‘farting’.

Diseases

Industrial Agriculture

Monocultures – that is, elds where large amounts of identical crops areplanted, packed closely together – are much more likely to fall victim todisease because if the disease infects one plant it can very easily spreadto the others. If slightly different varieties of each crop, which are notvulnerable to the same diseases, are planted in the same eld, they stop

infections from spreading so quickly.



UnemploymentBecause industrial farming is done on a few large farms rather than a lot of small farms, and usesmachines rather than human labour for planting crops and spreading fertilisers, a lot of peoplewhose families have been farmers for generations now nd themselves without land. They eitherhave to compete for the few human jobs on the industrial farms, often exposing themselves todangerous chemicals, or they have to move away from their traditional homes to look for work.

Feeding animals instead of humans A lot of the food grown today is grown not for direct humanconsumption, but for animal feed. These animals are then used toproduce meat and dairy, which are expensive and only available inlarge amounts to rich consumers. Around 33% of the soy beansgrown in Brazil and Argentina are used to feed chickens and pigson European farms , while at the same time the amount of landin Argentina used to grow rice and maize, crops that humans eatin large amounts, has dropped by 44% and 26% respectively

. Growing these soy beans for animal feed has also been a bigcause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

Meat for the rich, plants for the poor The countries with the highest amounts of meat consumption per person per year are all rich,developed nations, while poorer nations in Africa and Asia eat almost 50 times less – conrmingthe fact that growing crops to feed animals rather than humans is only an advantage to rich

countries.

A large amount of ‘food’ grown on industrial farms is not usedto feed humans or animals – it’s used to feed cars. Soy beansare increasingly being grown to produce biofuels, which areused in petrol in developed countries to try and lessen CO2emissions from transport. The European Union is one of thebiggest areas for biofuel demand, with an aim that 10% ofall transport fuel will be bio by 2020. In 2007 the amount ofbiofuel used in the EU required 38,000km2 to grow, an areathe size of the Netherlands, and all land that could have been

used to grow food instead .The amount of land needed for growing plants for biofuels isonly likely to grow in the future, as rich countries try to reducetheir greenhouse gas emissions and as oil runs out andbecomes increasingly difcult or expensive to nd.

Feeding cars instead of humans

D e n m a r k 1 4 6 k g

N e w

Z e a l a n d 1 4 2 k g

L u x e m b o u t r g 1 4 1 k g

B u r u n d i 3 . 5 k g

B a n g l a d e s h 3 k g

B u t h a n 3 k g



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o with a growing population set to reach 9 billion by the

middle of the century, and the industrial model of farming

causing environmental damage and prioritising fuel and meat

over feeding the world, what should we do? On these pageswe suggest a few positive ideas for improving agriculture.

As well as eating local food, eating less meat is goodfor the environment. As we have seen on previouspages, animals create a lot of greenhouse gas emissionsthrough their gas, and the rainforests of South America

are being chopped down to grow food for raising pigs andchickens, as well as to raise cows for beef. Many peoplein developed countries are now choosing to eat meat onlyonce or twice a week, to protect the environment, and

to encourage more land to be used for growing crops forhumans to eat rather than pigs and cows.

A lot of the food we eat, especiallyin Europe and North America, is own into our local

areas from a very long way away – bananas from Colombia,peppers from Israel, apples from South Africa. While we enjoyeating these foods from faraway places, we should do so in

moderation – the further away something comes from, the morefuel is needed to transport it to us, usually by plane. This is

very damaging to the environment, but luckily a wide rangeof food can be grown in the countries we live in, savingon emissions from transport. And eating food from local

farmers helps keep money in your local area andcreates green jobs on local farms.

Organic farms usually grow a much wider range of food,

both plants and animals, than industrial farms, meaning thateven if they do get affected by disease in one or two crops,

they have a lot of others to fall back on .

Local Food

Variety

Eating less meat

Alternative Agriculture



Are these steps enough to feed 9 billion people? Some would argue that it

isn’t, some that it is. Ultimately, we must remember the words of the UN World FoodProgramme – there is already enough food for everyone, we simply don’t distribute itfairly. The above steps will help us grow food that is good for people, good for jobs andgood for the environment, but a political change is what is needed to ensure thateveryone has access to this good food once we have grown it.

New varieties of crops like rice are being grown thatare able to deal with the effects of climate change,making it less likely for farmers in developing

countries to see their crops get wiped out by theweather. These new crops can be made tolerantto being submerged under water during oods,

droughts, having too much salt or iron in the soil,or extreme cold. All of them increase the amount of

crops that can be grown by overcoming climatechange-related problems, and they can all be

bred without the use of controversial geneticmodication (GM) techniques.

While growing food is a way of life for many people in rural areas, even those of uswho live in towns and cities can grow a little of our own food. This can be done in

gardens, on allotments, or even in pots on the windowsill – anywhere that has access tothe sun’s light and energy, in fact. In the UK for instance, many people grow tomatoes,herbs, strawberries and other fruit and vegetables on their land. This may not be enoughto feed everyone in the world for the whole year, and not everyone has access to the

knowledge, land and seeds needed to do it, but for those who do, it can provide fresh,nutritious food, and a connection with our food and the land.

Organic farming means not using chemical fertilisersmade from fossil fuels, or chemical pesticides to kill

bugs, and treating animals with care and respect. It isoften assumed that organic agriculture, which respects

and works with nature, cannot produce as much food asindustrial agriculture. In fact, research has shown that using

organic fertilisers produces almost exactly the same amountof crops as chemical fertilisers .

Grow your own food

Adapting for ClimateChange

Organic Agricultur e



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ne of the biggest problems is overcrowding, with too many

people having to live in too little space, competing for too

few jobs, and in many cases with no access to healthcare,

decent housing or even clean water.

Recent decades have seen cities around theworld grow to enormous sizes, especially in thedeveloping world – it is estimated that there are26 urban area with more than 10 million peopleliving in them, and 18 of those are in developingnations.

Cities and Slums

Many of these cities, while often attractiveand rich in the centre and home to manyinternational companies and banks, haveoutskirts crowded with slums, whereimpoverished people live in horribleconditions, with little or no access tohealthcare or clean water. The UN-HABITATagency, which deals with housing conditionsaround the world, describes a slum as ‘a

run-down area of a city characterised bysubstandard housing and squalor and lackingin tenure security’, meaning that the peoplethat live there are always at risk of beingthrown out by their government . By 2030 it isestimated that up to 2 billion people could beliving in slums.

But these slums are not created simplybecause there are too many people, butbecause of economic pressures andinequalities. Three-quarters of the world’shungry people live in rural areas, forcingmany rural people to move to the megacitiesin search of employment, money and food.Rural people are also usually poorer thancity-dwellers, giving them another incentiveto move. When they arrive in cities, they oftennd that the work they are offered is very low-

paid, and short-term, forcing them into slumsas the only way they can afford to shelter andfeed themselves.

T OK Y O

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DEL H

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20.3 Millions

Biggest CitiesIn Millions of Inhabtants

1

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In rich countries the movement of people is oftenin the opposite direction, with people movingout of city centres as they become wealthierand into sprawling suburbs at the outer edgesof cities. Suburbs are areas that are usuallydevoted largely to housing above all else, andare much more spread out than inner cities.

This means people have more space to live,and many people in the suburbs have largegardens, a luxury that is unavailable in crowdedcities. However, suburbs are also very bad forthe environment, as due to the large distancesbetween them, and their distance from shoppingand leisure areas, the people who live in themusually rely on cars to get around.Despite having many more people moving to

the richer suburbs, inequality and povertystill affect cities even in the developed world.For example, in London, one of the world’swealthiest cities, there are great differencesin the levels of poverty between differentparts of the city. In Tower Hamlets, in eastLondon, 45.7% of children live in families thatneed government assistance because of theirlow incomes; while in Richmond-on-Thamesin the south-west, the number is only 8.4% .

Meanwhile, amongst London’s gleaming glassbuildings, 5,000 people are homeless and live on the streets.

The Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator is home to

perhaps the most remarkable example of a slum –because as much as 25% of the entire populationof the country lives in it. Over the past two decades700,000 have moved to the district in the north ofthe city, with tens of thousands more arriving eachyear in search of a better life for themselves andtheir families – Mongolia has an overall populationof less than 2.8 million. Many of these people live ingers, the traditional felt tents used in the Mongolian

countryside, and in the coldest capital city in theworld, where temperatures drop as low as minus27C in January, they have to spend up to 40% of their income on fuel for heating.

ME

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19.5 Millions

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20 Millions

The problem, it seems, is not population – London, while being by far the biggestcity in the UK, is relatively small compared to many of the mega-cities at only7 million inhabitants – but poverty. It is poverty that creates dirty, overcrowded,unhealthy slums, and overcoming poverty will allow us to overcome these other

problems.

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16

Getting rid of Slums

F

ar from disappearing as the world has become more and more

developed, there are just as many slum-dwellers today as there

were decades ago – and with the continuing growth of the world’s

biggest cities, more and more people are going to be living in slums in the coming decades. What can we do about this?

There are a number of reasons why governments should make every effort to improve thelives of slum-dwellers. At the most basic level, it is simply the right thing to do to remove thesuffering faced by people living in shacks, with no access to healthcare or running water. Butit is also good for public health, as slums have high levels of infectious diseases like cholera;it is good for peace and social stability to increase equality within cities; and it is good forthe government’s budget – as people in slums begin to get jobs and achieve sustainable

livelihoods, they require less assistance from the government and can begin to pay tax ontheir income.So improving the lives of those who live in slums is good for everyone – the slum-dwellersthemselves, the rest of the population, and the government. But how can we best deal withslums? Below we look at four options that governments have taken to solve this problem –some good and some bad.

Security of TenureMost people living in slums have what is known as ‘insecure tenure’ – this means theyhave no contract stating they own or are renting the land they live on, and they can bekicked out without warning or reason. Security of tenure is one of the most importantthings to improve the lives of slum-dwellers – it would mean they could only be evicted

with a good reason and with plenty of warning, and would make their lives more secureand stable. With this extra security, they are more likely to invest in improvement to theirhomes and communities, and will nd it easier to get jobs and build sustainable livelihoods

to look after themselves and their families.

Neglect themThe rst option is to simply pretend slums don’t exist. Governments can do this because inmany cases slums ofcially don’t exist – they are illegally squatted, the people who live onthem have no contracts to rent the land, and often slum communities are not even includedin ofcial maps. Governments have often done nothing to improve conditions in slums,instead building public housing projects for the slum-dwellers to live in.

But public housing is expensive to build, and these projects are often abandoned withoutbeing nished, and the houses that are built are usually given to government employees like

teachers and police, while the slums continue to decay.



Help them A better option is for governments to accept that slums and the people who live inthem have rights and needs, and to improve living conditions in the slum. This includesproviding basic services like waste removal, clean water, and access to health care

and transport; providing security of tenure to slum-dwellers; and giving them accessto small loans to help start small businesses (this is called micronance, and wasdealt with in the second book in this series, Economics and Sustainable HumanDevelopment).

This is much cheaper than building new homes, and has had some successes in thepast – in Kolkata, in India, this approach helped to halve waterborne diseases likeCholera and Typhoid during the 1970s, by improving sanitation facilities and providingclean water.

However, after the initial high-prole improvements, often funded by organisations fromdeveloping countries, the slums are often ignored again. Maintenance is not done,initial changes are not followed up on, and soon conditions deteriorate back to theiroriginal level.

Evict themThe second option is to evict the slums – to kick the people out. The justication forthis may be that the slums are illegal, that the city centre is being redeveloped, thatnew infrastructure like a road or railway track needs to be built through the slum area,or that the slum is a threat to public health. When governments decide to do this,negotiation with the slum-dwellers is rare, and the evictions are often violent.

The problem with this approach, apart from the inhumanity of destroying thousandsof people’s homes, is that the slum simply reforms on the edge of the city. As the citygrows, the slum is surrounded by richer areas again, and the government has to evict it

again, and so on.

Involve themThe best option we have today is known as ‘participatory slum improvement’ – in thismodel, governments actively involve the slum communities in improving the slum,rather than trying to simply hand out improvements. Slum-dwellers can help decidewhat changes are needed in their own areas, and can even be trained and employedby the government to carry out these improvements – such as building wells or sewers.

If people take part in improving their own lives, communities and local areas, and

are given security of tenure, they will feel like they have an investment in the future ofthe slum – they will be more willing to improve things further, and to ensure that the

existing changes are maintained.



18

Public Transport

Public SpacesCities can also become more friendly places to live by increasing the amount ofpublic spaces they have. Public spaces include parks and other green areas, whichprovide leisure activities for people and trees to soak up carbon dioxide; public

buildings like libraries, which provide free meeting places for local people, as well asinformation and studying opportunities; and pedestrianised areas – spaces in whichcars are not allowed to go, and people can walk freely without fear of being rundown.

I

t’s not just the slum areas of developing world cities that need

improvements though – most cities around the world are crowded,

polluted, and built to favour cars rather than people. On these pages we

look at some ideas for making our cities nicer places to live for everyone.

Liveable Cities

Public transport includes buses, trains and other types of transport that can be usedby lots of people at once, and in many developed countries it has been severelyoverlooked in recent years, in favour of increasing numbers of polluting cars.Public transport needs to be made affordable, cleaned up, and on time – not justto convince people to get out of their cars, but to make journeys more pleasant forthose who already use buses and trains.

Another element of our transport systems that needs to be improved is making spacefor cyclists. Cycling is a healthy, energy efcient and fun means of transport, but it’ssomething that many of us stop doing after our childhood, often due to the dangersof cycling on roads. However, some cities, like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, haveachieved high levels of cycling by introducing large amounts of cycle lanes, specialtrafc lights to avoid cyclists having to stop and start as often as cars, and lots ofbicycle parking spaces. This helps 36% of the population of Copenhagen to get towork, school, or university by bike . Getting more people cycling is obviously easier incompact (and at) cities, but all cities can introduce more cycle lanes on main routesto help people make a healthy, green transport choice.



Picture by Kleper

19

Mixed use developmentsImproving public transport and cycling is not enough by itself – the design of ourcities also needs to be made more friendly to a smaller scale of life. Developedworld cities are increasingly being split into a number of single-use zones – thismeans each are is used for one thing exclusively, such as shopping, ofces, or

homes. This means people often have to use cars to access their workplaces, orto buy groceries.

Mixed-use areas, which combine shopping, housing and workplaces, are moresustainable, as people can work and shop near to their homes, allowing them to

walk, cycle, or take short public transport journeys between them.

Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of the Colombian city of Bogota between 1998 and 2001, put many of these ideas into practice,attempting to create a more sustainable and more equal city.He introduced a rapid new bus system that works as fastas a subway system, but at only a fraction of the cost. Heopened many new parks and built kilometres of bicycle-only roads. He even introduced a scheme that forced people toleave their cars at home two days a week, to reduce trafccongestion.

The scheme has also had long-lasting effects – theTransmilenio bus system has been visited by city planners from 70 countries around the world to see what lessons can be taken from it, thousands of drug addicts wererehabilitated and employed by the city, and 23 new schools and 14 new libraries were built in the poorest areas with themoney saved from road-building programmes.

this new way of developing Bogota sent out an important symbolic message that itwas more important to spend money on public services for the majority of people who lived in slums than to spend it on more roads for rich car-owners. He claims ‘anythingthat you do in order to increase pedestrian space constructs equality. It’s a powerful symbol,showing that citizens who walk areequally important to those who havea car.’ Enrique Peñalosa

The city of Bogota

Picture by Kleper

Picture by Andreas Rueda

Picture by Tijs Zwinkels



20

First, “Sorting your waste” . Separating waste materials for collection.. Awareness campaigns with distribution of pedagogic kits in

primary schools.. For older ones an iPhone app to teach users how to sort their trash better.. Creation of a Public service on Eco-behaviour in order to answer the customers’

questions.

Vanessa Champagne is a Structural Draughtswoman workingfor the city of Paris. She explains to us how huge andpopulated cities like Paris are trying to improve their liveabilityand keep their environmental impact low at the same time.

Case Study : Paris Tends to be “Greener”.

City cleanliness : Public space is a living space, but to avoid the city frombecoming a Gigantic Garbage disposal, the city offers : . 400 free public toilets.. More than 30 000 rubbish bins in the streets.. A huge team of bin men cleaning the streets and collecting trash 24/7.. A Grafti cleaning team.. A free service for the removal of bulky objects.

keeping a healthy city is respecting the nature, animals and also acting like a citizen towards everyone. Paris has decided to punish polluters.From now on you have 450 ofcers who are devoted to chasing this polluters.

The public transport system is very diverse and effective: . Enlargement of the metro network.. Tramway, RER and Transilien (which are suburban metro lanes).. A huge diversity of bus lines and night buses.. The vélib (rent a bicycle stations are all across the city) and there are more and more cycling lanes opening up inside the city.

Little note from a Parisian : Despite all this, people are really rubbish.

Little note from a Parisian : Paris stills smells like pee in parts, but we are nding less dog mess on the

pavement. Despite all of the rubbish bins, people are still throwing their wasteon the ground.

And with a lack of public ashtrays, cigarette butts are all over the oor. I think the city still has to work more on it to guarantee a healthy environment.

Little note from a Parisian : 1 metro every 4 min and one suburban train every 20min is very appreciable. Even if the price of a single ticket is quiteexpensive.



Development of Sustainable Eco-friendly Constructions : . You can see the creation of Eco-Districts with ecological housing

. Shared-gardens (a piece of land inside the city to garden with your neighbours). Encouragement to use tap-water because 1 litre of tap watergenerates 2500 times less greenhouse gases than a plasticbottle of mineral water. The introduction of “sutainablemanagement” label on the city’s public parks. And a “Zeropesticides” policy !. 7% of organic food in every canteen.. Priority is given to vegetation on public parks walls and rooftop ( green rooftops), to help reduce air pollution and temporary xes the carbon level.

. Improvement of the Seine’s channels in a eco-friendly way topermit a better environment for aquatic species.

. Installation of Beehives on Paris rooftops, to re-integratebees inside the city. Apparently urban bees can produce a betterquality honey than their countryside cousins because of the oral diversity and thelack of pesticides in an urban environment. For example, one brand of hotels put beehives on the roof of their buildings and voila – their guests can enjoy homemadehoney.

Keeping electricity consumption down : . Reconditioning of old schools and council ats which are energy guzzlers.. 225 000 m2 of solar panel installed on rooftops and even more on council buildings.. Rolling out a system for creating energy from Waste Water.. Reducing public lighting in buildings during the night by 30%.. Free instruction to Parisians on how to reduce their energy consumption.

Little note from a Parisian : I visited a communal garden in the centre of Paris, thoses places are “blooming” all over the city. It feels like a place for friendly meetings between gardeners and nature lovers, elders, children, onlookers, curious people… everyone has his own little piece of warmth and friendliness.Also, a rooftop garden has been created on the roof of Vignolles gymnasium.Which makes a 800 m2 garden!Garden, Parks and open spaces are becoming more popular and there are loads of new devices to entertain kids. Good bye TV and Video games!

Green is beautiful – more and more attention is given to green balconies, streets,rooftops etc…Guess what??? Insects are coming back !So this is a hopeful sign that Paris is getting better in terms of chemical

pollution even if the air quality has still got a way to go.



22

It is undoubtedly true that our consumption of all resources, from minerals, tofuels, to food, is growing rapidly, and that this is unsustainable. It is also truethat countries with large populations play a large role in this – after many yearsof the USA being on top, China is now the world’s largest overall source ofemissions. However, the gures for overall emissions disguise some important

facts we need to consider when talking about this.

Firstly, countries in the developing world usually have bigger and faster-growingpopulations than those in the developed world, but emit as much or lessgreenhouse gases than the developed nations. This means that per personthey actually pollute much less. Each Chinese citizen, for example, releasesan average of 5 tonnes of CO2 per year, while a citizen from the tiny Europeannation of Luxembourg releases an average of 22.6 tonnes per year – more thanfour times as much. Because Luxembourg is so small it has little effect on global

CO2 emissions, but if everyone on earth wanted to live like the Luxembourgerswe would soon be facing complete destruction.

T

he growth in population has also been blamed for some of the

environmental problems we are facing, such as climate change.

It seems like common sense to say that more people means

more resource use, more fossil fuels being burned, and more

emissions being released. But how much of these things are down tofast-growing developing countries, and how much to slower-growth

developed ones?

Co2 Emissions per person per year

OneLuxembourger

forty fiveSenegalese

22.6 tonnesof C02

22.6 tonnesof C02

Environment

L u x e m b o u r g

2 2 . 6 t o n n e s

A u s t r a l i a

1 9 . 3 t o n n e s

C a n a d a

1 6 . 9 t o n n e s

C h i n a 5 t o n n e s

I n d i a 1 . 4

t o n n e s

S e n e g a l 0 . 5



Finally, the emissions gures don’t count air travel – an activity which usesa huge amount of fossil fuels, but is almost entirely undertaken by people in

developed nations, and rich people in developing ones. The poor people whoare blamed for environmental problem because of their large family sizes arenot to blame for this.

While it is true that all humans have some impact on the environment, the realproblem facing us is not having too many people in the developing world eachconsuming a little, but having too many people in the developed world whoconsume a lot. If everyone aspires to live like citizens of rich countries, we willsoon face environmental catastrophe, so it is important that those nations set

an example by showing that it is possible to live good lives with much lessconsumption and resource use, rather than trying to blame climate change onthe same developing nations that have done the least to cause it and will be

most affected by it.

Even these gures are misleading, however, as theydon’t count ‘outsourced emissions’. Outsourcedemissions are emissions that are released ina developing country, but in the process ofmanufacturing something that will be consumed in

a developed country. For example, when electricalproducts are produced in a factory in China orMexico, the emissions are counted as belongingto China and Mexico. But the expensive productsare bought by rich consumers mostly in thedeveloped world, who can claim to be improvingtheir environmental record because they don’t needto count the emissions from making these goods.

Around one third of all Chinese emissions come fromproducts produced for other countries , and another

study suggests that if imported goods like these werecounted, rich countries would have increased theiremissions by 7% in recent years, rather than reducingthem as they claim.The same can be said for emissions fromdeforestation in countries like Brazil – the area ofthe Amazon rainforest which has been cut downwas 587,000km2 by 2000, an area six times thesize of Portugal. However, 70% of that land is used

to raise cattle for beef, much of which is exportedto rich countries, and soy bean production for biofuels, used in cars in North America and Europe, is also increasing. As with outsourced emissions frommanufacturing, at least half of these emissions should be considered as comingfrom the countries that consume the meat and biofuels, rather than all theresponsibility being on the developing world.



24

However, reducing the population is still a sensible goal – it is only a problem when thereproduction of the poor is given the blame for problems they didn’t cause. A reducedpopulation, as long as it is achieved through free choice and in an fair and equal manner,can reduce pressures on food and social problems, as well as the environment. Smallerfamilies are also usually a sign of prosperity and higher development – so improving levelsof human development will most likely lead to a reduction in the population, which isgood, as more developed countries usually consume more resources.

W

e have seen throughout this booklet that the increasing population

of poor people is not solely to blame for food crises, crowded cities, or

climate change – these problems are all caused by inequality, and by

the much greater consumption of a relatively small number of wealthy

people in developed countries.

Development and Child BirthAs human development scores increase, the number of children each family has tends to reduce.

Lowering Population

COUNTRY / HDI SCORE/ AVERAGE children per Woman

Niger / 0.261 /

7.6 children per Woman

Afghanistan/ 0.349/

5.4 children per Woman

Hong-Kong/0.862/

1child per Woman



Ways of Lowering the Population

The different ways of encouraging people to have fewer children could be broadlysplit into two categories – the coercive and the participatory.

Coercive ways are ways in which people are forced to

reduce the population by having less children. The bestexample of this can be found in China, where there is agovernment policy that familiesare only allowed to have onechild each. While this has beenvery successful in slowing downChina’s population growth – from5.6 children per woman in 1979,to 1.5 today – it has also causedproblems. Because of a culturalpreference for boys over girls,there have been many reports ofpeople killing or aborting femalebabies so they can have anotherchild and hope for a boy.The one-child policy has alsoemphasised inequality, as thepunishment for having morechildren is a large ne. This is

impossible to pay for most poorpeople in slums or rural areas, butricher people who can afford it can have more children without fear.

“One child per couple, birth controlstuff will be supplied free of charge” Around the child bottles with birthcontrol pills and packets of condoms.

Picture by IISG

Picture by Kattebelleetje

Some examples of birth control posters in China.

Coercive



26

Another way to reduce the populationthrough choice, rather than throughforce, is to improve health and reducethe number of children that die in therst few years after birth. This soundsodd, as you would expect reducing thenumber of deaths to increase the overallpopulation.

The participatory approach, where people

are educated to be able to make theirown decisions regarding reproduction,has been used in Iran with just as muchsuccess as the Chinese one-child policy– with the number of children per womenfalling from 6.6 in 1970 to 1.9 today.This was achieved by classes on familyplanning, and free contraceptives, likecondoms, handed out around the country.

Another effective policy in Iran was toincrease the education and literacy of women, especiallyin rural areas, where the birth rate was highest. From1976 to 2006, the percentage of young rural women whocould read and write increased from 10% to 91%. Whenwomen are educated and therefore have access to moreinformation about things like contraceptives, they are muchmore likely to have small families and to make their ownchoices about when to have those children.

Forcing people to have less children is also not very democratic – peopleshould have the freedom of choice to have as many children as they like,but they should be encouraged to have fewer. This is where the participatoryapproach comes in.

But a lot of families in the developingworld have lots of children becauseof the fear that some of them may die

before reaching adulthood – this is anespecially big fear in rural areas, wherechildren may be needed to help on thefarm as parents get older.

picture by foxtongue

picture by Beautiful Ethiopia

Participative



The Earth is our common living space.

We need to share its limited natural resources .

The more people there are,the more we need

and the more we want.

Over the lasttwo centuries our population has rapidly grown.

It is now at 7billion, and ourconsumption has

grown with it.

Everyone needs a piece of thoseresources.

We have tomake sure wedon’t use up all of the Earth’s treasures.



28

The developed world also needs to set a good example to developing countriesby reducing its own consumption. This means reducing food waste (people in the USthrow away 34 million tonnes of food every year, enough to feed the whole of NewYork City ve times over – and they’re not the only rich country with this problem),increasing recycling, and putting ‘green taxes’ on environmentally damaging itemslike cars and plane ights (with some of the money raised being spent on improving

public transport like buses and trains to help people get around in greener ways).

To avoid this, the developed world needs to help the developing countriesavoid the high-energy, high-consumption stage that they have all gone through,and encourage them to be environmentally friendly from the beginning of theirdevelopment. This means sharing the latest green technology with them, notthrough schemes like the Clean Development Mechanism (which we covered in ourprevious section, Environment and Sustainable Human Development) which aredesigned mainly for prot, but in ways which help local communities to produce

their own energy sustainably and cheaply.

Inuencing and changing the behaviour of consumers in rich countries with slow

population growth will, ultimately, have a much bigger impact on our environment,our cities and our ability to feed ourselves than lecturing poor countries and telling

their citizens to have fewer children.

T

hroughout this section we have made it clear that many of

the problems we face are not due to population, but down

to consumption, which is much higher in richer countries.

The problem is that as poor countries increase in human

development, they also usually increase in wealth, and their citizens

might then begin to consume as much as people in Europe or North

America. If this happens, our environmental, social and food problems

may get worse rather than better, even with a lower population.

Consumption and Population



Youth Action on Food and Cities

To help raise awareness of the UNconference on Sustainable Developmentand the work of Road to Rio+20,the Moroccan organization Rikab forDevelopment organized a workshop inOctober 2011 in a high school in Rabat,the Moroccan capital. The workshopconsisted of doing a clear up and plantingvegetables in a slum area where the schoolwas located. With the impressive work of

the youth who live there and thestudents of Omar Al Khayamhigh school, they gathered tomake their environment greenerand cleaner. The objective ofthe workshop was to makethe community where they liveaware about the importance ofa clean environment no matter

where and in what difcultiesthey live in. Theother objectivewas for the youthto show to theother wealthydistricts andcommunities thatwith basic meansand hand in handwe can make ourenvironment abetter one.

Rikab for DevelopmentO

ur food system may be facing a crisis, and there

may be an increasing number of dirty and dangerous

slums around the world, but it doesn’t have to be this

way - here are some examples of young people who are cleaning the system up and making a safe future for us all...



30

The sanitation condition of Freetown, Sierra Leone, is very poor. Heaps of

garbage and lth have taken over the city. Cockroaches and rats can be seen onthe streets of Freetown playing games, while dogs and vultures sit on top of thehuge garbage deposits as if they are in charge of affairs. Mosquitos are now incharge of the city, infecting it with malaria. Due to the alarming garbage depositsacross the city, there is also an increase in typhoid among the world’s mostvulnerable citizens – the children.

As a control measure, Foundation for Democratic Initiative and Development,a youth organisation in Sierra Leone, has seen the urgent need to engage theyouth in various communities within the city to clean their environment. Thiscleaning has helped to keep some parts of the city clean, safe and healthy. Italso engages youth who are massively unemployed across the city. Keeping theyouth engaged furtherkeeps the city freefrom petty crimes,gang violence anddrug-related offences.

Foundation for DemocraticInitiative and Development



Biofuels – fuels that act in the same way as petrol, but are made from the oil of plants. Somesee them as a great replacement for fossil fuels, others say that making fuel from plantstakes food away from humans.

Food speculation – this is a complicated process where banks trade food contracts with each

other for prot, meaning that when the food reaches the market the price has risen, and thepoorest people cannot afford to but it. For a more detailed explanation see page 9.

Hunger – the ofcial denition of a hungry person is someone who consumes less than 2,100calories a day – around 925 million people on earth t this denition.

Industrial agriculture –a type of farming that uses chemical fertilisers and pesticides,monocultures (see below), and very large farms. It has produced large amounts of food in thepast, but at a very high environmental and human cost.

Life expectancy – the average number of years a person in any country lives. This is muchlower in developing countries than developed ones.

Monocultures – A massive area of land in which only one crop is grown. These monoculturesare particularly at risk from the spread of disease. Traditionally, farmers would grow a widerange of crops on their land.

Organic agriculture – a type of farming that uses natural fertilisers (made from animal manureor plants) and grows a much more diverse range of crops on smaller farms that employ moreworkers. Contrary to popular opinion, if done well, organic agriculture can produce roughlyas much food as industrial agriculture.

Outsourced emissions – emissions that are created in one country while manufacturingproducts that will be exported to another country – i.e. sportswear that is made in thePhilippines, but sold in Australia. Currently, the manufacturing company is entirelyresponsible for the emissions, which many say is unfair.

Population growth – the amount of births minus the amount of deaths in any one country. Ifthere are lots more births than deaths, the population is growing, like in many parts of Africaand the Middle East, where people have large families; if the number of births and deathsare roughly equal, population is stable; if there are more deaths than births, the population is

falling.

Security of tenure – most people who live in slums are at risk of being kicked out of theirhomes at any time because they do not legally own the land. Security of tenure would meanthey would have a legal status and would have to be given warning and a reason beforebeing evicted. This would give them a much more stable life.

Slums – run-down areas of a city, inhabited by the poorest people, and often consideredillegal by governments. They often have little access to medical attention, clean water ortransport.

Suburbs – the suburbs are the area of a city that surrounds the centre. Suburbs are usuallyvery spread out, designed for cars to travel around, and have shops and leisure activitieslocated in out-of-town shopping centres, a long way from people’s houses.

Glossary



Artwork by Eric Benson

book four.. shd and society interactive

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