Grim outlook projected for slum cities of the future
The warning comes in a major study on cities — State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future — released by the Washington-based WorldWatch Institute, an international independent research institute.
It says that while cities cover only 0.4% of the Earth’s surface they generate the bulk of its carbon emissions, making them key to alleviating the climate crisis.
Cities around the world have begun to take climate change seriously, many in response to the direct threat they face. Of the 33 cities projected to have eight million or more residents by 2015, at least 21 are coastal and will have to contend with a rise in sea level caused by climate change.
Dr Carolyn Stephens, senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is one of a number of global experts to have contributed to the report, which calls for renewed investment in education, healthcare and infrastructure in the world’s cities.
She said: “Cities now represent the ‘brave new world’, with a minority living long lives in over-consuming affluence, and where most die young in inescapable poverty.
“We cannot achieve either sustainable development nor human health for the majority with this unethical, unsustainable model of urban development.”
By some time next year, more than half of all people will live in urban areas. More than 60 million people — roughly the population of France — are now adding to the planet’s burgeoning cities and suburbs each year, mostly in low-income urban settlements in developing countries.
The report warned that unplanned and chaotic urbanisation was taking a huge toll on human health and the quality of the environment, contributing to social, ecological and economic instability in many countries.
An estimated 1.6 million urban residents die each year due to lack of clean water and sanitation.
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