Rapid urbanization poses health and environmental hazards
The upcoming Conference on Sustainable Development is called “Rio+20” because it is the follow-up to the landmark Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which convened 20 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The integration of human development, environmental sustainability, and economic growth – at the time a young concept named “sustainable development” – was the hallmark idea behind UNCED. This meeting of world leaders dramatically changed the global conversation in regards to international development policy. The conference produced major agreements concerning sustainable development: the Convention on Biological Diversity; the Framework Convention on Climate Change; and the Agenda 21 path to sustainable development were all written here, and remain critical documents in international policy: the FCCC, for example, was the first global forum for climate change action and spurred the creation of the Kyoto Protocol. Additionally, the UNCED streamlined the concept of environmental sustainability, ensuring that ecological impact would be a core component of any policy or project (the conference even became known as ‘the Earth Summit’) .
Rio+20 is thus an occasion for global scrutiny on the progress made. So how has the world changed since 1992? The UN Environmental Program has just released a report comparing the world now and then in a variety of sectors. The major demographic story is that, for the first time in human history, more than 50% of our population lives in cities. This has important implications for the natural environment as a whole and urban ecologies in particular. Cities now consume 75% of the world’s energy and produce 80% of carbon emissions. Urban infrastructure – especially in developing countries – has been overwhelmed and unable to accommodate the rapid expansion of cities, increasing exposure to pollutants and health hazards. To illustrate this, although the proportion of slum dwellers has dropped, the absolute number has risen to over 800 million residents since 1992.
The I2UD has long recognized that improving living conditions for humans is a way to revitalize degraded ecologies, and vice versa; many of our past projects have tried to seize these “win-win” opportunities through strategic planning. From Tanzania to Turkey, Bolivia to Albania, the I2UD often recommends infrastructure upgrades to cut down on pollution, minimize the threat of natural disasters, and ensure sustainable economic growth. In the run-up to Rio+20 next week, check back for a deeper look into many different urban sustainability issues, as well as innovations from around the world and from our own portfolio that address these problems.