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The challenge of sustaining our habitat in the twenty-first century
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The Challenge of Sustaining Our Habitat in the Twenty-First Century Aliye P. Celik Abstracts---Adapted from the keynoteaddress at the North American Tunneling "96 conference, this paper deals with sustainable development of human settlements and infrastructure, within the context of the United Nat,ions Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), held June 4--.19 in Istanbul, Turkey.
ain grateful to you for inviting m e to be a keynote speaker, not only on m y behalf but on behalf of the United Nations Conference on H u m a n Settlements and the Secretary General of the U.N. Conference on Hum a n Settlements, Dr. Wally N'Dow. This shows your commitment to U.N. principles. I a m delighted to be here today to take part in this conference and to discuss Sustainable H u m a n Settlements Development as we go to the United Nations Conference on H u m a n Settlements, which will take place in Istanbul in June 1996. W e know that cities have been exploding all over the world for more than 50 years; however, nobody paid due attention to this phenomenon. While technological achievements and progress during that time have been tremendous, not m u c h has been done to understand or improve the conditions in cities. In :fact,w h e n it comes to politicalwill to improve the living conditions in the cities,there is none. However, the growth of citieshas reached a stage where it is a global catalyst for radical changes in the world's social and politicallife. Today it is not possible to separate the welfare of the city from the welfare of the nation---or, indeed, from that of the planet. W h e n the United Nations was established fiRy years ago, ninety percent of the world's population lived in rural areas. A few years inte the next millennium, the overwhelming majority of people in most countries willbe living in cities--overcrowded c:entresthat will continue to receive huge influxes of people. Already a billion of these new urban residents live in health- and life-threatening situations, with hundreds of millions living in absolute poverty. At least 250 million people have no access te safe piped water. Four hundred million lack sanitation.
l
In the next forty years, the global population will grow by 3.7 billion people. Ninety percent of this growth will be in developing countries; and ninety percent-of that will be in urban areas. In effect, every year we are witnessing the birth of twenty new cities the size of Washington, D.C. Or, to put it another way, more people will be packed into the cities of the developing world in the twenty-first century than are alive on the entire planet today. This global trend towards megacities is the consequence of rapid and sometimes destructive changes that face both rural and urban populations ~he world over. The combination industrialization, population increases, and division of land, the rate of urbanization has reached an unprecedented rate, resulting in a crisis situation in cities. Unless the urban agenda is addressed, the repercussions will continue to be felt in a vast array of problems: increasing urban poverty; homelessness and inadequate housing; unemployment; disaffection among youth; ethnic tension; violence; drugs; a lack of urban infrastructure; social disintegration; land degradation; traffic congestion; air, water, and noise pollution; health epidemics, etc. Apart from
Present address,allauthors:Dr. AliyeP. Celik,Officer-in-Charge, New York Office,United NationsConferenceon Human Settlements (Habitat),2 U N Plaza,Room DC-2-943, United Nations,New York, N Y 10017 U.S.A.
This paper is based on the keynote address given by Dr. Celik at the conference "North American Tunnelling '96: Tunnelling and Underground Space for Sustainable Development."
Tunne///n8 and Underground Space TeO~/ogy, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 377-379, 1996 Copyright © 1996 published by Elsevie~ Science Lid Printed in Great Brit~dn.All rights x-e~rv,ed 0886-7798/96 $15.00 + 0.00
Dr. Aliye Celik addresses participants in the opening ceremonies of the North American Tunneling N A T "96 Conference.
Pergamon
complexities of delivering infrastructure to the poor through causing social conflict, unresolved problems related to huconventional means will require governments to look for man settlements in urban areas not only will drain realternatives, such as informal sector participation, sources, but will prevent sustainable development. privatization of services and cost recovery financing. PriAll of the evidence makes for a compelling case that the vate as well as public sector provision has to be examined in focus of many, if not most, of the political, economic, and the light of different policy options for financing housing social programs of the next century must be on urban areas. infrastructure and services. It is there that most of the world's population will live and About 25 to 30 percent of the urban population in Latin work, where political and social tensions are most likely to America, Africa and the Middle East lack access to portable boil over into conflict, and where, ultimately, the roots of water. More than one-third of urban dwellers in Asia and real global and h u m a n security lie. the Caribbean are not served by portable water systems. Urbanization does not necessarily represent a destabiAbout two-thirds of the urban dwellers in West Africa lack lizing threat. Nevertheless, the trend towards urbanizabasic sanitation services, as do more than half in Asia, tion, when combined with other factors--such as inadCentral and South America, North Africa, and the Middle equate physical infrastructure to absorb new city residents, East. The rapid growth of slum and squatter settlements in an insufficient economic base to keep pace with the rapidly Third World urban settlements makes service extension rising population, and the lack of resources that can be difficult, and m a n y of the poor continue to lack any basic devoted to developing the necessary social infrastructure to urban services and facilities. The cost of providing municiaccommodate the stresses of urbanization---creates a popal infrastructure and services in developing countries is tentially destabilizing situation. high. The problem of h u m a n settlements threatens a new Policy options for providing services and increasing the global division: one between rich and poor, both within and capacities of national, metropolitan and local governments among nations. It is a division, moreover, that may well to provide services directly to urban residents include become the dominant characteristic of the new global introducing market surrogate and competitive contracting urban world order, with implications at least as dangerous methods to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of as the period of East-West rivalry that the world has only public service providers; using contracts to expand the recently left behind. service delivery capability of the public sector; providing Within this context, we have to remember that the rapid land with infrastructure before opening to development; pace of urbanization in developing countries has greatly and encouraging small and medium-sized cities where increased demands for shelter and infrastructure and social services can be provided more easily. The network-based services in towns and cities of the developing world over the services require large investments in capital and equippast two decades. Deficiencies in urban services particument, which must be linked in a system that operates larly affect poor families who lack the income to pay for them effectively. directly; and those neighbourhoods yield little or no tax Among the most important services that national, murevenues to finance their extension. As a result, the urban nicipal and local governments can provide to the poor in poor usually live in communities with few services or with urban settlements is the construction of large-scale capital those of the worst quality. They are often the last to obtain infrastructure for transportation, sanitation, public safety, potable water, basic sanitation and adequate health and recreation, and health facilities. Tunnelling will be a educational services. useful tool in the provision of energy, clean water, sewage Statistics demonstrate that only one-third of urban and transportation systems. Thus, there will be a great dwellers have water piped to their homes, and fewer than challenge for underground systems for infrastructure and 35 percent have access to sewage facilities. One-quarter of tunnelling to provide affordable and easily applicable the urban population lives in slums. The growing concentechnical solutions needed by cities, especially the poorer tration of the poor in urban settlements will further strain groups in cities. the existing services, and extension of public services and The efficient, affordable use of tunnelling, and other facilities to the growing number of urban families is exappropriate systems for providing infrastructure can help tremely expensive. prevent the disasters such as the following, which occurred Many national and municipal governments in developin the past: ing countries, however, face serious financial problems in providing low-cost housing, drinking water, adequate facili• The cholera epidemic in Peru, which afflicted 320,000 ties for sewage and garbage disposal, health, transportation people, killed 2600, and and educational services. Most caused $1 billion of ecodeveloping countries are exnomic damage; it proved to periencing difficulties in mainbe much more costly than tainingbasic standards of pubsanitation improvements "... Tunnelling will be a useful lic health and extending pubthat could have prevented lic utilities, especially in the the outbreak. tool in the provision of energy, slum and squatter communi• The plague outbreak of ties where the majority of the clean water, sewage and 1994 in Surat, India, in poor live. In the future, govwhich 54 people died and transportation systems. Thus, ernments in developing counthe health of 5000 others tries will find it increasingly was affected, causing $1.5 there will be a great challenge for difficult, if not impossible, to billion worth of economic underground systems for extend infrastructure and serdamage and an exodus of vices to the poor through con500,000 residents. infrastructure and tunnelling to ventional, public service deSubstandard housing, unlivery arrangements or to proprovide affordable andeasily safe water and poor sanitation vide adequate shelter. This is in densely populated cities are applicable technical solutions the challenge for those of us r e s p o n s i b l e for 10 million dealing with infrastructure. needed by cities, especially the deaths worldwide every year; Infrastructure needs of the and all of these deaths can be poorer groups in cities.'" poor will have to be met. The prevented by environmental high costs and administrative precautions and through sus-
378 TUNNELLINGANDUNDERGROUNDSPACE TECHNOLOGY
Volume 11, Number 4, 1996
"In the future, governments in developing countries will find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to extend infrastructure and services to the poor through conventional, public service delivery arrangements or to provide adequate shelter. This is the challenge for those of us dealing with infrastructure."
t a i n a b l e human settlements development. Four million infants and children 'who die because of water-borne diseases can be saved annually through the installation of proper infrastructure. This proves once more that prevention by building healthy cities with decent infrastructure is less costly than dealing with the implications of disasters later on. The challenge of the Habitat II Conference is to look for and find solutions to t]he problems in cities. Habitat II will be the logical culmination of the series of conferences launched by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro; the International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo; the Social Summit, in Copenhagen; and the World Conference on Women, in Beijing. These conferences span some of the most serious and pressing challenges that will confront the world community in the next century. The United Nations is sponsoring Habitat II in finding • information for shared solutions. This sharing ofinforma-
Volume i i , Number4, 1996
tion, together with the building of partnerships between the public and private sectors and the community, is the moving force envisaged for the collection of Best Practices to which central and local governments, as well as public and private sectors, can draw as they search for new ideas, new forms of cooperation, and workable solutions to the problems that confront them. The reconceptualization of the global agenda that is called for by the impact of a global urban civilization, however, is not a task that can be completed by Habitat II alone. We also need the efforts of people such as yourselves--who, although perhaps starting from different perspectives, engage many of the same issues and offer valuable insights, as well as program and policy innovations for us to consider if we are to successfully address all the dimensions of this issue. It is in the interest of every nation, therefore, to see to it that these human habitats--from the smallest to the large s t - a r e made safe and livable so that we pass on to our children an urban world that can sustain them in harmony; an urban world rid of the shameful poverty, the inequality, the discrimination that still pervades its ghettos; an urban world at peace with the environment and with itself. This is our collective challenge. [] A s a postscript to Habitat II, Dr. Celik adds: The U.N. Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) took place in Istanbul, Turkey, June 3-14, 1996. It was one of the most successful conferences of the last decade, mainly because it brought the concept of partnership to the international forum. It will be remembered as the conference of partnership--between governments, non-governmental organizations, local authorities, private sector representatives, parliamentarians, academicians, and various actors of the society-all of whom have an important role to play in the creation of human settlements. Editor's note: For the ITA perspective on Habitat II, please turn to page 513.
TUNNELLING ANDUNDERGROUND SPACETECHNOLOGY 379
The Challenge of Sustaining Our Habitat in the Twenty-First Century Aliye P. Celik Abstracts---Adapted from the keynoteaddress at the North American Tunneling "96 conference, this paper deals with sustainable development of human settlements and infrastructure, within the context of the United Nat,ions Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), held June 4--.19 in Istanbul, Turkey.
ain grateful to you for inviting m e to be a keynote speaker, not only on m y behalf but on behalf of the United Nations Conference on H u m a n Settlements and the Secretary General of the U.N. Conference on Hum a n Settlements, Dr. Wally N'Dow. This shows your commitment to U.N. principles. I a m delighted to be here today to take part in this conference and to discuss Sustainable H u m a n Settlements Development as we go to the United Nations Conference on H u m a n Settlements, which will take place in Istanbul in June 1996. W e know that cities have been exploding all over the world for more than 50 years; however, nobody paid due attention to this phenomenon. While technological achievements and progress during that time have been tremendous, not m u c h has been done to understand or improve the conditions in cities. In :fact,w h e n it comes to politicalwill to improve the living conditions in the cities,there is none. However, the growth of citieshas reached a stage where it is a global catalyst for radical changes in the world's social and politicallife. Today it is not possible to separate the welfare of the city from the welfare of the nation---or, indeed, from that of the planet. W h e n the United Nations was established fiRy years ago, ninety percent of the world's population lived in rural areas. A few years inte the next millennium, the overwhelming majority of people in most countries willbe living in cities--overcrowded c:entresthat will continue to receive huge influxes of people. Already a billion of these new urban residents live in health- and life-threatening situations, with hundreds of millions living in absolute poverty. At least 250 million people have no access te safe piped water. Four hundred million lack sanitation.
l
In the next forty years, the global population will grow by 3.7 billion people. Ninety percent of this growth will be in developing countries; and ninety percent-of that will be in urban areas. In effect, every year we are witnessing the birth of twenty new cities the size of Washington, D.C. Or, to put it another way, more people will be packed into the cities of the developing world in the twenty-first century than are alive on the entire planet today. This global trend towards megacities is the consequence of rapid and sometimes destructive changes that face both rural and urban populations ~he world over. The combination industrialization, population increases, and division of land, the rate of urbanization has reached an unprecedented rate, resulting in a crisis situation in cities. Unless the urban agenda is addressed, the repercussions will continue to be felt in a vast array of problems: increasing urban poverty; homelessness and inadequate housing; unemployment; disaffection among youth; ethnic tension; violence; drugs; a lack of urban infrastructure; social disintegration; land degradation; traffic congestion; air, water, and noise pollution; health epidemics, etc. Apart from
Present address,allauthors:Dr. AliyeP. Celik,Officer-in-Charge, New York Office,United NationsConferenceon Human Settlements (Habitat),2 U N Plaza,Room DC-2-943, United Nations,New York, N Y 10017 U.S.A.
This paper is based on the keynote address given by Dr. Celik at the conference "North American Tunnelling '96: Tunnelling and Underground Space for Sustainable Development."
Tunne///n8 and Underground Space TeO~/ogy, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 377-379, 1996 Copyright © 1996 published by Elsevie~ Science Lid Printed in Great Brit~dn.All rights x-e~rv,ed 0886-7798/96 $15.00 + 0.00
Dr. Aliye Celik addresses participants in the opening ceremonies of the North American Tunneling N A T "96 Conference.
Pergamon
complexities of delivering infrastructure to the poor through causing social conflict, unresolved problems related to huconventional means will require governments to look for man settlements in urban areas not only will drain realternatives, such as informal sector participation, sources, but will prevent sustainable development. privatization of services and cost recovery financing. PriAll of the evidence makes for a compelling case that the vate as well as public sector provision has to be examined in focus of many, if not most, of the political, economic, and the light of different policy options for financing housing social programs of the next century must be on urban areas. infrastructure and services. It is there that most of the world's population will live and About 25 to 30 percent of the urban population in Latin work, where political and social tensions are most likely to America, Africa and the Middle East lack access to portable boil over into conflict, and where, ultimately, the roots of water. More than one-third of urban dwellers in Asia and real global and h u m a n security lie. the Caribbean are not served by portable water systems. Urbanization does not necessarily represent a destabiAbout two-thirds of the urban dwellers in West Africa lack lizing threat. Nevertheless, the trend towards urbanizabasic sanitation services, as do more than half in Asia, tion, when combined with other factors--such as inadCentral and South America, North Africa, and the Middle equate physical infrastructure to absorb new city residents, East. The rapid growth of slum and squatter settlements in an insufficient economic base to keep pace with the rapidly Third World urban settlements makes service extension rising population, and the lack of resources that can be difficult, and m a n y of the poor continue to lack any basic devoted to developing the necessary social infrastructure to urban services and facilities. The cost of providing municiaccommodate the stresses of urbanization---creates a popal infrastructure and services in developing countries is tentially destabilizing situation. high. The problem of h u m a n settlements threatens a new Policy options for providing services and increasing the global division: one between rich and poor, both within and capacities of national, metropolitan and local governments among nations. It is a division, moreover, that may well to provide services directly to urban residents include become the dominant characteristic of the new global introducing market surrogate and competitive contracting urban world order, with implications at least as dangerous methods to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of as the period of East-West rivalry that the world has only public service providers; using contracts to expand the recently left behind. service delivery capability of the public sector; providing Within this context, we have to remember that the rapid land with infrastructure before opening to development; pace of urbanization in developing countries has greatly and encouraging small and medium-sized cities where increased demands for shelter and infrastructure and social services can be provided more easily. The network-based services in towns and cities of the developing world over the services require large investments in capital and equippast two decades. Deficiencies in urban services particument, which must be linked in a system that operates larly affect poor families who lack the income to pay for them effectively. directly; and those neighbourhoods yield little or no tax Among the most important services that national, murevenues to finance their extension. As a result, the urban nicipal and local governments can provide to the poor in poor usually live in communities with few services or with urban settlements is the construction of large-scale capital those of the worst quality. They are often the last to obtain infrastructure for transportation, sanitation, public safety, potable water, basic sanitation and adequate health and recreation, and health facilities. Tunnelling will be a educational services. useful tool in the provision of energy, clean water, sewage Statistics demonstrate that only one-third of urban and transportation systems. Thus, there will be a great dwellers have water piped to their homes, and fewer than challenge for underground systems for infrastructure and 35 percent have access to sewage facilities. One-quarter of tunnelling to provide affordable and easily applicable the urban population lives in slums. The growing concentechnical solutions needed by cities, especially the poorer tration of the poor in urban settlements will further strain groups in cities. the existing services, and extension of public services and The efficient, affordable use of tunnelling, and other facilities to the growing number of urban families is exappropriate systems for providing infrastructure can help tremely expensive. prevent the disasters such as the following, which occurred Many national and municipal governments in developin the past: ing countries, however, face serious financial problems in providing low-cost housing, drinking water, adequate facili• The cholera epidemic in Peru, which afflicted 320,000 ties for sewage and garbage disposal, health, transportation people, killed 2600, and and educational services. Most caused $1 billion of ecodeveloping countries are exnomic damage; it proved to periencing difficulties in mainbe much more costly than tainingbasic standards of pubsanitation improvements "... Tunnelling will be a useful lic health and extending pubthat could have prevented lic utilities, especially in the the outbreak. tool in the provision of energy, slum and squatter communi• The plague outbreak of ties where the majority of the clean water, sewage and 1994 in Surat, India, in poor live. In the future, govwhich 54 people died and transportation systems. Thus, ernments in developing counthe health of 5000 others tries will find it increasingly was affected, causing $1.5 there will be a great challenge for difficult, if not impossible, to billion worth of economic underground systems for extend infrastructure and serdamage and an exodus of vices to the poor through con500,000 residents. infrastructure and tunnelling to ventional, public service deSubstandard housing, unlivery arrangements or to proprovide affordable andeasily safe water and poor sanitation vide adequate shelter. This is in densely populated cities are applicable technical solutions the challenge for those of us r e s p o n s i b l e for 10 million dealing with infrastructure. needed by cities, especially the deaths worldwide every year; Infrastructure needs of the and all of these deaths can be poorer groups in cities.'" poor will have to be met. The prevented by environmental high costs and administrative precautions and through sus-
378 TUNNELLINGANDUNDERGROUNDSPACE TECHNOLOGY
Volume 11, Number 4, 1996
"In the future, governments in developing countries will find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to extend infrastructure and services to the poor through conventional, public service delivery arrangements or to provide adequate shelter. This is the challenge for those of us dealing with infrastructure."
t a i n a b l e human settlements development. Four million infants and children 'who die because of water-borne diseases can be saved annually through the installation of proper infrastructure. This proves once more that prevention by building healthy cities with decent infrastructure is less costly than dealing with the implications of disasters later on. The challenge of the Habitat II Conference is to look for and find solutions to t]he problems in cities. Habitat II will be the logical culmination of the series of conferences launched by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro; the International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo; the Social Summit, in Copenhagen; and the World Conference on Women, in Beijing. These conferences span some of the most serious and pressing challenges that will confront the world community in the next century. The United Nations is sponsoring Habitat II in finding • information for shared solutions. This sharing ofinforma-
Volume i i , Number4, 1996
tion, together with the building of partnerships between the public and private sectors and the community, is the moving force envisaged for the collection of Best Practices to which central and local governments, as well as public and private sectors, can draw as they search for new ideas, new forms of cooperation, and workable solutions to the problems that confront them. The reconceptualization of the global agenda that is called for by the impact of a global urban civilization, however, is not a task that can be completed by Habitat II alone. We also need the efforts of people such as yourselves--who, although perhaps starting from different perspectives, engage many of the same issues and offer valuable insights, as well as program and policy innovations for us to consider if we are to successfully address all the dimensions of this issue. It is in the interest of every nation, therefore, to see to it that these human habitats--from the smallest to the large s t - a r e made safe and livable so that we pass on to our children an urban world that can sustain them in harmony; an urban world rid of the shameful poverty, the inequality, the discrimination that still pervades its ghettos; an urban world at peace with the environment and with itself. This is our collective challenge. [] A s a postscript to Habitat II, Dr. Celik adds: The U.N. Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) took place in Istanbul, Turkey, June 3-14, 1996. It was one of the most successful conferences of the last decade, mainly because it brought the concept of partnership to the international forum. It will be remembered as the conference of partnership--between governments, non-governmental organizations, local authorities, private sector representatives, parliamentarians, academicians, and various actors of the society-all of whom have an important role to play in the creation of human settlements. Editor's note: For the ITA perspective on Habitat II, please turn to page 513.
TUNNELLING ANDUNDERGROUND SPACETECHNOLOGY 379