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Introduction
Urban Growth and Poverty
Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management
Urban Health
Urban Fact Sheets: Asia and the Near East
Introduction
South Asia is experiencing a major demographic transition. During the last fifty years, India's total population more than doubled, while the urban population grew by more than five times. In 1996, the urban population in Bangladesh was 23 million. By 2020, it will increase to 58 million. The urban population in Nepal, during the same period, will grow from 2.6 million to 7.7 million, and in Sri Lanka it will double to more than 8 million.
South Asia's expanding urban areas face a complex set of challenges that must be overcome if they are to fulfill their potential as hubs for economic, social and political innovation and leadership. The challenges are particularly great because of the speed at which their populations are growing. The pressures caused by geometric population growth continue to create huge environmental, health and infrastructural problems. This can, in turn, lead to social unrest. Local governments are well positioned to not only best understand the problems of their municipalities but to take the steps needed to solve them.
Urban Growth and Poverty
Serious poverty has accompanied urbanization. It is as much a result of rural-to-urban migration as it is the inability of the formal economy's capacity to keep pace with the growing population of unskilled labor. In many India states with large shares of urban population, for example, Maharashtra (38 percent), Gujurat (34 percent), and Tamil Nadu (34 percent), the share of urban population below the poverty line is greater than in rural areas. According to the World Bank, 50 percent of Indian urban dwellers live in slums and squatter settlements and these areas grow at twice the rate of urban areas. Nepal and Sri Lanka urban dwellers seem to be doing slightly better with 19% and 28% of their urban populations falling below the poverty line.
Poor entrepreneurs in the urban informal sector are extremely vulnerable to macroeconomic changes, more so than their rural counterparts as they tend to be almost completely dependant on the cash economy for production inputs. An increase in domestic prices for a poor entrepreneur with little or no savings can be devastating. It is possible that they may no longer be able to afford the inputs they need for production or to keep themselves healthy.
Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management
Only 50 percent of the urban population in Bangladesh has any access to safe water. Nepali urbanites do slightly better as 60 percent have access to clean water. Although the majority of urban residents in India and Sri Lanka have access to some water supply, it is not uncommon for piped water supply to be available sporadically. Further, access to potable water often means the existence of one or two standpipes in a slum area. The pipes must provide services to a thousand or more people and rarely run for more than a few hours a day. Moreover, the actual quality of the water changes considerably from season to season. Sewage service coverage is well below that for water supply. Less than half the urban population in India has access to adequate toilet facilities, and sewage treatment is virtually nonexistent, creating one of India's most serious environmental problems surface and ground water contamination. The situation is virtually the same in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
South Asian cities are drowning in their own waste. In New Delhi and Mumbai, more than 1.5 tons of garbage is left rotting on the streets or in improperly maintained pits every day. Dhaka is only able to collect about 50 percent of its waste each day. Further, since the city of Dhaka is growing so quickly, dumpsites must be located further from the Dhaka center, making it more costly to haul the garbage out of the city. Katmandu faces similar challenges. The piles of garbage that clog street drains in South Asia cities contribute to floods during the rainy season, which seriously jeopardize the health of nearby residents.
Urban Health
The health of the urban poor is often worse than that of their rural counterparts. Child mortality rates among populations in the lowest income quintiles, for example, are higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Children from poor families who live in urban areas are also more likely to be underweight and experience stunted growth than their rural counterparts.
Air pollution is another important health challenge of urban residents in South Asia. In Delhi, one out of ten school children have asthma. Premature deaths due to air pollution in Indian cities were estimated to have increased by 30 percent between 1992 and 1995. High levels of lead pollution in the air lead to stunted growth in children as well as hyperactivity and brain damage.
Role for USAID Assistance
Poverty Alleviation and Economic Growth: Urbanization can, if combined with greater education and access to financial capital, lead to an improvement in the circumstances of urban poor. Despite this potential, intervention is needed in urban areas to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to partake in the benefits of economic growth. As South Asian countries move to liberalize their economies, well-targeted programs are needed to ensure that poor, informal sector workers in urban areas are given at least some protection from the worst of the damage that price fluctuations can cause. They must also be given the resources necessary to take full advantage of the economic opportunities that liberalization can offer.
Environmental Services: Recognizing the need to introduce new approaches to meet the challenges of urbanization, local government are increasingly turning to private sector participation to close the infrastructure gap and improve management of urban services. Although a few privatization and capital market funding examples are documented in South Asia, much work still needs to be done to increase opportunities and the feasibility of private sector participation. Further, active community participation in solid waste management requires innovative planning from government officials and the leadership and motivation of community leaders to mobilize their inhabitants to properly store, segregate and recycle waste.
Health: Urban slum dwellers in South Asia are in desperate need of improved access to health services, both curative and preventative. This means that medical practitioners need to partner with urban service providers to come up with ways to not only improve the access of the urban poor to adequate nutrition, immunizations, neonatal and maternal health care but ensure that they are given access to adequate shelter, water, sanitation and other environmental services.
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