| The responses of developing country governments to urban poverty
|
| | |
| 1. | We were concerned to hear that few governments in sub-Saharan Africa have effective urban poverty reduction programmes, despite Africa's status as the world's fastest-urbanising region and the fact that it has the highest proportion of slum dwellers. We encourage DFID and other donors to advocate for increased attention to urban poverty by all partner governments, especially those in Africa. This will necessitate greater prioritisation of urban development within national poverty reduction strategies. (Paragraph 17)
|
| | |
| Measuring urban poverty |
| | |
| 2. | Ensuring that policies and programmes are based on accurate measurements of urban poverty is vital. We recommend that DFID encourage the World Bank and other key international institutions to explore new forms of measuring urban poverty that move beyond the use of crude poverty lines to take proper account of the high costs for housing and basic services paid by many of the urban poor. (Paragraph 20)
|
| | |
| The decline of donor urban programming
|
| | |
| 3. | We were concerned to hear that overall donor financing for achieving the Millennium Development Goal 7 slum upgrading target is very low. We are also concerned about the level of staffing capacity within donor agencies to meet the target. DFID is one of a number of bilateral donors that have withdrawn their dedicated urban poverty teams or units. It seems counter-intuitive to us that, as the process of urbanisation and levels of urban poverty have increased, staff capacity to work on these issues has been reduced. (Paragraph 27)
|
| | |
| Unemployment and crime |
| | |
| 4. | We welcome the pledge made in DFID's White Paper to address a key driver of conflict and crime—unemployment amongst young men. We also welcome DFID's recognition of the importance of developing women's skills. However, we were disappointed that neither point was linked to urban contexts specifically. In slum settlements, where large numbers of young, poor and unemployed people may be concentrated, the risks of internal conflict, crime and extremism are heightened. Women and children are at particular risk to exploitative and dangerous work. We recommend that DFID ensure that urban settings are given a specific focus for its crime reduction, employment generation and skills development schemes. (Paragraph 32)
|
| | |
| 5. | Local and community responses to urban crime have been proven to be highly effective. We credit DFID's support to community security and policing initiatives in Jamaica and Nigeria and urge the Department to look at other contexts where these approaches can be applied. (Paragraph 34)
|
| | |
| Social exclusion |
| | |
| 6. | Street children have different needs from other children living in urban contexts. We urge DFID to ensure that both the Department and its key partners include tailored policies and programmes for street children within their approach to urban development. We are concerned that indicators based on reaching vulnerable children more generally may not ensure that street children receive the discrete and targeted assistance they require. We recommend that DFID adopt indicators specific to street children within its new Institutional Strategy with UNICEF. (Paragraph 37)
|
| | |
| 7. | A lack of secure property rights is a major barrier to poor urban dwellers' inclusion in city-wide service provision. It also exposes poor residents to the risk of forced eviction. During our visit to Nigeria we witnessed the benefits emerging from a DFID-supported project to establish secure land tenure and property rights in Lagos. Establishing tenure can help residents improve their living conditions, access basic services and raise capital. We recommend that DFID disseminate lessons from and build on their support to the Lagos State Land Registry, and actively support other programmes supporting secure tenure. However, we would caution that land and property titling may not always be the most appropriate form of providing secure tenure for poor urban dwellers and we would encourage DFID to use the approach judiciously. (Paragraph 42)
|
| | |
| 8. | Slum dwellers face multiple levels of social exclusion, and their marginalisation may be exacerbated by other forms of discrimination based on, for example, gender, ethnicity, age and migrant status. We believe that DFID should allocate resources towards urban programmes that strengthen inclusive governance, transparency and accountability. This should include support to community groups working for urban development, including women's organisations. (Paragraph 46)
|
| | |
| 9. | Social protection schemes provide an important safety net for households at risk from poverty and economic shocks. We urge DFID to ensure that its expansion of social protection schemes over the next three years is focused as much on urban as rural contexts. We encourage DFID to look beyond cash transfers alone to broader measures of protection that will ensure all vulnerable groups are reached. (Paragraph 48)
|
| | |
| Population growth |
| | |
| 10. | We were struck by the paucity of evidence received in this inquiry addressing the links between urbanisation and population growth. Natural population increase accounts for some 60% of urban growth. We understand that population control is a sensitive issue but it seems surprising to us that neither UN-Habitat nor DFID provided us with information on linking their support to urban development with a population strategy or with co-operation with the UN Population Fund. We suggest that both agencies look more closely at how such linkages could be achieved. (Paragraph 52)
|
| | |
| Climate change and the environment
|
| | |
| 11. | We were pleased to hear that DFID is seeking to bring the climate change and urbanisation agendas closer together. However, we urge DFID and other international agencies to ensure that attempts to address the impacts of climate change in cities do not divert resources from targeted programmes for urban poverty reduction, including basic service provision and slum upgrading. We recommend that, as well as ensuring its own programmes avoid this outcome, DFID advocate for UN-Habitat, in conjunction with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to lead efforts to boost the capacity of cities to address climate change impacts without neglecting vital urban poverty reduction strategies. Building capacity at local government and community level is central to managing this tension. (Paragraph 58)
|
| | |
| DFID's response to urban poverty
|
| | |
| 12. | We were surprised at what appears to be a sharp imbalance in the level and profile of DFID engagement in programmes addressing urban development in Asia compared to Africa. We understand that programmes that benefit urban contexts may not always be labelled as such. But given the impressive range of programmes explicitly labelled as "urban" in India, we fail to understand why DFID does not support similar initiatives in Africa—especially given its status as the world's fastest urbanising region and the fact that it has the highest proportion of slum dwellers. We are concerned that, without a new and comprehensive approach to urban development in Africa, a number of cities could face a humanitarian crisis in as little as five years' time, given the huge expansion of their urban populations. (Paragraph 66)
|
| | |
| 13. | We were impressed with the Community-Led Infrastructure Finance Facility (CLIFF), which is forging new relationships between urban poor organisations, governments, donors and banks—and leveraging considerable financial resources in the process. We commend DFID's decision to provide a second phase of funding to CLIFF, and recommend that DFID encourage other donors to support this highly worthwhile initiative. We were pleased to hear that the second phase of funding will facilitate the expansion of the Facility into two further countries beyond the initial three (India, Kenya and the Philippines). We recommend that at least one of these countries, and if possible both, are located in sub-Saharan Africa, where improved urban housing and infrastructure is urgently needed. (Paragraph 70)
|
| | |
| 14. | Slum dwellers and other low income urban groups need targeted support to improve their living conditions. Housing microfinance offers an effective and sustainable route towards funding these improvements. We recommend that DFID explore options for strengthening funding of housing microfinance schemes, as a way to boost the current relatively low level of financing it allocates to the housing sector. (Paragraph 74)
|
| | |
| 15. | DFID's approach to strengthening healthcare by supporting discrete projects, channelling funds through multilateral frameworks and providing social protection 'safety nets' is well-established. However, there are a number of specific challenges associated with health care provision in urban areas, especially regarding communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, mental health and inequalities in access to services. DFID should differentiate specific urban components of its health programmes so that steps being taken to address these particular challenges are made clear. We recommend that DFID help ensure that international efforts are based on a solid knowledge base by funding research into the current gaps in detailed understanding of the nature of disease and health problems in poor urban settlements as part of its 2008-13 Research Strategy. (Paragraph 79)
|
| | |
| 16. | We believe that, as with healthcare, there are a number of specific challenges associated with education provision in urban areas, including cramped and unhygienic classroom conditions, the problem of absenteeism due to child labour (especially for girls) and a lack of government schools due to non-recognition of informal settlements. Similar steps to differentiate specific urban components of DFID's education programmes are needed to identify the measures being taken to address these challenges and enhance interventions where necessary. We recommend that DFID work with partner country governments to tackle the issue of official recognition of slums so that more local schools can be provided for children in slum areas. (Paragraph 82)
|
| | |
| 17. | We welcome the support to water and sanitation that DFID is providing through its India programme. However, we are aware once again that there are few examples of DFID support to these essential services in African countries. We assume that DFID provides some support through country programme work but we were not given details of this. It is also clear that DFID provides support through international initiatives such as the Community-Led Infrastructure and Finance Facility and the Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor partnership. These are both highly commendable ventures, and we urge DFID to extend its funding of these and other projects with strong community participation. We recommend that DFID carefully consider whether it is doing enough to help meet the MDG 7 target to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, especially within urban contexts in Africa, the region which is most off-track on this target. (Paragraph 89)
|
| | |
| 18. | We recommend that DFID keep under careful review the commitment in its new Water and Sanitation Policy to continue to direct much of its support to sanitation and water in rural areas. Undoubtedly, provision in many rural and remote areas is very low. But the balance of need may be shifting in line with the trend of urbanisation; services in urban areas, particularly within the sanitation sector in Africa, are often very poor. In order for DFID to make informed choices about where to commit its resources, it will need to ensure it is working from accurate measures of urban poverty. We reiterate our earlier recommendation that DFID encourage the World Bank and other key international institutions to explore new systems for measuring urban poverty. (Paragraph 91)
|
| | |
| 19. | The challenges associated with providing adequate power and transport services within poor urban areas were self-evident during our visit to Nigeria. Lack of electricity and constraints upon movement around cities makes life even more difficult for poor people and limits their ability to escape poverty by running their own businesses or going out to work. We were pleased to see that DFID is supporting the Nigerian Government to strengthen both sectors through the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility. We urge DFID and the World Bank to continue to boost investment in these sectors in Nigeria and in other African and Asian countries to ensure that power and transport services assist, rather than hold back, the process of poverty reduction. (Paragraph 98)
|
| | |
| The response by other stakeholders
|
| | |
| 20. | We believe that all development actors, including DFID, should do all they can to unlock private sector investment in urban development. These flows have the potential to substantially reduce urban poverty. Our recommendations to DFID, multilateral donors and other global stakeholders are thus based on the premise that the greatest impacts will be achieved when donor funds are used to stimulate private, alongside public, investment in urban development. (Paragraph 100)
|
| | |
| 21. | We commend the work of UN-Habitat on human settlements and urban development across a wide range of contexts. We were disappointed to learn that the UK's contribution to the agency's core funding has fallen from 12% in 2002 to 7%. We recommend that DFID's £1 million annual contribution to core funding (or 7% of the total from all donors) is boosted to bring it closer to that of Norway and Sweden, who provide 15% and 11% of the core budget respectively. Non-earmarked funding of this kind is vital for the agency to pursue its identified priorities which cover an important range of urban development outcomes. (Paragraph 105)
|
| | |
| 22. | We agree with DFID that co-ordination across UN agencies on urban poverty is highly important and that the work carried out by different UN agencies on urban issues needs to be fully integrated at country level. In particular, UN Development Programme and UN-Habitat, with their close on-the-ground operational partnership, should ensure that they work coherently so that impact can be boosted and urban poverty moved higher up the agenda in the countries in which they work. (Paragraph 106)
|
| | |
| 23. | We commend DFID's decision to provide half of the initial funding for the Slum Upgrading Facility and to contribute to enabling this important project to get off the ground. We support DFID's planned evaluation of the initiative as a basis for future funding decisions, but encourage it to find extra funding to facilitate a two-year extension of the project. Local Finance Facilities have provided a unique forum for bringing together all the major players across a city involved in the slum upgrading process. Results may have been slow in emerging, but once momentum has been gained we believe that the Facilities offer considerable potential for upgrading slum settlements on a large scale. (Paragraph 110)
|
| | |
| 24. | The Cities Alliance's attempt to highlight the opportunities of urbanisation is a worthy one and we commend DFID's continued collaboration with the coalition. However, we encourage the Alliance to consider dropping its "Cities without Slums" slogan, which promotes an unworkable outcome that may encourage slum clearance or forced evictions. We see the long-term strategic focus of the Slum Upgrading Facility as equally, if not more, worthy of DFID support as the somewhat problematic Cities Alliance. (Paragraph 112)
|
| | |
| 25. | We were concerned to hear that the African Development Bank (AfDB) currently focuses so little attention on urban poverty. Whilst Africa is still predominantly rural, it is the fastest urbanising region in the world and has the highest proportion of slum dwellers amongst its urban population. This represents a huge and growing problem for the African continent and it is imperative that its regional development bank does more to address the growing crisis of urban poverty. The UK should use its leverage as the largest bilateral donor to the Bank to ensure that the new AfDB urban strategy, currently under development, makes strong commitments to addressing urban poverty. This should include a particular focus on infrastructure, one of the Bank's priority areas and a crucial component of future progress. We recommend that DFID press for a dedicated department on urban development to be set up within the Bank. (Paragraph 114)
|
| | |
| 26. | We commend the increased focus on urban development by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. We welcome the World Bank's development of a new urban strategy. Given its substantial funding of the World Bank, we urge DFID to engage fully with the development of the Bank's new strategy and to ensure that it is sufficiently comprehensive, with strong focus on African, as well as Asian, countries. We welcome the Asian Development Bank's Cities Development Initiative for Asia, and its planned increase in specialised urban staff. We encourage the African Development Bank to emulate this enhanced focus and capacity to take forward urban development work. (Paragraph 118)
|
| | |
| The role of community-led initiatives
|
| | |
| 27. | We were impressed to hear that federations of poor urban dwellers are facilitating slum upgrading and urban improvement schemes in more than 20 countries, with large-scale partnerships being developed between these groups and governments in several instances. We believe that supporting community-led initiatives not only strengthens citizenship and boosts democracy, but is also an incredibly cost-efficient way of promoting urban development. Evidence shows that small amounts of external financing can help deliver substantial development gains. (Paragraph 125)
|
| | |
| 28. | We believe that DFID should boost its funding for urban community-led initiatives. We recommend that DFID begin funding the Urban Poor Fund International, an existing financing mechanism that has brought about improvements to housing and basic services for 30,000 households for less than £1.8 million over the past six years. If this success can be replicated, as little as £5-10 million of additional DFID funding could potentially reach another 150,000 households. (Paragraph 126)
|
| | |
| The role of local government
|
| | |
| 29. | We believe that a key opportunity exists for UK local government expertise to be shared on a more systematic basis with municipal authorities in developing countries and we welcome DFID's acknowledgement of this in its response to our earlier report. DFID's ability to expand its human resources is currently constrained but expertise on urban issues exists within many UK local authorities. This seems to us to create the perfect opportunity to tap into an available but currently under-exploited source of knowledge. We recommend that DFID look at partnership models used by Canada and Norway whereby small amounts of international development funds are used to support the logistical arrangements for sending local government staff overseas. It is important that the objective of such projects should be to facilitate capacity-building and should involve robust on-the-ground collaboration and strategic follow-up. This will require strong commitment from DFID, the Department for Communities and Local Government and local government if it is to be effective. But we believe that a relatively modest amount of funding could have great impact in strengthening local government capacity in areas such as financial management, governance and accountability, the 'greening' of urban economies and regeneration. This would be a two-way learning process and would bring mutual benefit. (Paragraph 131)
|
| | |
| Improved collaboration across Whitehall
|
| | |
| 30. | Co-operation between DFID and the Department for Communities and Local Government on urban development currently appears to be weak. For example, DFID sent just one staff member as part of the joint delegation to the last World Urban Forum held in 2008. Closer joint working will be necessary if DFID is to provide support for UK local government to contribute to international development and it will only become more important as the world continues to urbanise. We recommend that, in response to this Report, DFID provide us with information on how it intends to improve joint working. We also encourage DFID to use the forthcoming Fifth World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro in March 2010 as an opportunity to move towards new, closer working practices. (Paragraph 135)
|
| | |
| Poverty reduction strategy papers
|
| | |
| 31. | We believe that urban issues require far more emphasis within developing countries' national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). We disagree with DFID that implicit references to urban issues within PRSP texts are sufficient. Urban poverty will only be prioritised when it is made visible as an issue on national agendas with the necessary political will underpinning firm targets. We believe that achieving higher prioritisation within PRSPs will require concerted efforts from key players in the process, including the World Bank, civil society and major donors. We recommend that DFID make much more vigorous efforts to encourage development partners to ensure that urban poverty reduction is given specific and detailed coverage in their strategy papers. (Paragraph 139)
|
| | |
| Implications for DFID's organisational response
|
| | |
| 32. | We believe that DFID's reluctance to label programmes as "urban" has contributed to a decline in the visibility of urban development within the Department. This decline is linked to a recent period of fragmentation of urban expertise within DFID, with specialised staff now scattered confusingly across the UK Headquarters and international programmes. Without a coherent grouping, the Department's capacity to carry out effective policy analysis and programming for this complex issue risks being compromised. Furthermore, the lack of a designated urban team or unit makes it difficult for external organisations to engage with DFID on urban poverty issues. Although it is for DFID to decide on the precise configuration of its urban expertise, we recommend that it put structures in place that clearly convey how and where its core staff for urban development are located. (Paragraph 149)
|
| | |
| 33. | We recommend that this urban poverty team or unit, in whatever form it takes, reflect the multi-sectoral nature of urban development. We believe that DFID's current reliance on its infrastructure cadre for urban expertise is misplaced. Issues such as slum upgrading require inputs from a range of DFID advisory cadres, including governance, infrastructure, social development and climate change. We believe that all of DFID's more substantial country programmes should include urban advisers. This is essential if DFID is to capitalise on opportunities to push urban poverty higher up national agendas. (Paragraph 150)
|
| | |
| 34. | We believe that another way of strengthening DFID's "community of practice" on urban development would be to make better use of the research and practitioner base both within the UK and internationally. The UK has world-reputed university departments, research institutions, NGOs and professional organisations working on the urban sector. We recommend that DFID develop an approach to reach out to these groups and make effective use of the skills and expertise that they have to offer. (Paragraph 154)
|
| | |
| 35. | We recommend that DFID use its new Research Strategy to fund research into the most effective policies and interventions for addressing urban poverty. There are many potential topics for such research, but we believe that managing and understanding slum growth should be at the top of the agenda given the urgency of reaching the MDGs. We also reiterate our recommendation that the Strategy should help fill the current gaps in detailed understanding of the nature of disease and health problems in slums and informal settlements. The intersections between urbanisation, urban poverty and climate change is another crucial topic, and we suggest that the Department's new Climate and Development Knowledge Network look at funding such research work. (Paragraph 155)
|
| | |
| 36. | We believe that, given the pace and scale of urbanisation, DFID should produce a new strategy paper on how it intends to address urban poverty. Such a paper would help to raise the profile of urban development both within and outside DFID, and enable urban specialists within DFID to bring their knowledge to bear. A new strategy would also help communicate more clearly DFID's work on urban poverty, which is currently subject to some confusion in terms of where the Department works and what its priorities are. We are not satisfied that the development of a new infrastructure paper will go far enough towards meeting these objectives and believe that what is needed is a comprehensive document along the lines of DFID's well-received 2001 urban strategy paper. (Paragraph 160)
|
| | |
| 37. | We recommend that DFID assess with urgency how it can replicate within African countries successful strategies from its well-established urban development programme in India. Africa is the world's fastest-urbanising region and has the highest proportion of slum dwellers. It therefore needs immediate assistance with urban development. DFID has successful examples of urban interventions from its India programme. It also has a handful of successful urban programmes within Africa, such as the Luanda Urban Poverty Programme in Angola. We recommend that the Department look carefully at which of these strategies could be replicated across DFID's African programmes. Of course, some approaches will be context-specific. Their replication will also depend on the presence of high-level political will to address urban poverty within national governments. However, we do not believe that the fact that there is currently greater community participation in some Asian countries than African ones is a reason not to focus on urban development programmes in Africa. (Paragraph 165)
|
| | |
| 38. | We believe that DFID's ability to replicate approaches from Asia in African countries will depend on its ability to re-configure expertise—so that major African programmes have access to at least one urban poverty specialist—and make better use of research that documents successful strategies for urban development from around the world. (Paragraph 166)
|
| | |
| 39. | We reiterate our recommendation that DFID and other donors advocate for increased attention to urban poverty by all partner governments, especially those in Africa. We also recommend that DFID take a leading role in helping to build political support for this approach within the international community. None of the changes that we have suggested in this report will be possible unless urban poverty is given higher priority at the global level. Unless the full range of development actors, including other donors, the UN and international civil society, is convinced of the need to act, enhanced DFID efforts will not be able to achieve additional funding and resources to address urban poverty. (Paragraph 171)
|
| | |
| 40. | The ability to generate political will amongst developing country governments will require donor agencies to demonstrate that they themselves attach sufficient priority to urban, as opposed to rural, contexts. We believe that seeking to overcome the challenges associated with the complexity of the urban sector is not only the right thing to do but is potentially a cost-efficient development strategy, offering sustainable solutions to large numbers of people. It is difficult for us to comment on DFID's own prioritisation because the Department categorises assistance by sector but not by type of beneficiary. However,we recommend that DFID carefully assess the overall balance of its support to urban and rural poverty and keep this under review as the world continues to urbanise. (Paragraph 172)
|
| | |
