Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 45)
TUESDAY 12 MAY 2009
MR PAUL
TAYLOR AND
MR MICHAEL
MUTTER
Q40 Mr Singh:
You said earlier that DFID had been helpful in putting money up
front. Has DFID continued to have an involvement with this facility?
Mr Mutter: Yes, absolutely. They
are a member of the overseeing board of the process. We have just
recently had one of the board meetings in Nairobi and we will
have the next one in Tanzania. DFID want to stay involved, but
they gave 50% of the overall funding, $10 million, right up front
and have naturally been impatient to see the results coming in.
It has taken longer than was originally anticipated. Nevertheless,
there will be, I think, good results to show, and an opportunity
to continue investing in the process, let us say, in the next
two years.
Mr Singh: Thank you.
Q41 Chairman:
The World Bank has increased its commitment towards urban poverty
reduction—I think the figure they are identifying is $10.3
billion—but you have also said that the World Bank, for
example, was not being particularly forthcoming in helping deal
with social deprivation, housing and innovative forms of funding
and addressing that issue. How closely are you able to work with
the World Bank to, perhaps, help shape the way they approach that?
Do the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) give enough focus?
You are shaking your head already! Perhaps I can put the question
the other way round: what do you think the World Bank should be
doing, or you would like them to be doing?
Mr Taylor: Let us take the PRSPs,
first of all, or the Country Assistance Strategies. I think we
know of only one Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank
where urban is treated as a significant sector, and that is Vietnam.
I am not aware of any other. So there is obviously a big gap there.
This is also true for the UN sponsored processes—the UNDAFs[1]—as
well. The way we have chosen to address this in UN-Habitat, under
our own medium-term strategic and investment plan, is to start
a process of development of what we call Habitat Programme Country
Documents, which we develop with the governments together with
other stakeholders in the country, to actually develop a programme
to deal with urban issues, and then to talk to some of the key
players, particularly on the UN side but, also, from other players
like the World Bank and the EC, which is also quite a powerful
player in many countries, to give an evidence base on which to
give increasing attention to urban. In terms of relationships
with the World Bank in general, these have gone up and down over
the years. In round about 2000 we came together on a joint venture
basis to establish something called the Cities Alliance, where
we would trade off the comparative advantages of UN-Habitat and
the World Bank to try and make more of an impact; Habitat particularly
to do a lot of the pre-investment work, World Bank to provide
the finance facilities. That has worked to some degree and we
are continuing to collaborate, but it has now become much more
of a multi-donor group than UN-Habitat and the World Bank. We
have had recent discussions with the World Bank over its own new
development strategy, and I have to say that it was a very good
discussion. What we are seeing now is that many policies are in
the mix; there is much more uncertainty about urban policies than
in the past—what are some of the key levers—and this
is reflected in the World Bank's last World Development Report,
which dealt with urban. We are collaborating with the World Bank
in terms of the further elaboration of its urban strategy, and
using that opportunity to look at opportunities for increased
collaboration. We have identified five countries, so far, in which
we would like increased collaboration (if I remember correctly:
Kenya, Philippines, Burkina Faso—I cannot remember the other
couple), where we would drive this collaboration in conjunction
with the Bank's new urban approach. However, by the same token,
in terms of trying to up our game, as UN-Habitat, we are embarking
on a peer review process whereby we ask our partners what they
think of us, and the World Bank is very keen to get involved in
that, to do some critical and, hopefully, constructive comments
on what we do and the way we do it. Also, the World Bank, in our
latest discussions, has been very eager to become involved in
a new initiative of UN-Habitat called "The World Urban Campaign".
This is a campaign to promote sustainable urbanisation, which
addresses environmental issues, equality issues and financing
issues.
Q42 Chairman:
In all those areas the World Bank ought to be a significant partner.
Mr Taylor: That is right, yes,
and to advance the sorts of arguments that we have been putting
forward to you today, because the World Bank, like ourselves,
feel that urban, in terms of its potential contribution to sustainable
economic development, is not really punching its weight.
Q43 Chairman:
My final follow-up question is the sustainable point, on two counts:
first of all, these expanding cities, if they are not expanding
in any kind of organised way, will be contributing to the problems
of unsustainability, over-use of water and emissions. The first
point is how you ensure that development of these cities is done
in ways that are sustainable rather than adding to the emissions.
Secondly, an awful lot of them are in vulnerable coastal locations,
which could therefore mean that they are under threat. Are you
working with the UN Framework on Climate Change to try and put
those things together?
Mr Taylor: Yes, we are; we are
working very closely. In fact, there is going to be a special
working group session on urbanisation. There is quite a debate
on whether we see cities as culprits or cities as areas of opportunity.
Q44 Chairman:
The point we were making in our sustainable development inquiry
is that you partner developing countries to ensure not that they
are blamed but that any development they do is, wherever possible,
using the most up-to-date sustainable technology rather than saying:
"Do whatever you want and we will sort it out later".
Mr Taylor: Absolutely right. We
see already that the various city forms have an incredibly powerful
impact on emissions. American cities, for example, emit per capita
something like four times the emissions that European cities do.
This is energy related and transport related, and it has a lot
to do with urban form and density, and so on. So there are lots
of things that you can do in that area. There are technology fixes
as well. We would tend to say that, as a crude generalisation,
developed countries should particularly address mitigation issues—that
is reducing greenhouse gas emissions—and developing countries
should focus on adaptation—that is, to meet the results
of climate change. The results of climate change are already with
us. I do not know whether you have received evidence on this so
far, but the frequency of natural disasters, for example, is increasing
dramatically, and particularly those coastal cities that you mentioned,
particularly in Asia, are very much on the receiving end of those
natural disasters. I think the particular challenge we face at
the moment is to make certain that whatever we do in the way of
addressing climate change also addresses poverty issues as well.
Things could be done in such a way whereby those who are the most
vulnerable could actually be left out if processes go as they
have done in many cities in the past, where the poor, frankly,
tend to get neglected, and generally speaking it is the poor who
are living in locations which are the most vulnerable to the impacts
of climate change-related events.
Q45 Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed. I think it has been a fascinating
discussion. It is interesting that if one just thinks about the
general focus on development, all the images people tend to have
in mind are rural yet, in reality, the poverty is predominantly
in urban areas. It does suggest we have got a mismatch, even in
just thinking about it. Certainly, when you look at a lot of the
NGOs and charities, a high proportion of them are doing rural
projects where they could be doing urban projects. I think it
is a very interesting for us to explore this, and we are looking
at some aspects of it in our visit to Nigeria next month as well.
Thank you very much indeed; I think it is fascinating to hear
what you are engaged in and all the sort of various parameters
that have sprayed off in different directions. Thanks a lot for
coming and giving us evidence.
Mr Taylor: Thank you very much
for the opportunity, and we very much enjoyed it as well.
Mr Mutter: Thank you.
1 UN Development Assistance Framework Back
|
