Examination of Witnesses (Questions 98
- 99)
TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2009
MR GEOFFREY
PAYNE AND
MR RICHARD
SHAW
Q98 Chairman:
Good morning. I would like you to identify yourselves for the
record and then we can start with the evidence session.
Mr Shaw: I
am Richard Shaw. I am the Chairman of the UK Local Government
Alliance for International Development. The Alliance brings together
a number of local government partners and they include the Commonwealth
Local Government Forum, the Improvement and Development Agency,
the Local Government Association, the National Association of
Local Councils and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives.
Mr Payne: I am Geoffrey Payne.
I run a small consultancy working on urban development issues
in developing countries. I have been doing teaching, training,
consultancy and research throughout that period, much of it funded
by DFID and its predecessor ODA.[1]
Q99 Chairman:
Thank you very much. Welcome to both of you and thank you for
coming in. As you appreciate, we are getting to grips with the
whole issue of urbanisation and urban poverty and how you tackle
what is a fast-growing issue. We visited Lagos last week, where
there is a dispute about what the population of Lagos is. The
census said nine million, most people assumed that the actual
figure was between 18 million and 19 million, and the projection
was that it would be between 26 million within a few years time.
That makes the targets of reducing slum dwellers by 100 million
a little easy to achieve but not meaning very much, if the numbers
are rising so fast. I suppose that raises the question of how
you slow the development of slums, which seem to be exploding,
and how you improve the lives of the people living there. What
are the main issues? Is it money? Is it how quickly you respond?
Is it how quickly you coordinate things?
Mr Payne: In my experience, you
need a twin-track approach. First of all, you need to improve
far more than the 100 million that the Millennium Development
Goal (MDG) target stipulates. We need to be increasing that tenfold
effectively, but at the same time we need measures that will increase
the development of land for urban development in ways which help
all those stakeholders concerned: the farmers, the agricultural
landholders, the developers who need to make a reasonable profit,
but, also, the planning authorities who need to manage and control
the process. I think the idea of controlling growth is not appropriate.
It is a question of managing and regulating it but, first of all,
accepting that it is inevitable. I was speaking to the Permanent
Secretary in one country recently who said, "The problem
is that if we help the poor by increasing access to land, housing
and services, we will only attract more migrants," so there
is almost an anti-urban bias in some countries which is sadly
reflected to some extent in the donor community. There is a reluctance
of donors, not just in the UK but internationally, to withdraw
or to reduce a low level of urban funding in the first place,
and I think that needs to change.
1 Overseas Development Administration. Back
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