Examination of Witnesses (Questions 135
- 139)
TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2009
MR DAVID
SATTHERTHWAITE AND
MR LARRY
ENGLISH
Q135 Chairman:
Thank you very much for coming in. Welcome, gentlemen. You were
in the last session, so you have heard something of what we have
been discussing. For the record, I would ask you to introduce
yourselves.
Mr Satterthwaite: I am David Satterthwaite.
I am with the International Institute for Environment and Development.
I also manage a grassroots fund which supports urban poor slum
federations direct.
Mr English: I am Larry English.
I am the Chief Executive of Homeless International, which was
set up by the social housing movement here in the UK. We work
with organisations of the urban poor to enable them to generate
sustainable solutions to short-term settlement.
Q136 Chairman:
Thank you. You have made your own submissions, for which we thank
you. You are expressing some disappointment, I think, in DFID's
lack of focus in this area. What do you think DFID's response
ought to be, given that it used to have a team and it no longer
does? Do you have a specific view as to what DFID should now be
doing to respond to the increasing pressures of urban poverty
and urbanisation?
Mr English: I think urbanisation
should have equal status to climate change. In an earlier submission
someone made the point that urban is a context not a sector and
I think that urban issues are multi-sectoral, require integrated
approaches, not just within DFID itself but within DFID and the
different sectors in the UK and internationally. That kind of
consideration is a role that DFID can play. Mostly, the issue
of urban development needs to be pushed higher up the agenda,
not as a sector but as a context around which all these issues
revolve.
Mr Satterthwaite: I think each
of the DFID country offices needs an urban expertise, and that
expertise has been lost over time. DFID country offices have to
learn to work with the urban poor direct and their own community
organisations. In a sense urban poverty reduction is still seen
as something we deliver for them. They have amazing capacities,
the capacity to organise, to mobilise, to vote, to do things,
to build, and we need much more support for their own capacities,
so that aid is a dialogue and a mutual partnership, it is not
a one-way street.
Q137 Chairman:
You have made a fairly radical statement, Mr English—and
I am not disagreeing with it—that you want to put it on
a par with climate change. Of course climate change has been pushed
up the agenda and there is a climate change unit in DFID that
has been expanded. Do you both think urban development requires
a dedicated unit or is it something more organic than that. I
take your point, Mr Satterthwaite, that you are saying it should
be in country. Should there be something like, for example, the
Conflict Prevention Pool, which brings together resources from
the Foreign Office, Defence and DFID and what-have-you? In this
context it would also need local government, for example, and
many other departments, so that, rather than just a DFID organisation,
it would be a cross-government organisation. I have put in rather
too many questions there, but it is really to try to get a feel
as to what you think. If you were given a free hand, how would
you organise DFID's approach to this issue?
Mr English: My experience in South
Africa was that when housing was prioritised as a political issue
it achieved a status which was cross-cutting. In any local authority,
in any city, housing ran across the different line functions and
had a mandate to supersede and to prioritise housing issues. That
is because, from the centre, it was made an important issue. I
think the same thing can happen, but obviously not housing as
a narrow function. It needs to be recognised as cross-cutting;
it needs to be managed. You mentioned the idea of a unit and I
think it needs that kind of oversight. It needs people who understand
cities not as infrastructure purely or as local authorities, but
people who understand that cities—and cities are unique
wherever they are in the world—require co-ordination. But
it also needs authority. I think that should happen within DFID,
but I also think, on the ideas presented about utilising local
authority/local government association expertise and the third
sector housing association expertise in this country, that those
voices need to be at the table too. They also need to be included.
Mr Satterthwaite: DFID has some
very good urban specialists, but if there is no clear explicit
policy they cannot bring their knowledge and their capacity to
that. It is funny about climate change. I have been on the IPCC[6]
for the last two assessments. What is the priority in urban areas
to confront climate change? Good water, good sanitation, good
drainage, good healthcare. The capacity of the poor not to live
on flood plains and steep slopes. Dealing with climate change,
at least in the next 20 years, is a good urban poverty reduction
agenda. In a sense that is why you want urban poverty reduction
to get up the agenda because that also is one of the main components
for addressing climate change.
Q138 Chairman:
A passing observation is that most of Lagos is below sea level
and it is going to have a population of 26 million in a few years
time. It looks like a disaster waiting to happen.
Mr Satterthwaite: Yes. Absolutely.
Q139 John Battle:
I was interested to listen to your comments about the capacities
of people in poor neighbourhoods. My background before I came
into the House was some experience in Latin America with dwellers
in Sao Paolo and the whole urban question there. My information
is a bit out of date. I served as foreign minister dealing with
Latin America and South East Asia. That is where the fastest growing
communities are and some of the pressure there, whether it is
Jakarta again or Sao Paolo or, indeed, the African cities. I wonder
whether DFID is in the right place. In your first response you
referred to DFID's country offices, that they are not perhaps
in the right places. Given the comments we have heard previously
on the staffing restrictions within DFID, what scope is there
for DFID to support urban development through other agencies?
Are they in the right place for making the right connections?
For example, should they increase their funding to UN-Habitat?
How could they make more use of the research base that they have?
Are they going in the right direction or would you re-direct them
and say that the urban question is elsewhere from where they are
going. As the Chairman said earlier, we spend a lot of time pushing
them to refocus on agriculture again, rather than just building
dams and engineering energy plants. What would be your response
to that?
Mr Satterthwaite: Some countries
in Latin America and Asia have done a fantastic job on an urban
poverty reduction agenda. Brazil certainly—both local government
and national government has dramatically reduced urban poverty.
Chile also. Mexico also. Thailand has one of the most effective
urban poverty reduction programmes in the world. A lot of them
have certain characteristics. A key role for national government,
a key role for local government, a key role for civil society
and those working together. I would like DFID to focus on the
rapidly urbanising nations in Asia and Africa that do not have
good national policy as of yet and to build that alliance between
the representative organisations of the urban poor, local government
and national government. There are some helpful signs in India.
In India the national government for the first time is taking
seriously the funding for urban poverty reduction. It is still
the very technocratic, top-down, professionally-driven agenda,
not working with the knowledge and expertise of their slum dwellers.
6 Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. Back
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