Urbanisation and Poverty - International Development Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160 - 166)

TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2009

MR DAVID SATTHERTHWAITE AND MR LARRY ENGLISH

  Q160  John Battle: The Tenants' Association.

  Mr English: We have had discussions with the TSA[8] and they are very willing to do it. It is how we actually get that to happen. What we do have the opportunity to do is we do have places where that is set up to happen. It just needs the kind of authority, the kind of sanction, that would resource those different entities to be in that same space.

  John Battle: Thank you.

  Q161  Chairman: You are saying that DFID has a lack of focus on urban poverty and poverty reduction, but is that not true of the developing countries as well? Is it true that they have their supposed Poverty Reduction Strategies but do they really build in a focus on urban poverty? To be fair, the Committee—and I give some credit to Mr Battle, who was very anxious that we do this report—has probably taken a little while to cotton on to the fact of how much development needs to be addressing people living in urban poverty in developing countries. The image of development, very often, is rural, with wells and villages and things. Of course, that is relevant but that is almost the whole image to most people, yet there are more and more people in that situation. Are the governments and the communities of developing countries on board on this? Are they really clued up to the fact that actually, perhaps, the top of their strategy ought to be to deal with their urban poor?

  Mr Satterthwaite: Some certainly are. A shocking fact: you can go to a 300-page PRSP and you ask "slums"—nothing; "squatter settlements"—nothing; "urban"—appendix 7. It just is not in the conception of the people that develop the PSRPs that there is a thing called "urban poverty" that has importance. I think that is mainly the fault of the World Bank staff. It is not the fault of the nations. That is a slight exaggeration; India is certainly taking urban poverty very seriously; pretty much every Latin American nation is; most of the middle income nations in Asia are—some with very good policies. In North Africa there are some very good urban policies, but in sub-Saharan Africa less so. Which of the African countries? Senegal has had a reasonable policy on urban poverty, but I am kind of struggling to look for good examples.

  Q162  Chairman: Mr English was shaking his head when I was asking my question.

  Mr English: I think this is a point we made. The observation that I feel is clearest is from Thomas Melin of SIDA who said that the complexity of the interdepartmental collaboration that is required to actually address slum issues (even where they are highlighted the strategy) is difficult in this country but more difficult in sub-Saharan African countries. So it is unlikely that the mechanics of developing a strategy and prioritising housing is going to happen if there is not a culture of interdepartmental collaboration. So it could be purely the lack of that policy or that way of managing the issue that is not identified. There is a lot of anti-urban bias. I have been to ministers of housing in Africa—even the one in Nigeria said: "Could you focus on building houses in rural areas so that these people can go back home?" That has been repeated with many, many other countries. There are a lot of other people who have written about this; the fact that cities are regarded as places for the elite.

  Q163  Chairman: Other evidence that we have been given as we have gone through this inquiry is that although it requires investment and it requires planning, in some ways it is easier to deliver poverty reduction in an urban environment than it is in a rural environment—to deliver water, sanitation, power and all these other things.

  Mr English: Exactly. In one small space you can deliver on just about every MDG just by one intervention, and that is what makes it, sometimes, so difficult to understand.

  Q164  Chairman: Just a comment on the irony of Nigeria, and then a final question.

  Mr English: My example was some time back, I must say.

  Q165  Chairman: What we were told every day, and we experienced every day, was that the big problem in Nigeria was the shortage of electrical power, which meant the lights were literally going on and off all the time and, consequently, everywhere you went people were running generators, because they could not rely on the power system. Yet, the price of power is subsidised. They said: "We cannot possibly put up the price of electricity in order to fund investment because it will hit the poor"; but the reality was that the poor were not buying electricity; they were generating it much more expensively through diesel generators. Going back to the earlier discussion, you are saying DFID needs to get its act together as a leading donor, then it needs to work with developing country partnerships to help them get their act together. So there is a quite major shift required if we are going to address this, I think, is what you are both telling us.

  Mr Satterthwaite: Yes. One interesting indication: DFID understood that governance was very important, but it hardly focused on local governance. If you are looking at the poor in Lagos it is all local organisations they need to negotiate with: for tenure, for schools, for health care, for drains, for water, for sanitation, for transport. It is getting the understanding that you have got to drive local governance reform if you are going to deliver. We would never have got rid of cholera in the UK if it had not been driven by city government, by municipal government. You need that competence and capacity in city/municipal government all over Africa.

  Chairman: That is a very important point. We actually visited the Megacity project in Lagos. It is a wonderful empty office; it would have been completely empty if we had not turned up! The professor actually had to come in to meet us in his own office to discuss the project that was not being taken forward. I think we have got quite a lot of food for thought, and I think by the time we have finished DFID is going to have quite a lot of food for thought as well.

  Q166  Mr Singh: The only difficulty I have is that budgets are both limited and committed. It is easy to make a recommendation in this Committee that DFID should do a lot more about urban poverty. What would suffer? I do not think the budget is going to expand to cover that. Will we do this at the expense of tackling rural poverty?

  Mr Satterthwaite: Absolutely not. If DFID decided, over the next five years, to ramp up support to £100 million, that is a very small part of DFID's total commitment. If it is steering that with and through the urban poor and local governments, you get incredible value for money. It sounds very heretical but some of the best aid agencies I know have very heavy staff costs because they engage with the urban poor and their community organisations and give the least money that is needed. I know this is really tough; every bilateral agency is judged on its spend and its staff costs, but if you actually want to work with the urban poor and never give them too much money it takes a relationship, and a relationship needs staff and it needs staff on the ground. We have got to think of urban poverty reduction as a partnership with the urban poor driving it, and that means you have to structure your funding differently. Sometimes that $18,000 provided quickly in response is going to have tremendous implications, much more than the $50 million that you were planning on a big initiative. How do we get DFID to support hundreds of community-driven initiatives which then filter up and begin to address the local governance issue? Institutionally difficult but if we do not think of a way of doing it we are not going to reduce urban poverty.

  Mr English: I would like to add the same point that was made in the last session around local government. I do think that there is a lot of resource in the UK; there is a lot of expertise. What, probably, many people do not know is a lot of our support has actually come from, as I have mentioned before, housing associations that have twinned with other organisations in the south, helped them to develop over time and have been patient enough to do that We have already had discussions with the TSA, with the NHF[9] and the Scottish Federation and the other federations, as well as the CIH,[10] to actually mobilise more resources—and I mean resources, not just financial, in terms of people who want to get involved. The reason we have always stayed away from that is the question of translation; it is a completely different environment and, often, it can be well-intended and those kinds of resources are not helpful. However, I still think it is a challenge that DFID does not meet. It is not just financial resources; I think DFID needs to engage its own sectors; it needs to involve. We have personally taken it upon ourselves to make sure that every person who is into housing in this country understands the housing issues outside of this country.

  Chairman: A good question to ask, Marsha, and I think you got a good answer. Thank you both very much indeed. As I was saying, I think we have a serious challenge here. More and more people living in an urban environment are an increasing proportion of the poor people we are supposed to help and, yet, it would appear, really, as we go through this inquiry, we do not have proper structures for dealing with it. I believe this is going to be a timely and important inquiry. It will not be in time for the White Paper but, frankly, that is beside the point, I think. Thank you both very much indeed.







8   Tenant Services Authority. Back

9   National Housing Federation. Back

10   Chartered Institute of Housing. Back


 
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