Sustainable development blog : ecology and humanitarian aid

Translated by Valerie Kwan.

Whether they be on the steep hills of Caracas, at the polluted outskirts of toxic waste sites in Arang (India) or by the banks of the excrement-filled Tijipio River in Recife, shanty town terrain is always fraught with risks.

The urban poor exchange their physical integrity and health for a few square metres of land and a measure of assurance against eviction. It's this last point that explains why the majority of shanty towns are found in former swampland, in regions prone to seasonal flooding, by the sides of volcanos or unstable hills, around landfills or chemical waste dumps or at the edge of busy roadways.

Precisely because these areas are dangerous and inhospitable, they offer protection against private or public property developers. In Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Recife, the topography has caused much of the urban poor to occupy the hills. Following deforestation, extreme soil compaction and the absence of retaining walls, these dwellings are subject to landslides and dangerous rockfalls.

According to a study from 1990, 16% of shanty town dwellers living on the sides of hills in Rio run short- and medium-term risks to their lives and their property (Taschner, 1995). In Caracas, nearly two-thirds of the urban population live on the side of unstable hills where landslides are a permanent danger, a risk intensified by seismic activity in the area (Jiménez Diaz, 1994).

A good number of favelas (common term for shanty towns in Brazil) are also vulnerable to flooding. In Recife, the drainage systems date to colonial times and are clogged with refuse much of the time. There is thus the problem of sewer overflow that causes flooding of entire districts during the rainy season. In Manila, the same problems, accentuated by deforestation, provoke extreme flooding each year that affects the poorest quarter of the population. Extreme flooding in 1998 left 300 000 homeless. According to Kenneth Hewitt, geographer specializing in risks, hazards and disasters, earthquakes were responsible for the destruction of more than 100 million homes during the twentieth century. Of these, the precariously situated shanty towns were among the most affected. One example is the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, where 1.2 million people lost their homes and virtually all of the 59 million households destroyed in the capital were situated in shanty towns.

Fires, however, represent the most imminent danger for residents of shanty towns. "Their mixture of inflammable dwellings, extraordinary density and dependence upon open fires for heat and cooking is a superlative recipe for spontaneous combustion" (Davis, 2006). Once started, fires spread very quickly and firefighters, if they respond, are stopped by narrow streets. Even if these fires are accidental, in some cases they are the result of irresponsible behaviour. In São Paulo, for example,one can meet youths whose pastime consisted of making "Balão", a kind of mini hot-air balloon that bursts into flames once aloft and then falls back down into the shanty towns. On the other hand, fire can also be a good strategy for property developers seeking to "clean" shanty lands once they have risen in value.

In addition to these natural risks must be added those inherent to urban settings. To include in the list of valueless properties are those contaminated by industrial pollution, those subject to the nuisance of heavy traffic and those areas with deteriorating infrastructure that have been abandoned by the state. In the Global South, examples of industrial pollutants are legion: refineries, pesticide factories, electronic waste 'recycling', battery recycling, foundries, dry cleaners, tanneries, etc... Since environmental norms are often non-existent and these industries are surrounded by shanties, countless tragedies have been recorded.

1984 was a particularly tragic year, when an oil pipeline exploded in February in Cubitão (São Paulo) and caused a fire that killed 1500 people. Eight months later, a PEMEX natural gas plant exploded in the Mexican district of San Juanico and the 2000 inhabitants of the neighbouring shanty town were killed. Three weeks following, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh, unleashed a toxic gas cloud that immediately killed 7000 people, with 15 000 succumbing later to gas-related illnesses. An examination of newspapers from the Global South suffices to observe the ever-growing number of similar news items. In every case, it is people in the most precarious conditions who are the most severely touched.

Another predator of the urban poor is spreading in an extraordinary manner throughout all the cities of the South: motor vehicles. In 1980, 18% of automobiles worldwide were used in developing countries, whereas the predicted proportion for 2020 is 50% (Pemberton, 2000), (Sperling; Clausen, 2002). With the explosion of individual motorized transportation and the absence of adequate infrastructure, traffic today kills more than 1 million people per year, two-thirds of which are pedestrians. According to the World Health Organization, the global economic costs of road traffic deaths and injuries are nearly equivalent to twice the total amount of development aid received by developing countries. They predict that in 2020 road accidents will be the primary cause of mortality for the urban poor.

Alongside this, the absence of political will to improve public transport keeps this inacessible to the poor and the quality of service is of such mediocrity that a middle-class citizen can dream of only one thing: possessing a private vehicle. In Recife, for example, the price of one trip within the city costs 2.45 Reis, while the minimum salary is 300 Reis. In order to take the bus to work an employee earning the minimum salary would have to spend a third of his/her budget.

Cities are often considered as an adequate response to the exceptional increase in the global population. Indeed, urban density will necessitate a more efficient use of space, energy and natural resources. To Westerners the city is also the symbol of public, democratic spaces where cultural institutions and a whole gamut of services to assure the quality of life of the "modern man" flourish. However, to realize this dream of the ideal city, a balance will need to be found between human needs and those of the environment housing the community. Urbanization in developing countries is destroying the ecosystems that make these cities livable.

One of the greatest challenges for every city is waste management. And this situation is one of the major problems of cities in the Global South. Indeed, most systems of collection and treatment of household waste are inadequate. As for the uncollected waste, it accumulates in cracks in the urban fabric; hills crop up suddenly in former wastelands; ditches and riverbeds fill up and pollute groundwater. The problem is worsened by rampant urbanisation that devours fertile land surrounding urban areas. Market gardening which used to occur at the outskirts of cities is now pushed ever more distant. Food security is not a given and public health problems abound, caused by agricultural pollution. Untreated sewage discharged into urban water courses reaches to nearby agricultural land. For example, peasants on the outskirts of Dakar use urban effluent as water and fertilizer, thus creating an entryway for pathogens into food that contaminate those who consume it (Felix, 2005). This pollution also affects potable water sources within the city. In São Paolo, for example, to resolve the problem of contamination from grey water, municipal water is treated with 170 000 tonnes of chemical products. Even so, residents are advised to drink bottled water. Only 10% of human excrement is treated in Latin America (Stillwaggon, 1998).

This situation is found throughout the southern hemisphere and has dramatic consequences for the poor. According to Eileen Stillwaggon, public health specialist, water, garbage and sewage-related illnesses kill 30 000 people every year and are responsible for 75% of human health problems. This worldwide failure in public health is observable from the first visit to a city in the Global South and Recife is no exception.

Evidently, the matter of urban poverty is not simply a question of weak purchasing power. The living conditions of a third of the world's urban population are nightmarish. These environments have neither the advantages of urban areas - accessibility of public services (health, education) - nor those of rural areas - relative food security (subsistence agriculture), absence of industrial pollutants. On the contrary, they combine the dysfunctions of the two worlds - total absence of infrastructure, extreme pollution and food insecurity. This observation is illustrated by an epidemiological study conducted by a team of public health and urban development researchers. According to the study, the urban poor are subject to the illnesses of both underdevelopment and industrialisation. On the one hand, they inherit infectious diseases linked to malnutrition, and on the other hand chronic illnesses and social maladies (Werna; Blue; Harpham, 1997). Shanty towns are thus home to diseases generally seen in rural areas such as worms, sleeping sickness and dengue fever and also to diabetes, cancers and heart problems, that combined afflict countless victims (Horton, 2003).