Environment & Urbanization

Millenium Development Goal 7:
Ensure Environmental Sustainability Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

Mapping global urban and rural population distributions: Analysing population distribution in relation to poverty and environmental factors is increasingly recognized as a valuable element in decision-making processes related to development issues. Accurately mapping and assessing vulnerable populations can provide a solid basis for recommendations on how best to reduce poverty and improve living conditions in developing countries.

Urban environmental issues are receiving more attention in the international development arena, and with good reason. Not only are the world’s population and poverty becoming increasingly urban, but:

• Environmental conditions account for a large share of ill-health, early deaths and hardship in African, Asian and Latin American cities, and contribute to persistent poverty.
• Urban consumption and production patterns, especially in the more affluent parts of the world, account for a large share of global and regional environmental burdens.
• Better urban environmental management is possible, while preventing urbanisation is rarely either possible or even desirable.

Facts :

Facts & figures from the UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund

Every year, the world’s urban population is increasing by about 70 million.

Over the next 30 years it is estimated that the total urban populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America will double to nearly 4 billion. By this time, 60 per cent of the population of poor countries will be living in towns and cities.

In 2001, 924 million people, almost one third of the world’s total urban population lived in slums and this will increase to 2 billion by 2030 if current trends and policies continue.

Smaller towns and cities are growing more rapidly than larger ones – in 2000, sixty percent of urban dwellers in Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia lived in small and intermediate urban centres. Around two thirds of the urban population - and most of the urban poor - in developing countries are located in urban centres with less than 1 million inhabitants.

In 2000 there were 16 mega-cities with over 10 million inhabitants - but together they were home to less than 4% of the world’s population