Living on the edge: as the world's population grows people are pushed into areas that are basically uninhabitable.

Why do we keep seeing mass starvations in places such as Ethiopia? The answer is that in Ethiopia, and many other areas, human existence hangs by a thread. In normal years, people can have enough to stay alive and no more; it's called subsistence living. But, when a drought hits, as it does regularly in the Horn of Africa, there are no reserves to feed the people.

As population grows, land that can support only a tiny number is pressed to support beyond its capacity. The land loses its fertility and provides even less sustenance than before. Large numbers of people are then forced off the land and into squalid slums on the edge of many cities.

In October 2003, the United Nations reported that nearly a billion people--almost a third of the world's urban dwellers and a sixth of all humanity--live in absolute squalor in slums. In The Challenge of Slums, the UN predicted that within 30 years that figure could double to two billion.

During the 1990s, the urban population across Asia, Africa, and South America grew by more than a third. Although the concentration of slum dwellers is highest in African cities, Asia accounts for about 60 percent of the world's urban slum residents. There are at least 550 million slum dwellers in Asia, 187 million in Africa, 128 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and a further 54 million in the world's 30 richest countries.

The Challenge of Slums says residents of slums constitute a staggering 78.2% of the urban population of the least-developed countries and about a third of the global urban population. The world's highest percentages of slum dwellers are in Ethiopia (an astonishing 99.4% of the urban population), Chad (also 99.4%), Afghanistan (98.5%) and Nepal (92%).

Poverty used to be mostly a rural issue, but it's become much more urban as most people in the world have migrated to cities. The 1990s saw huge urban growth, with the worldwide urban population increasing by 36 percent. The UN report predicts that in addition to the growth of giant cities in all continents, up to three-quarters of future anticipated urban population growth will occur in some of the world's smaller cities, defined as those with current populations between one and five million. So, while there will be mega-cities with more than eight million people, and hyper-cities with more than 20 million, much of the population growth will take place in the already overburdened smaller cities; these simply can't accommodate such huge numbers of people. Many of them lack enough water, electricity, and sanitation services, particularly in South Asia and Africa. Without sewage disposal, disease is widespread: aside from the high incidence of HIV/ AIDS, the UN estimates that two out of five African slum dwellers live in poverty that is considered "life-threatening."

The UN report details how the emergence of globalization over the last 25 years has made a bad situation worse. This is partly because of the free market policies forced upon nations by the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization over the last three decades. The wealth created by deregulated markets has not "trickled down" to slum communities, states the UN.

Writer Mike Davis makes similar points in an article called "Planet of Slums" in the New Left Review (March/April 2004). In 1950, there were 86 cities in the world with a population over one million; today, there are 400, and by 2015, there will be at least 550. "Cities, indeed, have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950 and are currently growing by a million babies and migrants each week," writes Mr. Davis. "The present urban population (3.2 billion) is larger than the total population of the world in 1960. The global countryside, meanwhile, has reached its maximum population (3.2 billion) and will begin to shrink after 2020. As a result, cities will account for all future world population growth, which is expected to peak at about 10 billion in 2050."

And, 95 percent of that growth will occur in developing countries, which will see their populations double in the next generation to nearly four billion.

These are regions in which slum dwellers already account for 43 percent of the population in contrast to about six percent in more developed regions.

Although there is growing recognition worldwide of the need to address the slum question, the UN report notes that there is still a general apathy and lack of political will among governments to have policies aimed at improving their living conditions.

China is shifting from a rural to an urban country. But, in most of the developing world, city growth lacks China's powerful manufacturing-export engine as well as its vast inflow of foreign capital (currently equal to half of total foreign investment in the developing world).

In some regions, city slum dwellers are taking charge, trying to improve their own lot. Many of them are part of Slum Dwellers International (SDI), a loose network of people's organizations from a number of developing countries. SDI affiliates all are organizations of the Urban Poor, ranging in size from a few hundred in Zambia to more than a million and a half in India. Some are decades old, while others have just started up. The idea is to organize and unite the poor so they can become a part of the decision-making process. They hope to improve their living conditions, working at a local level.

In Kenya, for example, squatters and slum dwellers comprise the majority of Nairobi's 2.3 million residents. It's estimated that 60 percent of the city's population--1.4 million people--exist in more than 100 slum and squatter communities. Most are crowded onto less than five percent of the residential land area in the city.

Nairobi's slums are considered among the worst in the world. They are among the most dense, unsanitary, and insecure on Earth. The most common dwelling is one room in which four to six people live. Densities average 250 units per hectare. Urban services, if they are provided at all, are extremely basic, consisting of earth roads and paths, earth drains, communal water points, and pit latrines, each shared by as many as 60 people.

But, in 2003, a group of Nairobi slum dwellers banded together and asked the city council to give them land they had been squatting on illegally. They wanted to build their own houses, schools, and community centres, and with the help of aid agencies they did. According to a recent article in Profile Africa, "The houses are still tiny--each one measures just 4.25 metres by 4.25 metres--but they are mansions compared to the dwellings the residents want to leave behind. Each family sends one person to the building site one day a week to help with the work. A local housing charity, the Pamoja Trust, paid for some of the residents to train as stone masons and carpenters, and a microfinance charity has agreed to contribute 80 percent of the building costs if the residents raise 20 percent themselves."

The idea of Nairobi slum dwellers taking over the land they had squatted on at the edge of the city came from Slum Dwellers International. In the 1990s, SDI helped slum residents in Mumbai claim the land they were squatting on and turn it into a proper residential area with running water and electricity. The group has programs in Africa, Asia, and South America.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Do a report on the history and activities of UN-HABITAT.

2. The United Nations Millennium Declaration aims, among other development priorities, to end extreme poverty and hunger and to significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. Research how it hopes to achieve this, and open a file to monitor its progress.

FACT FILE

A mega-city with a population of 10 million requires approximately 6,000 tonnes of food every day.

In China (43 percent urban in 1997), the number of official cities has soared from 193 to 640 since 1978.

There may be more than a quarter of a million slums on earth. The five great metropolises of South Asia (Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi; Kolkata, and Dhaka) alone contain about 151000 distinct slum communities with a total population of more than 20 million.

More than 70 percent of the world lives without fresh water, and 25,000 people die each day as the result of poor water management. In our need to develop land we often destroy valuable wetlands, which play a crucial rote in maintaining healthy water quality.

Of the 600 million people on earth who are estimated by the World Health Organisation to be suffering from hunger, more than per cent live in desert areas.

DEFINITION

Classical definition of slums as stated in a UN report: overcrowding, poor or informal housing; inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure.

LAND DEGRADATION 

The United Nations estimates we will need to increase food production more than 50 percent by 2025 to feed the worlds growing population. And, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says about 80 percent of future increases in crop production in developing countries will have to come from intensification: higher yields, increased multiple cropping and shorter fallow (rest) periods. But, in many places, land degradation threatens the productivity of existing farmland and pasture. An on-line report at People & the Planet explains that farmland is lost as a result of wind and water erosion, loss of soil nutrients, and poor irrigation systems that cause the soil to become salt-laden and water-togged. "Globally, land degradation threatens the livelihoods of at least one billion small-scale farmers and ranchers, almost all in the least-developed countries."

The Global Land Assessment of Soil Degradation (GLASOD) says of the nearly 3.2 billion hectares which are under pasture, 21 percent are degraded, while of the 1.5 billion hectares in cropland, 38 percent are degraded to various degrees. The degradation of cropland is most extensive in Africa, affecting 65 percent of the cropland area, compared with 51 percent in Latin America, and 38 percent in Asia.

With population growth and less fertile land, family farms have had nowhere to go but down, as plots are divided into smaller and smaller pieces. According to the FAO, more than half of all farms surveyed in 57 developing countries in the early 1990s were less than one hectare in size, not enough to feed the average rural family. In India, the world's second most populous country, three-fifths of all farms are less than a hectare. On top of diminishing land, water is in short supply in many countries. The United Nations says there are 31 countries that don't have enough water and that more than a billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Some expect that as many as three billion people may face chronic water scarcity by 2025, and that, ultimately, water wars will be added to our problems.

Conversion of forests and other arable land to pasture for cattle reduces rainforests essential to the environmental health of the globe. The cycle of environmental degradation has also led to unnatural disasters, especially droughts and floods. In the first few years of the 21st century, floods in Honduras and India and droughts in Afghanistan have made those countries heavily dependent on international food aid.

In October 2004, the Juba Valley in southern Somalia was deluged with weeks of heavy rainfall. By November, large areas of the valley had been flooded, with thousands of hectares of farmland destroyed as a result. Part of the problem is that local farmers are cutting into river embankments to irrigate their land. Instead, they increase the risk of flood. At the same time, years of successive droughts have left millions of rural people in Ethiopia starving in their attempts to eke out a living through subsistence farming. An estimated two billion citizens of the world lack access to adequate nutrition, and nearly 800 million are chronically hungry.

As resources are depleted and agricultural life declines, many rural poor have no choice but to move into urban areas. UN researchers warn that by 2020 "urban poverty in the world could reach 45 to 50 percent of the total population living in cities."

Websites

City Population--http:// www.citypopulation.de/

UN-HABITAT--http:// www.unhabitat.org/

People & the Planet--http:// www.peopleandplanet.net/

Shack/Slum Dwellers International--http:// www.sdinet.org/