Philippines – Urban aquaculture project

November 3, 2008 · 0 comments

Quezon City has been declared the pilot area for the country’s urban aquaculture project, dubbed as “Pangisdaan sa Bakuran.”

The project involves the culturing of the fast-growing Pangasius catfish in the backyards of urban poor homes to enable the participating families to raise a total of 180 fishes in 90 days.

The Pangasius can be cultured in six plastic drums arranged like a three-tiered pyramid, which can be placed in a backyard as small as five meters long and four meters wide.

Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. has launched the project at the Barangay Paligsahan Hall in District 4 by awarding Pangasius fingerlings to families from depressed areas in the city.

“This is now a part of the city’s poverty reduction effort, specifically aimed at mitigating the impact of rising prices of commodities,” said Dr. La Rainne Abad-Sarmiento, chair of the city’s Anti-poverty Integration Task Force (APITF) and head of the city’s Sikap Buhay Entrepreneurship and Cooperatives Office (SB ECO).

The project is a partnership between the Quezon City government, through the APITF, and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, the Angel Club Multi-purpose Cooperative, Vitarich Corp. and the A & L Fish Hatcheries, Inc., according to Sarmiento.

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Uganda – Drought, hunger drive Karamoja children to beg in Kampala

November 3, 2008 · 0 comments

KAMPALA, 3 November 2008 (IRIN) – Agatha Locham, 23, sits with her two weak and malnourished children a few steps from the entrance to a bank in Kampala.

“Mpayo ekikumi [give me a 100-shilling coin],” the boy, his stomach distended, shouts at passers-by.

Locham and her children are among the increasing number of residents of the drought-prone region of Karamoja, north-eastern Uganda, who have travelled hundreds of kilometres to the city to beg to survive.

She said her malnourished child was weak because they had not had a decent meal in days.

Locham declined to reveal how much they made in a day, saying only that it was sufficient for a room in Kisenyi slum.

Up to 30 people live in rooms meant for five in Kisenyi, with children charged 100 shillings (five US cents) while adults pay 300 shillings (15 cents) per night.

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USAID – Emergencies in Urban Settings: A Technical Review of Food-Based Program Options

October 31, 2008 · 0 comments

Emergencies in Urban Settings: A Technical Review of Food-Based Program Options. USAID’s Office of Food for Peace Occasional Paper 6. 2008. (pdf, 286KB)

Although food assistance needs in urban and peri-urban areas are expected to require increased resources in the coming years, most experience with food-based programs is in rural areas. Against this backdrop, USAID’s Office of Food for Peace Occasional Paper No. 6, Emergencies in Urban Settings: A Technical Review of Food-Based Program Options, examines 11 common food-based programs to highlight advantages, disadvantages, targeting and implementation modalities in the urban context. The programs include: targeted household food distribution, food for work, food for training, wet feeding programs, community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) programs, supplementary feeding in maternal and child health and nutrition programs, institutional feeding for street children, orphans and vulnerable children and other vulnerable groups, school feeding programs, food support to child care facilities, market assistance programs, and support to national strategic food reserves. The paper also presents tools to help determine the most appropriate interventions and approaches for given settings.

Women, slums and urbanization

October 29, 2008 · 0 comments

Women, slums and urbanisation: examining the causes and consequences.. Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions , 2008 (pdf, ful-text)

This report examines the worldwide phenomenon of urbanisation from the point of view of women’s housing rights. The report focuses, in particular, on the experiences of women and girls living in slum communities throughout the world, premised on the idea that both the causes and consequences of urbanisation for women are, in fact, unique and deeply related to issues of gender. The report highlights women’s experiences from Africa, Asia and the Americas and background information on the global realities of urbanisation, including trends and analysis.

7th International Conference on Urban Health, Oct 29-31, 2008

October 28, 2008 · 0 comments

The 7th International Conference on Urban Health: Knowledge Integration- Successful Interventions in Urban Health will be held in Vancouver, Canada from Oct. 29-31, 2008.

Highlights at this year’s conference include:

- Five pre-conference workshops offering overviews and in-depth knowledge and exchange opportunities on this year’s conference theme and tracks
- Two pre-conference tours to explore the urban agriculture movement and health service delivery to complex patients in Vancouver
- Seven highly renowned, international plenary speakers
- 180 peer-reviewed oral abstract presentations addressing the conference tracks
- Twelve concurrent workshops and panel sessions
- Four poster presentation sessions
Numerous networking opportunities and social events including the Welcome Reception

HABITAT – State of the World's Cities 2008/2009: Harmonious Cities

October 28, 2008 · 1 comment

Half of humanity is now living in cities, but this dramatic transition is far from over, according to the new UN-Habitat report “State of the World’s Cities 2008/9: Harmonious Cities”, which finds that urbanization levels globally will rise dramatically in the next 40 years to reach 70 per cent by 2050.

Anna Tibaijuka, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), and Eduardo Lopez Moreno, Director of UN-Habitat’s City Monitoring Branch and principal author of the report, launched the report at a Headquarters press conference in New York today.

Ms. Tibaijuka cited the report as stating that, although more than 70 per cent of the populations of Europe, North America and Latin America were already urban, Asia and Africa, which were predominantly rural, with 41 per cent and 39 per cent of their populations, respectively, living in urban areas, were in for a major demographic shift.

By the middle of the twenty-first century, the total urban population of the developing world would more than double, increasing from 2.3 billion in 2005 to 5.3 billion in 2050. In the last two decades alone, the urban population of the developing world had grown by an average of 3 million people per week. She said that, given such an enormous demographic shift and transformation taking place so rapidly, the trend was sometimes overwhelming the available resources to address the situation. Further, one out of every three people living in the cities of the developing world lived in slum and squatter settlements.

A slum was defined by the report as any dwelling that had no access to water or sanitation and was either made of not durable building materials, was overcrowded or had insecurity of tenure. However, she explained, the report found that not all slum-dwellers suffered the same degree or magnitude of deprivation, nor were all slums homogenous. Some, in fact, provided better living conditions than others, and the degree of deprivation depended on how many of the five “shelter deprivations” used to measure slums defined above were associated with a particular slum household.

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Mexico – Smog chops 2 months off Mexicans' lives

October 28, 2008 · 0 comments

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexicans would live an average of two months longer if they breathed cleaner air, Harvard researchers conclude in a study published Monday. The study found that some 7,600 people’s lives were cut short each year by diseases related to air pollution between 2001-2005, representing about 1.6 percent of annual deaths in Mexico.

The highest proportion of those deaths — 38 percent — were in Mexico City, a mountain-ringed valley long known for its dense layer of smog.

Mexico’s average life expectancy — 72.3 years for men and 77.8 for women — would be longer by 2.4 months if urban air quality were improved, according to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers — Gretchen Stevens, Rodrigo Dias and Majid Ezzati of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health — used death records and air quality monitoring data to estimate the number of people who died from lung cancer, cardiopulmonary diseases, respiratory infections and other illnesses as a result of breathing heavily polluted air. Then they estimated what Mexico’s average life expectancy rate would be if those people had not died early.

The researchers also studied the effect on mortality rates from the use of solid fuels, like coal and wood burning, and from unsafe water sanitation in Mexican homes.

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Urban vulnerability to climate change

October 24, 2008 · 0 comments

Project examines urban dwellers’ vulnerability to heat in face of climate changes

TEMPE, Ariz. – Sophisticated climate and environmental data will be combined with social science knowledge by a team of Arizona State University researchers investigating human vulnerability to deadly heat exposure.

With the mounting effects of climate change and half the world’s population now living in urban areas – one-third of the people in slums – the potential for the increasing frequency and severity of heat waves is cause for grave concern, says Sharon Harlan, an associate professor of sociology in ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“People in cities are in double jeopardy due to urban heat islands and global climate change – factors that are increasing and intensifying as they interact,” she says.

Exposure to extreme heat events could lead to even larger disasters than some seen in the recent past, such as the heat wave that took as many as 50,000 lives in Europe in 2003.

Harlan will lead researchers in seeking answers to guide policymakers and planners in bolstering protective measures to prevent heat-related illness and deaths. The collaborative project, partnering ASU and the University of California, Riverside, is supported by a recently awarded $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

The teams will examine how global environmental change combines with local conditions to affect human vulnerability to climate change. Studies show the urban poor are most vulnerable to extreme heat, but little is known about the interplay between changing urban climates and the human and natural systems within cities.

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India – Urban sanitation is in a shambles

October 16, 2008 · 0 comments

LUCKNOW: ‘One can bear hunger but cannot hold the urge to ease oneself’, quipped a woman in a zero-sanitation locality of the city. The comment only
gives words to the inevitable innate human need. Despite this, the issue of sanitation lies entangled amidst red-tapism and government apathy. A number of facts obtained from government of Uttar Pradesh (GoUP) stand in support of this.

It is shocking to learn that the state does not have complete figures on urban sanitation coverage, though there are some rough estimates. The UP government 11th plan document is one such source. But the figures only turn the scenario grimmer.

Citing these figures, expert in sanitation with the unicef, Amit Mehrotra said, “Close to 33 per cent households in the urban areas of the state are without toilet facilities, while 50 per cent do not have a sewerage system.”

Adding more he said, “The same document reveals that out of the 629 urban local bodies, only 55 have partial sewerage system. The drainage system is almost non existent in most urban areas. The situation is worse in urban slums, which house more than 30 per cent of a city’s population.”

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Rwanda: Habitat Fetes Kigali, Four Others As Model Cities for the World

October 13, 2008 · 0 comments

A decade-long effort by Rwanda to turn its capital Kigali into a modern metropolis with efficient garbage collection, non-use of plastics and a low crime rate, has finally paid off in the United Nations honouring the city for its innovativeness.

Kigali now stands shoulder-to-shoulder with four other Chinese, Russian and Mexican cities, which were also given the same award.

The award, presented by UN-Habitat during this year’s World Habitat Day, recognised Kigali for innovations in building a model, modern city characterised by zero tolerance for plastics, improved garbage collection and a substantial reduction in crime.

Also honoured were the Chinese cities of Shaoxing and Zhangjiagang, the Tatarstan city of Bugulma, in the Russian Federation, and Ciudad Juarez, a major Mexican city on the United States border.

The highest award conferred by the United Nations system in the field of habitation — the Habitat Scroll of Honour Special Citation — went to the Chinese city of Nanjing.

Kigali’s journey to realising its “restoration-to-lost glory” dream started in 1998 with the targeting of garbage collection, and the banning of plastic bags. The streets and pavements were beautified, and public transport was upgraded.

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