Urban jungles in jeopardy
We may not know exactly what the world will look like in two decades, but we know this: it will be a world of cities.
Each year, urban areas are growing by an average of more than 75 million people – more than the population of the world’s 85 smallest countries combined.
For the world’s economy, this is great news, since cities produce 80 percent of global GDP, despite currently being home to only 55 percent of the population. However, this is a problem for urban infrastructure, which can’t keep up with such fast-paced growth. Cities, which are already vulnerable, are increasingly susceptible to natural disasters – from flooding and landslides that can decimate informal housing settlements, to earthquakes that can devastate power grids and water systems.
These risks could be disastrous for the urban poor, 881 million of whom currently live in slums (up 28 percent since 2000). A recent report by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) found that climate change may force up to 77 million urban residents into poverty by 2030. With climate change increasing the intensity and frequency of natural disasters, multilateral and government institutions now see resilience and climate adaptation as integral pillars of development.
It is for this reason that they’ll be coming together this week with practitioners, experts, and academics to discuss urban resilience at UNISDR’s 2017 Global Platform for Risk Reduction. At a World Bank session of the Local Governments Summit, mayors, city leaders, and partners will share lessons learned from cities across Africa and Latin America, and discuss strategies for remaining resilient in the face of rapid urbanization.
As they build that resilience, cities have more tools at their disposal than ever before. In Dhaka, the spatial-data platform GeoDASH is serving as a central warehouse for 250 spatial datasets from more than 50 organizations, making it easier to share resilience data. Geospatial data is also aiding Can Tho, Vietnam: the city hopes the improved data will help better plan investment in infrastructure, and better manage land use, sustainability, and growth. By reducing the impact of regular flooding, the project will help protect Can Tho’s 420,000 residents.
Urban resilience projects like these are a priority for the World Bank and SECO, who collectively provided $260 million for the efforts in Can Tho. Public and development sectors, however, cannot do it alone. Funding from the private sector is necessary – so we will need to address frequent obstacles to resilience investment: limited public-sector capacity, country-specific financial regulation, inhospitable business climates, and other factors.
The public sector and multilateral development banks play a crucial role, helping cities overcome these barriers and boost investment. To that end, the World Bank, with support from GFDRR and SECO, is developing a new City Resilience Program that aims to help 50 cities create and fund comprehensive resilience programs over the next five years. The program is designed to work with cities to address all sectors in a holistic, flexible approach that will unlock further sources of capital.
Urban spaces bring people together; to make them safer and stronger, the international development community will have to come together, too. Right now, disaster risk is evolving rapidly, far outpacing resilience efforts. Worldwide, 136 coastal cities can expect their collective annual losses to reach $1 trillion in just over 50 years.
Those numbers are daunting, but they are not set in stone – as long as we act now to invest in boosting urban resilience, globally. Working together, we can build the inclusive, competitive, resilient cities of the future.
This post was co-authored with Ivo Germann, Head of Operations of the Economic Development Cooperation Directorate at the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). It was first published on the World Bank blog, and you can read the original version here.
Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez is the Senior Director for the World Bank Group’s Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice. In this position, Mr. Ijjasz-Vasquez leads a team of over 600 technical experts deployed across the world, leveraging global knowledge and collaborating with partners to help tackle the world’s most complex development challenges. Previously, he was Director for Sustainable Development of the Latin America and Caribbean Region, covering infrastructure, environment and climate change, social development, agriculture and rural development, disaster risk management, and urban development with an active portfolio of about $17 billion. From 2007 to 2011, he was based in Beijing, where he managed the Sustainable Development Unit for China and Mongolia. Mr. Ijjasz has a Ph.D. and a M.Sc. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in civil and environmental engineering, with specialization in hydrology and water resources. He has been a lecturer at the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Johns Hopkins University, and at Tsinghua University. He is a Colombian and Hungarian national.