Diana Mitlin

Environmental problems in an urbanizing world : finding solutions for cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Cities can provide health safe and stimulating environments for their inhabitants without imposing unsustainable demands on natural resources ecosystems and global cycles. A successful city in this sense is one that meets multiple goals. Such goals include: healthy living and working environments for the inhabitants; water supply provision for sanitation rubbish collection and disposal drains paved roads and footpaths and other forms of infrastructure and services that are essential for health (and important for a prosperous economic base) available to all; an ecologically sustainable relationship between the demands of consumers and businesses and the resources waste sinks and ecosystems on which they draw. (excerpt)

With and beyond the state — co-production as a route to political influence, power and transformation for grassroots organizations

This paper reviews the use of co-production — with state and citizens working together — as a grassroots strategy to secure political influence and access resources and services. To date, the literature on social movements has concentrated on more explicitly political strategies used by such movements to contest for power and influence. Co-production, when considered, is viewed as a strategy used by citizens and the state to extend access to basic services with relatively little consideration given to its wider political ramifications. However, co-production is used increasingly by grassroots organizations and federations as part of an explicit political strategy. This paper examines the use of co-productive strategies by citizen groups and social movement organizations to enable individual members and their associations to secure effective relations with state institutions that address both immediate basic needs and enable them to negotiate for greater benefits.

Urban Poverty in the Global South: scale and nature

© 2013 Diana Mitlin and David Satterthwaite. All rights reserved. One in seven of the world’s population live in poverty in urban areas, and the vast majority of these live in the Global South – mostly in overcrowded informal settlements with inadequate water, sanitation, health care and schools provision. This book explains how and why the scale and depth of urban poverty is so frequently under-estimated by governments and international agencies worldwide. The authors also consider whether economic growth does in fact reduce poverty, exploring the paradox of successful economies that show little evidence of decreasing poverty.Many official figures on urban poverty, including those based on the US

Civil society and urban poverty - examining complexity

1 per day poverty line, present a very misleading picture of urban poverty’s scale. These common errors in definition and measurement by governments and international agencies lead to poor understanding of urban poverty and inadequate policy provision. This is compounded by the lack of voice and influence that low income groups have in these official spheres. This book explores many different aspects of urban poverty including the associated health burden, inadequate food intake, inadequate incomes, assets and livelihood security, poor living and working conditions and the absence of any rule of law.Urban Poverty in the Global South: Scale and Nature fills the gap for a much needed systematic overview of the historical and contemporary state of urban poverty in the Global South. This comprehensive and detailed book is a unique resource for students and lecturers in development studies, urban development, development geography, social policy, urban planning and design, and poverty reduction.

Reducing Urban Poverty in the Global South

CIVIL SOCIETY IS increasingly recognized as being critical to the successful realization of development. Grassroots organizations are regarded as a new panacea for people-centred, pro-poor development. But should this be the case? Low-income communities are subject to division due to unequal access to power, prestige, income and capital. Do such organizations really support their poorest members to increase and achieve development options? How do NGOs truly support participatory processes? Do their staff use their professional skills and expertise to enable the poor to control development programmes, or does decision-making remain in the hands of a few? Do grassroots organizations and NGOs reduce poverty, or is their role to reinforce dependency, powerlessness and exclusion? And how does the state intervene to influence these organizations and the way in which they are developing? These are the questions that need to be understood if issues of empowerment and participation are to be addressed. This paper draws together a wide range of development literature to consider the activities of grassroots organizations and NGOs in poverty reduction in urban areas. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, rather it draws on a range of documents to provide an overview of issues and themes. The focus of the discussion is on the issue of governance and how authority and control are exercised within civil society institutions and between civil society and the state. The discussion begins by introducing the concept of civil society and examines the growing interest in recent years in civil society, NGOs and the related concept of social capital. Later sections explore the nature of participation and governance within grassroots organizations, the relationships between grassroots organizations and NGOs and, finally, relations between civil society and the state. Governance is broadly defined and refers to the process whereby institutions govern themselves, be they nation states or residents’ associations. In the case of the nation state, the process of governance refers primarily to relations between citizens (either individual or collectively) and their governments. In the case of membership organizations, it refers to relations between members and leaders.

Integrated approaches to address the social determinants of health for reducing health inequity.

1. Why this Book? 2. Approaches to Poverty Reduction in Towns and Cities of the Global South 3. The Work of Local, National and International Agencies 4. Citizen led Povery Reduction 5. Understanding Pro-poor Politics and Pro-poor Transformation 6. A Future that Low-income Dwellers want - and can Help Secure

Reducing urban poverty; some lessons from experience

The social and physical environments have long since been recognized as important determinants of health. People in urban settings are exposed to a variety of health hazards that are interconnected with their health effects. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have underlined the multidimensional nature of poverty and the connections between health and social conditions and present an opportunity to move beyond narrow sectoral interventions and to develop comprehensive social responses and participatory processes that address the root causes of health inequity. Considering the complexity and magnitude of health, poverty, and environmental issues in cities, it is clear that improvements in health and health equity demand not only changes in the physical and social environment of cities, but also an integrated approach that takes into account the wider socioeconomic and contextual factors affecting health. Integrated or multilevel approaches should address not only the immediate, but also the underlying and particularly the fundamental causes at societal level of related health issues. The political and legal organization of the policy-making process has been identified as a major determinant of urban and global health, as a result of the role it plays in creating possibilities for participation, empowerment, and its influence on the content of public policies and the distribution of scarce resources. This paper argues that it is essential to adopt a long-term multisectoral approach to address the social determinants of health in urban settings. For comprehensive approaches to address the social determinants of health effectively and at multiple levels, they need explicitly to tackle issues of participation, governance, and the politics of power, decision making, and empowerment.

Participatory approaches in urban areas: strengthening civil society or reinforcing the status quo?

Many donor agencies are recognizing the need to address the growing levels of urban poverty in Africa, Latin America and much of Asia. Many also acknowledge that they had under-estimated the scale of urban poverty. As they develop or expand programmes on poverty reduction in urban areas, there are many remarkable initiatives on whose experience they can draw. This paper reflects on the lessons from seven of these: three from Asia, three from Latin America and one from Africa. All these initiatives combined direct action by low-income groups themselves, working with local NGOs, with some support negotiated from one or more external agency in order to improve housing and living conditions, basic services and livelihoods. Each initiative sought to make limited funding go as far as possible-and most achieved partial or total cost recovery for some (or all) of their interventions. All used credit to allow low-income groups to spread the cost of capital investment over a number of years. These initiatives also changed the relationship between poor urban groups and local authorities, bringing about major benefits. However, official donors may find it difficult to fund initiatives such as these, especially through conventional project-cycle oriented funding for capital projects that is channelled through recipient governments. They may also find it difficult to fund initiatives that aim to change the policies and practices of local (or national) governments; also to support initiatives that are multisectoral, relatively cheap and require long-term support because they are long-term processes rather than discrete projects. Initiatives that generate cost recovery may also present them with difficulties. Most official donors will need to develop new channels to support such initiatives-for instance through support for intermediary funds for community projects located within these cities.

Addressing urban poverty through strengthening assets

The paper examines current experiences with the use of participatory methodologies in low-income urban communities. It outlines the nature and development of participatory approaches and describes experiences, prospects and problems related to their use in an urban context. Three case examples from the UK, Sri Lanka, and India and South Africa demonstrate how innovative approaches are being used by different agencies to strengthen and support the activities of community based organizations. Finally, the paper concludes with a number of broad questions about the future application of participatory approaches in low-income urban communities.

Decentring poverty, reworking government: social movements and states in the government of poverty.

Abstract The importance of urban poverty is increasingly recognized. This paper seeks to learn from the experiences of eight urban poverty reduction programmes to understand how effective development programmes can be instituted. The emerging lessons emphasize the use of three strategies to enhance the asset base of the urban poor: strengthening grassroots organizations, transforming relations with the state and developing new alternatives to conventional urban development practices. The experiences offer insights into strategies to secure poverty reduction within the broad framework of sustainable livelihoods.