Sheridan Bartlett

Climate change and urban children: impacts and implications for adaptation in low- and middle- income countries

This paper discusses the particular and disproportionate risks to urban children in poverty from various aspects of climate change, both extreme events and changing means. It explores the potential impacts on childrens health, learning and psychosocial well-being, and considers the implications of family coping strategies for children. The paper goes on to discuss the implications for adaptation, making recommendations for an adaptation agenda that focuses on the realities for children. Preparatory measures are considered, as well as responses to extreme events and to changes in weather patterns.

Building Better Cities with Children and Youth

There are many more urban children now, and hundreds of millions of them live in the kind of deep poverty that is a challenge to life, health and future prospects. The critical environmental health problems that are part of urban poverty, and that affect children in particular and disproportionate ways, have not gone away. Although cities, with their economies of scale and more prosperous economic bases, have long been considered better off than rural areas in terms of provision for child health and survival, this urban advantage has declined in some areas and is increasingly being called into question. (2) In the absence of effective, responsive local governance, poor urban areas are some of the world’s most life- and health-threatening environments for children. In other words, 12 years on, it would be more than reasonable to devote another issue of the journal to the on-going crisis in environmental health for urban children. The fact that we have not done so in no way implies a lack of urgency in this area. Some of the papers do describe effective responses to this concern ‐ specifically the descriptions of UNICEF initiatives in the Philippines and Brazil. But our primary emphasis is different this time.

Water, sanitation and urban children: the need to go beyond “improved” provision

This paper reviews the implications of inadequate provision of water and sanitation for children’s health and general development, especially in urban areas. Research into health differentials shows that child mortality and morbidity rates in poor urban settlements can equal or exceed those in rural areas. This review considers, in particular, the higher vulnerability of children to sanitation-related illness, the links between unsanitary conditions and malnutrition, the impacts for mental and social development, and the practical day-to-day realities of poor provision for children and their caregivers in urban areas. It argues that health education and health care, while essential complements to proper provision, can in no way be considered alternative solutions. The true costs for children of a failure to respond to this ongoing emergency lend another dimension to discussions of the cost-effectiveness of various solutions.

Children's experience of the physical environment in poor urban settlements and the implications for policy, planning and practice

This paper describes how childrens needs are routinely ignored or misunderstood by urban development policy, plans and practice – and the very high costs this brings for them in terms of ill-health, injury, premature death and impaired physical, mental and social development. For instance, provision for water, sanitation and housing often fails to address the main requirements for child health while neighbourhood-wide development fails to understand the significance of play for childrens development, including the extent to which adequate provision reduces accidents. The impact on children of evictions, overcrowding and neighbourhood violence is also considered. The paper also describes, with examples, how acting on children’s needs and priorities can be incorporated into existing interventions without major cost increases, and the benefits this brings for children and for other inhabitants.

The significance of relocation for chronically poor families in the USA

This paper considers the difficulties facing the many low income households who are constantly moving-for instance because of eviction or as they search for better conditions-and the factors influencing their decision to move. After reviewing the literature on relocation, this paper describes the experiences of one low income family living in a small town in the United States who have moved 24 times since the birth of their nine year old daughter. The low paying, poor quality jobs they find do not encourage them to stay in one location and the family income is never sufficient to pay for decent housing. Moving becomes an escape from unsatisfactory conditions and a hope of better conditions in the new location. But it also means constant disruption for the children as they change school and lose friends, great difficulties for the whole family in maintaining social relations and the obvious difficulties in constantly re-registering with new authorities for health care and schools. The paper ends by considering the role of inadequate housing in supporting this cycle of constant relocation and suggesting that if low income groups could find decent housing, it would help break this cycle and the heavy costs it imposes on all family members.

Is it possible to reach low-income urban dwellers with good-quality sanitation?

All urban dwellers need safe, quick, easy access to clean toilets, day and night – without fear, without a long walk, without a long wait in line, and without the need to plan ahead or to spend more than they can easily afford. They should be able to count on privacy, cleanliness and the means to wash anus and hands quickly and conveniently, which is difficult if there is no water piped on the premises.(1) These toilets need to serve everyone – girls and boys, women and men of all ages and conditions. Women who are menstruating should have not only a way to wash but a place to put their waste safely and privately. People with impaired mobility should not have to add toilets to the list of challenges they face.(2) Small children should be able to meet their needs without someone having to pick up and dispose of their waste or accompany them to a distant facility. Older children should be able to count on sufficient well-maintained toilets at school. And all toilets need to function so that toilet wastes do not end up contaminating anyone’s food, water or hands. In high-income countries, nearly all urban dwellers can access a toilet the moment they want to or need to. There is no need to consider “do I have time to do so now?” or “do I have the money to be able to pay?” They seldom have to worry about the toilet being occupied, when there are only a few people per toilet, as is the case in most houses or apartments in highincome countries. But how different this is for households where the person/toilet ratio is much higher – especially when there are also tenants renting rooms or adult children and their families who remain in their parents’ house because they cannot afford their own house. This problem is doubled or tripled when the toilet is shared with one or two other households. Most of those reading this editorial probably have toilets in their home that are not shared with other households and that fulfil all the above needs. We have become so accustomed to never having a problem accessing, using and paying for toilets that we don’t realize how difficult it is for those without them. We not only have immediate access to one or more toilets in our home (most with basins and hot water for washing too) but also clean, easily accessed toilets in the workplace, in hotels, railways stations, airports and most petrol stations when we travel, in most restaurants and cafes, and in many public spaces. In addition, when we need to or choose to move to another location, all the housing choices come with good provision for sanitation (and piped water, drainage and solid waste collection). There may be instances of unmet needs that certainly should be addressed but the proportion of those inadequately served is very low.

Editorial: The full spectrum of risk in urban centres: changing perceptions, changing priorities:

In many urban centres in the global South, there is little or no information on either the scale or the causes of premature death, serious injury, illness or impoverishment. In sub-Saharan Africa, this is the case for most urban centres. Even where there may be some information, it is seldom available for every district in the city. We get some sense of the scale of these issues from household surveys (such as the Demographic and Health Surveys), which show very high infant, child and maternal mortality rates “for urban areas” in many African and Asian nations.(1) But for practical action this kind of information is needed for every ward or district – on what the problems are, where they are and who is most impacted. Civil servants, politicians and civil society groups working at neighbourhood, ward, district and city levels may have some sense, based on their experience, of what the concerns are within their jurisdictions. But without data to present to higher-ups, it can be difficult to get proper action in response. The availability of data is worst of all for informal settlements – despite the fact that they often house more than half of a city’s population. In Nairobi, the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) has shown that aggregate figures for infant and under-5 mortality rates for the city hide the much higher rates in informal settlements.(2) But this kind of information is needed everywhere, and there is in general scant documentation of the serious risks faced by the billion or so urban dwellers who live in informal settlements.

“We beat the path by walking” How the women of Mahila Milan in India learned to plan, design, finance and build housing

This paper considers the collective knowledge about housing design and construction that was developed over 30 years by the Indian Alliance of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), Mahila Milan and the National Slum Dwellers’ Federation (NSDF) in its pursuit of secure shelter for the pavement dwellers in Mumbai, the most vulnerable people in the city. It traces the learning and innovations developed by these women pavement dwellers, mostly illiterate, in this one specific aspect of their much larger joint journey towards a safe, secure home in the city, something that seemed almost inconceivable when they began. The deeply political aspects of this larger journey are only briefly touched on here, allowing space to describe the hands-on learning about planning, design and building that was also essential in this process. The paper is one of an ongoing series tracing the work of this Indian partnership since 1986, examining the critical milestones that have emerged from discussion, reflections and collective exploration.

Editorial: Responding to urban youth’s own perspectives

The challenges facing urban youth in terms of both livelihoods and their involvement in local governance are increasingly recognized as some of the most important development issues worldwide. We also have remarkably few effective precedents on how to address these issues. And yet, for perhaps the first time ever in Environment and Urbanization, we have fewer themed papers in this issue than we do papers that provide feedback on themes in previous issues. We are disappointed and not a little chagrined at our failure to produce the bumper number on urban youth that was contemplated. The five papers we have certainly make an important contribution and we are delighted to be publishing them. However, some equally strong papers came in too late to be included (although these will feature in the April 2011 issue); also some research reports, while pointing in very interesting directions, were still too preliminary to be publishable; and in some cases, people who had been committed to contributing their rich experiences and strongly felt opinions turned out to be too busy to produce. We are looking forward to publishing in the next issue an overview by Richard Mabala on youth and livelihoods in Africa; an account of the youth federation in Nairobi that, in a sense, has grown up under the wing of the federation of the urban poor there but that has gone very much in its own direction; a discussion of deaf youth in large cities; an evaluation of a programme seeking to provide safe spaces and savings accounts for young girls in a Nairobi slum; and a description of the development of the Technical Training Resource Centre in Karachi, set up by a young engineering student and providing practical training for youth in construction, design and neighbourhood level mapping and documentation. There are some powerful narratives shaping the discourse around youth. On the one hand, they are seen as the problem – the unemployed, disaffected, irresponsible generation, a “ticking time bomb”, the ugly “bulge” that is likely to burst, spreading violence and chaos.(1) On the other hand, young people, and young women in particular, are seen as victims – victims of HIV, of violence, of sexual abuse, of discrimination, unemployment, exploitation. Yet another perspective is a vision of youth as the answer, a repository of knowledge, energy and vision that has only to be tapped to solve the world’s problems. This does not cover all the stereotypes around youth – in our next issue Richard Mabala will discuss a more complex typology. But these particular narratives, contradictory and simplistic as they are, can have a powerful influence on the ways in which young people are responded to, with often disappointing results. These papers offer a more thoughtful, nuanced middle ground, an area that clearly needs to be explored if the complex realities facing urban youth are to be more effectively addressed.

The missing population at the 2006 World Urban Forum

This comment discusses the lack of attention given to children at the June 2006 World Urban Forum in Vancouver. Although progress was made in terms of the recognition given to youth at this Forum, only two out of 162 events focused on the concerns of children under the age of 15 - a group that constitutes almost one-third of the world’s population. This failure is not unique to this Forum, but reflects a broader failure to integrate attention to the priorities and involvement of children within development practice. The paper explains why this failure is significant, not only for children themselves but also for the successful implementation of the Forum’s more general concern with “urban sustainability”.