Global concerns on human settlement and cross-cutting issues in living environments

Abstract

The total population of the world reached 7 billion in October 2011, and the United Nations has forecasted that the world population in 2050 will be around 9 billion. What are the environmental implications of rapid population growth? Globally, over half of the world’s population (54%) lives in urban areas in 2014 although there is still substantial variability in the levels of urbanization across countries. If we review the history, in 1800, only 3% of the world’s population lived in urban areas. In 1900, almost 14% of populations were urbanites and in 1950, 30% of the world’s population resided in urban centres. The world has been experiencing unprecedented urban growth in recent decades. The coming decades will bring further profound changes to the size and spatial distribution of the global population. The continuing urbanization and overall growth of the world’s population is projected to add 2.5 billion people to the urban population by 2050, with nearly 90% of the increase are being concentrated in Asia and Africa. At the same time, the proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas is expected to increase, reaching 70% by 2050. The process of urbanization historically has been associated with other important economic and social transformations, which have brought greater geographic mobility, lower fertility, longer life expectancy and population ageing. Cities are important drivers of development and poverty reduction in both urban and rural areas, as they concentratemuch of the national economic activity, government, commerce and transportation. Urban living is often associated with higher levels of literacy and education, better health, greater access to social services, and enhanced opportunities for cultural and political participation. Nevertheless, rapid and unplanned urban growth threatens sustainable development when the necessary infrastructure and policies have not been developed or not been implemented to ensure that the benefits of city life are equitably shared. Today, despite the comparative advantage of cities, urban areas are unequal and hundreds of millions of the world’s urban poor live in sub-standard conditions caused by rapid sprawl, pollution and environmental degradation, together with unsustainable production and consumption patterns. The United Nations’ system has an essential role to support work for amore sustainable future for everyone. The concept was globally inaugurated in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (so-called BrundtlandCommission). In the last two decades, the concept of ‘Sustainable Development’ has become essential political and ethical guideline for dealing with the Earth’s ecological and social crisis. The paper on the historical evolution of the concept of sustainability is thought to be a contribution to the 20 th anniversary of the report of the Brundtland Commision, which paved the way to the Rio summit and defined ‘sustainable development’ in 1987 as ‘a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. This particular way of thinking and acting is deeply rooted in the cultures of the world. The United Nations has introduced a programmatic guideline for the 21 st century’s urbanization and this should be integrally connected to the three pillars of sustainable development: economic development, social development and environmental protection. The UN programme for human settlements (UNHABITAT) was established in 1974 to provide a focal point for all urbanization and human settlement matters within the UN system and is mandated by the UN General Assembly, which has an aim to help the urban poor by transforming cities into safer, healthier, greener places with better opportunities where everyone can live in dignity. The main documents outlining UNHABITAT’s mandate are the Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements (Habitat I), the Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlements (Habitat II), the Declaration on Cities and Other Human Settlements in the new Millennium Development Goal (MDG). The MDGs are eight goals that all 191 UN member states