Regional NGO Consultations – Habitat II

The South Asian Regional NGO Consultations for Habitat II took place at Suraj Kund, near New Delhi on 19-20 January 1996.  More than thirty representatives of voluntary agencies, community based organisations and other NGOs from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan took part in the meeting, the purpose of which was to share views within the region for effective participation in the Habitat II Conference taking place at Istanbul in June 1996. 

The participants deliberated on the mammoth problems of shelter and human settlements confronting the region today.  They noted that despite the promises the Habitat I at Vancouver two decades earlier, most of these problems still remain, worldwide, to be solved.  Many have, in fact, become even worse and some have become a serious threat to social stability, the life support system and indeed the very survival of humankind.  Within the South Asia region, the condition of human settlements has deteriorated even more rapidly than in the rest of the world.  Civil society organisations will have to provide independent but concerted inputs as Istanbul to ensure that national policies and international commitments are designed to reverse the trend and, in time, to improve the living conditions of the people in the region.

During the past decades various approaches in regard to settlement based development have been adopted.  While impressive achievements have been demonstrated – as for example regeneration of the total community and environment of a village or of an urban settlement – it has not often been found possible to replicate such models on a wide scale.  Most of the solutions attempted so far have been narrowly conceived, piecemeal interventions to address specific issues like improving access to land or building housing colonies.  Experience has shown that such solutions have provided some relief at the settlement level but generally fail to touch the underlying socio-economic causes of settlement problems.  They thus fail to spread at the rate and on the scale needed.

The consultation therefore recognized the need for a broader, more holistic approach to sustainable habitat and, particularly, the importance of integrating the fulfillment of basic needs (which include shelter) for all as the fundamental bedrock of development strategy.  In the twenty first century, shelter must be a human right no less basic than the right to life and livelihood.  But to achieve this, the participants agreed that it is now time to go beyond generalities and platitudes to specific action-oriented solutions.  The present consultations and,even more important, the Habitat II conference must identify and agree on not only overall objectives but also the strategies and the means for achieving them. 

The group, after considerable deliberation, came to the conclusion that the primary reason why present efforts have not been able to create a significant impact is the top-down political and which tend to concentrate power and resources at the higher levels of government.  They do not allow communities to take decisions or participate in the decision processes which affect their lives. 

Some countries have amended their constitutions to confer recognition and powers on local governments.  It is often claimed that this is synonymous with conferring power on the people.  However, these moves could just as easily end up conferring power on local political elites unless the local governments are placed under the surveillance of the communities. 

Many Third World countries are going through the process of structural adjustment towards an open market economy.  Some people see this as a sound move for stimulating economic growth and creation of jobs.  Others have reservations and feel that the market economy will further marginalise the poor and destroy the resource base.  Without going into a debate over this issue, the group felt that the emergence of a market based economy would also need transparency in governance and participation of communities in decision-making as a check against possible malpractices of a market system. 

Basic Issues: Human or Inhuman Settlements?

The UN discourse on human settlements assumes that modernization, urbanization and development and are inherently desirable, and that progress towards them constitutes an unequivocal improvement in human well-being.  However, reality in the South is otherwise. 

The development process, particularly in South Asia, has been accompanied by persistent poverty, expanding slums, massive and growing environmental degradation, an exponential increase in crime as well as civic violence, and a virtual breakdown of societal values.  It is true that there has been an increase in aggregate systems: in fact, these improvements are generally viewed as definitive features of the twentieth century.  However, the social problems mentioned above are equally representative of the era.  Development means not only skyscrapers but equally slums. 

This raises two issues.  First, modern sensibility has justified the creation of inhuman rather than human settlements.  It creates sky scrapers rather than human scale settlements.  The development model needs to be modified to allow “humane” and “human scale” settlements to be created.  Second, development creates slums.  We have to understand how this happens, and how to ensure that people’s lives are improved rather than impoverished. 

The mainstream approach is based on what can only be described as a northern perspective.  It assumes that the social problems mentioned above are transient and incidental, and indeed that they are merely residues of the past which will disappear with greater economic development.  It is possible, however, to posit two alternative perspectives.  The first, and more radical, perspective sees the social problems and economic development as linked inextricably to each other.  This perspective asks for a complete transformation of the nature and direction of social change in southern societies.  An alternative, more moderate perspective, suggests that the increase in income and social indicators has come at the cost of tremendous societal problems.  It calls for a decoupling of development from its adverse social and cultural entailments.  

There is an absence of effective institutions rural as well as urban, local as well as national – to identify collective problems, find collective solutions, and to impelement these solutions in an equitable and just manner. 

Much of this stems from a model of development which glorifies centralization and size, ignores collective institutions and generates injustice in the name of economic growth.  Any alternative must start with a reversal of these assumptions and biases.  Such alternatives would have to be defined for each context, but some general features can be highlighted.  These are:

q	Decentralization of the polity through creation of autonomous, effective, and quasi-sovereign local governments.
q	Large urban conglomerations would need to be split into municipalities or boroughs with smaller governing management units to transfer effective political control to sub-metropolitan levels with smaller populations through the creation of neighbourhood governance systems.  These small-scale governments should have clear and powers of legislation, taxation, executive control.
q	Economic empowerment of the communities through the transfer of ownership over all local resources.
q	De-scaling of the size and scale of urban forms and infrastructures to bring them into line with human needs and the capacities of human collectivities to manage and maintain them.

Public transport needs to be accorded much greater attention as an important element in the human settlement.  It has a crucial economic dimension in determining access to jobs and affecting productivity and incomes.  It also has a social dimension in that it determines mobility for personal, educational, cultural and other purposes. 

Social Issues

The design and management of human settlements in large measures determine the quality of life of their citizens and social relationships among them. 

The present period is fraught with both social and physical dislocation of people.  Entire patterns of collective action and institutions have broken down, and traditional values practices that nurtured these rapidly being replaced by ideas of modernity and individuality that cannot be the basis of a sustainable society.  The causes of this degradation of social institutions clearly lie in the intensification of a capitalist mode of production in industry, agriculture, technology on the one hand and the prepetuation of patriarchal relationships by the State, capital and the family on the other.  These forces are powerful, and the central question then to be answered is: how can the types of relationship, forms of institution and collective action be rebuild? 

In terms of responding to the chalelnges outlined above, alternative systems need to be developed which recognise that communities do manage themselves through self-styled entrepreneurship, managing housing and supply of water, sewerage, transport and by and large develop themselves to cater to their needs without the investment of the State. 

The forum put forward the following suggestions: 

q	The State’s perception of itself and its role needs to be re-examined so that while being responsible for providing basic services, it is aware of its limitations and does not take on inappropriate paternalistic roles.
q	A monitoring or checking system needs to be provided within State agencies to prevent the kind of power structures and relationships that currently grow within bureaucracies.
q	The role of NGOs is to empower people communities/activists themselves rather than becoming a bridge between people and the government.  Their role can best be defined in terms of strengthening/facilitating communities through direct involvement, political education, social mobilization and focusing on “success” stories/best practices etc and not to undertake what the state fails to perform.

 

Infrastructure and Technology

 

Design, implementation and operation of interventions – whether public or private – in the area of infrastructure and technology should be based on the principles of:

q	Participation of affected people at every decision and action level.
q	Partnership of community organisations business and government.
q	Land development and utilisation plans should be finalized through due process of public debate.
q	Human settlements need to be sited appropriately, in consonance with the natural topography and water regime of an area.
q	The development of arterial transport infrastructure that ensures time-saving and humane connectivity between places of residence and work, particularly for the poor, needs to be given priority by civic authorities.
q	Community groups should be empowered to operate and maintain utility services such as water supply, electricity, waste disposal and garbage collection at the neighbourhood level and to collect utility charges.
q	Improvement in physical shelter decentralized private entrepreneurial systems.

 

Transparency and participation in Governance

The forum strongly felt that the governance practices in any democracy, developed or developing, would have to be along the following lines:

q	Empowered Local Governments
q	Bottom-up Integrated Planning
q	Negotiation between Urban and Rural areas on sharing of environmental & financial resources.
q	Right to Information required in the decision process
q	Mandatory Public Hearings
q	Grassoroot Democracy as the first tier of civic management.
q	Participatory Tender Committees
q	Planning with nature

Responsible Right to Shelter

In most third world countries, nearly 30 percent of the urban population lives in squatter settlements in degraded environments and with little security.  Families living in such settlements for some time establish social and economic roots and need security.  “Responsible Right to Shelter” needs to be recognized in such squatter  settlements. 

The right to shelter in rural areas includes access to energy, drinking water, livelihood and a legitimate roof.  A prerequisite for this right is responsible use of natural resources.  The laws should confer on the communities control over the natural resources of every village with commitment of sustainable use for energy, livelihood and shelter purposes.  Prime emphasis should be laid on watershed management for recharging the ground water, a crucial prerequisite for regenerating the rural economy and meeting drinking water needs. 

To sum up, the real issues before the Habitat II are: how do we restore the resource base of the countryside?  How do communities gain access to these resources?  And how will individuals within each community, particularly the women and the disadvantaged be taken special care of?  The group urges that the various initiatives for improving availability of shelter, infrastructure and livelihoods as also for social development including the empowerment of women taken so far may be intensified in the coming years.  Of paramound importance is to strive toward ‘bottom-up, decentralised, participatory, transparent and empowered democratic institutions at all levels of decision-making and governance to create sustainable human scale Habitats for the humankind. 

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