| Cover Story: URBAN CRISIS |
Towns bursting with growing population and limited resources
Samisoni Pareti
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Kiribati... has a population density of 127 people per kilometre. But in South Tarawa alone, you have 40,311 people living on 15.76 square kilometres Photo: Herve Damlamian
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Numbers are telling the story. Towns and cities of the Pacific are growing at breathtaking speed and if left unrestrained, the growth ‘bubble’ is going to burst sooner than later with catastrophic ramifications for the islands communities.
No where is this so obvious than in the larger islands of Melanesia, urban planners say.
Take Solomon Islands, for instance. The country has a population of 487,237 by 2006, according to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, of which 18% or 88,432 are said to be living in the urban centres.
Their urban growth rate of 4.3% outstrips the annual population growth by almost 2%. This means, says the SPC, population growth in Honiara, Ariki, Gizo and other towns in the Solomons will double in just a matter of 16 years.
So with an estimated urban population of a little over 88,000 in 2006, this is projected to rise to almost 180,000 in 2022 and over 350,000 by 2038.
Fiji’s urban population growth rate of 2.6% on the other hand appears modest when compared to the Solomon Islands’ 4.3% or Vanuatu’s 4.2%.
Yet SPC’s head of population and population division, Dr Gerald Haberkorn, estimates that should recent trends continue, Fiji’s urban population will peak at one million in 30 years time.
“Port Moresby’s experience during the 1990s and the recent civil unrest in the Solomon Islands, concentrating largely on Honiara and the surrounding areas on Guadalcanal, should serve as timely reminders of what could be in store should rural-urban migration persist at current levels,” warned Haberkorn in a paper he had presented to the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat on September 2006.
“Apart from the obvious social impacts on urban life and Pacific societies at large, particularly the overall well-being of Pacific islands people, persistent high urban population growth and overcrowding have serious implications on the provision of infrastructure, such as housing and roads, water supply and sanitation, the availability of services such as education and health, and the provision of employment.
Shanty towns: “It can have severe environmental consequences, leading to increase environmental degradation and contamination.”
Harberkorn, of course, had written his paper before the deadly November riots in Nuku’alofa last year and the Black Sands killings in Port Vila in March this year.
In fact another study done in February 2006 made the assertion that 80 to 90% of all new housing in the islands of the Pacific are built either informally or illegally.
Put another way, bulk of the new housing developments in the Pacific are squatter settlements or shanty towns.
This is true for Jittu Estate in the surburbs of Suva city as it is true for Black Sands in Port Vila and Betio in South Tarawa.
Nationwide, Kiribati, according to Harberkorn, has a population density of 127 people per kilometre. But in South Tarawa alone, you have 40,311 people living on 15.76 square kilometres of land, a density of 2558 per square kilometre.
Yet zoom in on Betio atoll alone of South Tarawa, a sandy islet of 1.2 square kilometres, the population density balloons to 10,400 per square kilometre. Implications on waste management and the health risks they posed were raised by Donovan Storey of Massey University in New Zealand.
“South Tarawa may have a reticulated sewerage system, but this is not available to a growing number of informal settlements and therefore has not solved the problems of open defaecation,” Storey wrote in a study he did recently for AusAID.
“Most sewage and solid waste continues to be disposed along the waterfront, and green belts and water catchments have been replaced with housing.
“In a recent survey, more than one-third of people in Kiribati identified the sea as an acceptable place to dispose waste, while 29% of Tarawa residents did not recognise that waste was a problem (only 5.4% of Suva’s and 7.6% of Apia’s residents felt the same).
“There is, as yet, no coordinated government/civil society response to environmental issues facing South Tarawa.”
If the situation in Betio is bad, then it must be worse in Ebeye atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Potential risks: When it comes to population density, Harberkon believes Ebeye not Betio is one of the most densely populated pieces of real estate on earth.
“With a resident population of 9449 in 1999, estimated at 10,250 in 2006 and living space confined to a land area of just 0.27 square kilometres, this translates into a population density of 38,000 per square kilometre,” Harberkon told a regional conference on urban management last April.
All these urban management experts have expressed the potential risks, health and otherwise posed by poor housing and overcrowding. Of disturbance too is the obvious link they see in squatters and poverty.
“Analysis of Vanuatu’s 1998 HIES (survey) indicated that while income poverty was more widespread in rural areas, levels of ‘extreme poverty’ were over-represented in urban areas,” observed Storey in his February 2006 report “Urbanisation in the Pacific.”
“Young couples aged in their twenties with children, female-headed households and those renting were particularly vulnerable, even though the majority of these households had at least one source of income.”
The squatter-poverty link has also been confirmed, Storey said, in numerous studies in Fiji.
He said one such study—jointly done by ESCAP and ECREA (Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy—discovered that:
• Approximately 80% of those living in informal settlements in Suva fall below the ‘poverty line’ (although this is an estimated figure);
• Average incomes in settlements were between F$90-F$100/week, even though at least one adult was working fulltime and most families had a second source of income;
• Urban poverty is increasing with migration and growth. In 1997, urban poverty was estimated at 27.6% of the population. In 2002, 29.3% of urban households fell below the poverty line and initial figures to be released in 2006 estimate that this may have increased to between 33-35%.
Not much work however has been done on poverty in squatter settlements in Kiribati, Storey wrote in his report.
There was an estimate, he said, that about half of Kiribati’s population live below the poverty line. But this has been simply a matter of conjecture.
“Of interest, is that families living in South Tarawa below the poverty line had a household average of 11.7 persons compared to families above the poverty line with 7.7 persons/household.
“This indicates a relationship between poor and overcrowded households,” said Storey.
For solutions, both Haberkorn and Storey promoted a good urbanisation policy and a multi-sectoral approach.
“It is absolutely essential that in line with the cross-cutting nature of urbanisation, a multi-sectoral approach is pursued that extends beyond a single-focus “engineering approach” of fixing roads, water, sanitation and waste management and bringing together key players from different agencies representing public and private sector, as well as civil society,” wrote Haberkorn.
“The key conceptual and operational focus needs to shift from urban management to managing urbanisation.”
The provision of income generation and better housing projects form Storey’s list of recommendations. A land system developed through consultation with all concerned is also proposed as well as pushing for a “community-based solid waste management” initiatives. Storey did issue a warning though.
“One of the challenges facing policymakers and donors is that outside blueprints are not readily transferable into Pacific towns.
Challenges: “Though development aid and policy is characterised by its division into sectors, management divided by managers into portfolios, and responsibilities divided by boundaries, these artificial divisions impede collective and coordinated decision-making, action and consensus.
“In the context of Pacific urban places, which have fluid urban/rural boundaries, multiple and contested forms of leadership, power and responsibility and limited alternatives (for example land and land tenure) these divisions are unhelpful.
“Consequently, Pacific urban areas are unique places requiring innovative approaches and visionary policies.
“There are neither the resources nor the capacity to simply copy the strategies of larger states. Pacific towns and cities pose real and special challenges to academics, governments and donors.
“Without action the region’s cities will almost inevitably be characterised by slums, endemic poverty and environmental degradation.”
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