Global S&T Development Trend Analysis Platform of Resources and Environment
Tackling Inequality in Cities is Essential for Fighting COVID-19 | |
admin | |
2020-04-14 | |
发布年 | 2020 |
语种 | 英语 |
国家 | 美国 |
领域 | 气候变化 ; 资源环境 |
正文(英文) | The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruptive new normal for everyone through shelter-in-place orders and social distancing guidelines. But for the billions of urban poor, these guidelines aren’t just burdensome; they’re essentially impossible. Social distancing is a critically important response to the pandemic, but it also assumes that residents have adequate space, services and social safety nets to survive such an order. This is simply not the reality across cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. More than 1 billion people live in slums and informal settlements globally. As much as 50-80% of employment is informal in developing cities, from street vendors to minibus drivers to migrant workers. Many of these families are essentially surviving day-to-day, living in dense neighborhoods with unreliable and often shared access to basic services like water, sanitation and electricity. Many don’t have bank accounts, basic employment contracts or insurance. Their incomes and workplaces are not on any government agency’s radar. In short, they lack the resources to survive without defying lockdown orders. The shortcomings of recent social distancing orders are evident in cities like New Delhi, Bangkok, Lagos, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro, where millions of residents feel their lives have been upended with little protection or access to support. The helplessness is widespread as families prepare for the worst. Recognizing and addressing the stark reality of urban inequality is essential for addressing the current pandemic. It can also help cities build back better and more resilient to future crises. Dense housing in Surat, India. Photo by Lubaina Rangwala/WRI Urban Inequality, India and COVID-19Perhaps no situation is more dire than in India, where a national lockdown with little notice ordered 1.3 billion people to self-isolate for at least 40 days. With the current guidance — from washing hands frequently to staying put — it’s unclear how the country’s 460 million urban residents will cope. Between 152-216 million people in India live in dense informal housing, or slums. It is common to see lines of shacks for migrant workers crowded at a river’s edge and other hazard-prone areas. WRI’s World Resources Report documented how one slum in Bangalore is 12 times denser than the city average, housing 140,000 people per square kilometer. In 2018, only 60% of residents could access piped water — and even then, water was only available in taps for an average of two hours per day, two to three days a week. In another slum in Mumbai, we found more than 2,000 people lacked access to piped water. While more than 70% of residents queued up for water delivered by tanker trucks every few days, the amount of water these households could access was far below the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 50 liters per day in non-emergency situations. In these circumstances, where washing your hands might mean traveling to a shared tap or drawing from a scarce household supply, self-isolation is not just unfeasible; it may threaten day-to-day survival needs. The same challenges apply to informal workers. A recent survey in Bangalore — where over 70% of the workforce is informal — showed that while many low-income workers were afraid of contracting COVID-19, most felt compelled to continue working for fear of losing income, jobs and the ability to feed their families. Food insecurity is at an all-time high, and without support, residents are seeing only two choices: starvation or disease risk. A week of dropped wages could mean they will lose their housing. For some, their work is their place of shelter. Often “invisible” to governments and other urban residents in the best of times, what happens to informal workers like street vendors and domestic workers during the COVID-19 pandemic could affect whole cities — rich and poor folks alike — and beyond. In response to the Modi government’s lockdown order, millions of urban migrant and informal workers are fleeing by foot back to their home villages. This could accelerate the spread of infection across India, putting many rural areas with little health care in immediate danger. How to Reduce Urban Inequality and Close the Services GapIn the long term, large-scale investments in infrastructure for water, sanitation, housing and health care are needed around the world to provide growing populations with essential services. And to keep cities humming as economic, cultural and political dynamos, these investments need to specifically improve access for those residents currently being left behind. But there are short-term strategies to help cities respond now, too. Communities and the citizens that comprise them should be seen as active agents with knowledge, energy and power to shape their response now and in the future. These strategies can give the urban poor more feasible options for getting through this period and help reduce the spread of COVID-19 for everyone:
Responding Now Can Create More Resilient Cities in the FutureProviding targeted emergency assistance now can create better preparedness for the future. Establishing deeper and more trusted partnerships with communities can lead to more responsive policies, budget allocations and channels of communication. Establishing more comprehensive data infrastructure and identifying high-risk locations — such as those where water access is dangerously low — can reduce future public health risks and inform urban planning. In the 1990s, a plague outbreak in Surat, India, led to the creation of a citywide health monitoring cell in the municipal government that’s helping the city respond to COVID-19 today. Likewise, East Asian cities like Hong Kong and Singapore have been able to respond better to COVID-19 in part because of public health surveillance systems set up in response to the SARS outbreak from 2002-2003. Closing the urban services divide can help cities build back better and more equitably to better withstand the next crisis. Protecting and empowering the most vulnerable helps create more sustainable, thriving environments for everyone. |
URL | 查看原文 |
来源平台 | World Resources Institute |
文献类型 | 新闻 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/232741 |
专题 | 资源环境科学 气候变化 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | admin. Tackling Inequality in Cities is Essential for Fighting COVID-19. 2020. |
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