Sunday 11 October 2015

Habitat III - UN conference on housing and sustainable urban development

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Source: The Indian Express

About Habitat III

  • The UN General Assembly convenes it
  • 1st meeting
    • Vancouver 1976
    • Urban Population 40%
  • 2nd meeting
    • Istanbul 1996
    • Urban Population 45%
  • 3rd meeting
    • Quito, Ecuador 2016 
    • 54 per cent

India's Focus

  • Inclusiveness, efficiency, sustainability and empowering the local governments.
  • SDG Goal 11: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.
Problems

  •  India still doesn’t have a comprehensive national urban and habitat policy and this is happening because Urban development has always been a state subject and states have never bothered to define a vision. 
    • What has centre done so far?
      • Earlier - National Urban Renewal Mission and Rajiv Awas Yojana
      • Now - five recently-launched missions of 
        • Smart Cities, 
        • AMRUT, 
        • HRIDAY 
        • Swachh Bharat
        • Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. 
  • Financial
    • Despite the 74th amendment, enacted in 1993, that delegated greater powers to urban local bodies, the scrapping of revenue sources such as octroi has greatly reduced the capacity of municipal bodies when it comes to self-funding. 
    • Moreover, the essential nature of the services provided by ULBs, such as water supply and sanitation, makes it difficult to tap those for revenue sources. With the depleting powers of the urban local bodies in terms of revenue share, the final focus area of ’empowering local governments’ assumes greater urgency




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