Web Chat - State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future

Worldwatch Live Online Discussion

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: State of the World 2007 Project Director

January 11, 2007 - 3:00pm EDT

In 2008, half of the Earth's population will live in urban areas, marking the first time in history that humans are an urban species. State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future, released on January 10, will explore the myriad ways urbanization is affecting our lives and the global environment--with a special focus on the ideas that can make our cities more environmentally sustainable, healthy places to live.

Join Project Director Molly O'Meara Sheehan for a Web chat Thursday, January 11, at 2pm EST to discuss the findings. Submit your questions now!

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Welcome to the first in a series of State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future online discussions. Our guest today is Worldwatch Senior Researcher and State of the World 2007 Project Director Molly O'Meara Sheehan. Welcome, Molly, could you give us a brief background on this year's focus for State of the World?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: Thanks, Steve. This year, we used the State of the World book to look at urbanization, as we'll soon reach the milestone where more than half of the World's population lives in urban areas.

England: Human activity is transforming nature on an ever greater scale, yet humankind seems unable to alter its behaviour. Any changes we do attempt are more than cancelled out by yet more economic growth. We are at the mercy of market forces, but these forces are not like the weather, they are human made, they are a type of society. How do you expect appeals to change behaviour within a market economy to have any real impact on mitigating the ecological crisis?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: Yes, I agree with you that we’ve been transforming the planet – diverting rivers, razing forests, and altering the climate. But I’m less convinced that humankind is unable to alter our behavior. The abolition of slavery is one dramatic improvement that comes to mind. Within the last century, women have gone from not being able to vote in the vast majority of the world’s countries, to becoming elected leaders of many nations.

To tackle global environmental challenges we’ll not only need to change our behavior, but our economies: taxing the industries that most harm the environment, subsidizing those that improve it, giving consumers additional information about the environmental impact of their purchases in the form of eco-labels for products that come from sustainably managed forests and fisheries, and paying special attention to the way we build and manage our urban areas, which will soon be home to half of humanity.

With more people concentrated in urban areas, we theoretically should be able to use resources more efficiently, and recycle materials with greater ease. Throughout history, cities have been hubs of innovation. And today we’re seeing some fascinating experiments in urban planning and urban design that hold promise for a much greener urban future. In the new Western Harbour development in Malmo, Sweden, for example, 100% of the district’s energy comes from locally-produced, renewable sources.

There’s increasing demand for better, cleaner energy options from within the world’s cities – and there’s tremendous room for shifting our economy in this direction. Governments worldwide subsidize the fossil fuel and nuclear industries to the tune of $300 billion each year – which is more than 4 times as much as has been spent renewable energies in the last 2 decades.

Addis Ababa Ethiopia: Having in mind that almost all urbanization process in developing world is the result of uncontrolled booming of population resulting rural urban migration. Were as the urban areas are not ready for that. Hence what does this mean especially for developing world?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: In numerical terms, our planet’s urban future belongs overwhelmingly to the “developing world.” Most of the total population growth in the coming decades is expected in the urban areas of Asia and Africa, which are set to become predominantly urban regions for the first time in history, and in Latin America, which at 77% urban has already gone through an urban transition.

Although, as you point out, migration from rural areas is one reason for the growth of cities – and in some places may indeed be the primary contributor – demographers looking at global population numbers estimate that the natural increase of the population that already exists within cities accounts for over half of urban population growth.

A look backwards at the history of urbanization suggests that this global shift from rural to urban offers many reasons to be optimistic. Over time, urbanization has brought higher levels of health, education, and income to countries in Europe and North America. The countries that rank highest in the Human Development Index are those that are most urbanized.

However, the scale of urbanization today -- the sheer numbers of people being added to cities – is unprecedented in history, making it more difficult for governments, some of which are plagued by corruption, to provide people with desperately needed services like water, sanitation, and trash collection.

Among the positive experiments that can we learn from: Federations of the urban poor in more than a dozen nations worldwide, united as Slum Dwellers International, have shown governments how they can be partners with the urban poor in constructing homes, building homes, and creating better cities for everyone. Contributors to State of the World 2007 from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), have helped to document this movement.

Alexandria, Egypt.: How can 50% of the earth population living in urban areas face the growing problem of solid wastes and bad air quality ?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: As I mentioned to the correspondent from England, cities have a great potential – often unmet – to turn more of their wastes into resources, through recycling and better urban design. Trash that goes into landfills can be used to generate biogas for cooking and heating, and to produce electricity. Today, landfill gas produces electricity in a number of U.S. cities, in Sao Paolo Brazil, and in Riga, Latvia.

There’s also an incredible potential for reducing air pollution by heating buildings, providing hot water, and producing electricity with renewable resources. In this year’s State of the World, researcher Xuemei Bai writes about the Chinese city of Rizhao, where today 99 percent of households use solar thermal to heat their water, and most street and traffic lights are powered by solar energy.  How did this come about? The city government decided to invest in the solar industry, helping to drive down the costs of solar water heaters to the level of electric water heaters. And the people who use the solar systems don’t have to pay month to month for the hot water they need. The city is now among the top 10 Chinese cities for good air quality.

Fumes from cars and motorbikes contribute a great deal to air pollution. Cleaner fuels can help, as can investments in public transportation. Contributors to this year’s report from the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy in Australia have documented the potential of public transportation to use less fuel, and thus help clean up the air. Urban car travel uses on average twice the fuel as bus travel, 3.7 times more than light rail, and 6.6 times more than urban electric train.

Bus rapid transit, using low-emissions buses, can come close to providing the effiency, speed and comfort of a subway system at a fraction of the cost. A contributor to this year’s report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy has described the spread of this type of system from Latin America to Asia, Europe, and North America.

Belo Horizonte, Brasil: Why every year we are talking about the crises of the world, the greenhouse effect and does not happen nothing to save it ?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: In this year’s report, we document many instances of cities taking the lead in addressing pressing global issues, from poverty to climate change. Here are three:

- In Timbuktu, Mali, tree planting and grass cultivation projects on the city’s outskirts have provided a healthier natural resource base that has led to increased income and reduced vulnerability to drought;

- In Loja, Ecuador, comprehensive land use planning and environmental policies limited land degradation, improved public health, and facilitated infrastructure management, while saving material and construction costs for municipal projects such as adding water lines to the poorest neighborhoods;

- In Melbourne, Australia, the city council has adopted important strategies to address carbon emissions, water consumption, and waste management.

Delhi,India: How does Country like India manage with large influx of ecological refugees from the interiors ousted by large and unsustainable developmental projects...note.. cities like Delhi is still fighting to manage the waste and resources to sustain ever-growing population.

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: Citizen pressure for better development projects seems to be having some effect in India. In last year’s State of the World report, Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment in India noted that there are 2 essential prerequisites for creating needed change: democracy and good governance, and new and inventive thinking.

Scottsdale, Arizona: Hi, How can development/growth become more sustainable without legislation? Development seems soley focused on revenue and profit and so is many local governments. Is the solution local, state, Federal and how should they be related?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: We can change some things about the way our economy operates by changing laws, so yes, legislation is important. Here in the United States, we’ve seen an increasing number of ballot initiatives supporting funds for public transportation – an example of how laws can be used to promote better development. The organization Smart Growth America has been working to show how changes can be made at all levels of development.

Bremen, Germany: I.r.o. "Strengthening Local Economies" - what is your perspective with regard to "Community Currencies"?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: I believe community currencies have been used successfully in some places, but I’m afraid I don’t know that much about the topic. The author of the chapter on local economies, Mark Roseland, also writes about the contribution of credit unions and microfinance to improving the economic health of communities.

Syracuse, NY: I understand that we need to look at our urban future. I am also very interested in the rural future that inevitably will support our urban centers. As you worked on the book, did you also encounter visions for what rural communities will look like and how their relationships to urban centers?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: Yes, you’re right that we’d like to see a future in which people in both rural and urban areas can live good lives. Several of the chapters discuss the close link between urban and rural. The chapter on urban agriculture, for instance, describes the value of having food produced locally in and near urban areas. Through community supported agriculture, urban dwellers can support nearby farmers. The chapter on local economies discusses the ways in which the buying decisions of people in urban areas affects rural economies.

Madison, Wisconsin: I know that in the US at least there is a trend of retirees moving back to the city, rather than to a cottage in the hinterlands. Is there any special role that older generations play in this urbanization movement?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: Yes, older people have much to contribute to our communities. Unfortunately, in the U.S., so many of our metropolitan areas are difficult to navigate without a car, making it hard for anyone without the ability to drive– whether it’s a 12-year old child or an 80-year old retiree with failing eye -- to get around and to fully participate in society. The nonprofit Partners for Livable Communities in the U.S. is one of several organizations that are trying to figure out solutions to this problem.

Jaipur (Rajasthan) India.: A major product of future urbanisation is going to be the growing social conflicts specially in Asian countries? The growing income gap between urban and rural people may unleash many conflicts besides poor availability of water, energy, growing pollution to effect the overall environment? How these issues are to be addressed?

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: You are right that urbanization presents challenges to nations like China and India that are undergoing massive population transitions. And I expect that governments and citizens will need to experiment with new ways to address problems of inequity and environmental degradation. In this year’s report, we look to the eco-development planned on an island near Shanghai as one such experiment. Our last chapter, by the founder of the Mega-Cities Project, describes some of the ways in which innovations in urban planning and design might be fostered. To quote again from Sunita Narain’s eloquent foreword to last year’s State of the World: “The South – India, China, and all its neighbors—has no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory.”  

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Thanks for joining us today, Molly, and thanks to all of our participants!

Molly O'Meara Sheehan: Thanks to all of you for your interest, and your thoughtful questions. Please stay tuned to this site, as several more contributors to the report will be hosting live discussions in the coming weeks, and will be able to delve into the some of the topics discussed today in more detail.