URBAN GATEWAYFor The International Urban Development Community

Phot

o: D

ader

ot

Barcelona wants to teach you about its “market city”

2

URBAN GATEWAY is an online community that helps cities and urban practitioners across the world unite to share knowledge and take action.

The Urban Gateway is the first web platform of its kind to leverage the energy and resources of the global urban development com-munity. It will allow UN-HABITAT and its external partners to network,exchange knowledge, discuss issues and share opportunities related to sustainable urbanization worldwide.

It responds to the needs of our partners - from governments and local authorities, to researchers, civil society organizations and the private sector - to establish a central hub of practical knowledge on building sustainable towns and cities.

Users of the Gateway are able to find and contact other members, form common interest groups, offer and apply for opportunities, share experiences and get the latest local and global news on urban issues in their language.

The Urban Gateway maintains the momentum, discussions and networks developed at the World Urban Forums, reinforces part-nerships and highlights the impact of World Urban Campaign.

We invite all partners to join the Gateway atwww.urbangateway.org

Welcome to the Urban Gateway

Phot

o: N

HD

-INFO

/Flic

kr

Follow us

Photo: Jonathan McIntosh

6

103

More cities will take up Rio’s approach to measuring andreducing emissions

Believe it or not, the earth is run-ning out of sand

2014 is a ‘devastating year’ for children, says UNICEF

8

4

It’s one of the oldest tricks in politics: Talk down expectations to the point that you can meet

them.

And it played out again in Berlin as 21 countries—including the United States—pledged nearly 9.5 billion dollars to the Green Climate Fund, a U.N. body tasked with helping develop-ing countries cope with climate change and transition to clean energy systems.

The total—which will cover a four-year period before new pledges are made—included three billion dollars from the United States, 1.5 dollars billion from Japan, and around one bil-lion dollars each from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

That’s a big step in the right di-rection. But put into context, 9.5 billion dollars quickly sounds less impressive.

Floods, droughts, sea level rises, heat waves, and other forms of extreme weather are likely to cost developing countries hundreds of billions of dollars every year. And it will take hundreds of billions more to ensure that they indus-trialise more cleanly than their counterparts did in North Ameri-ca, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Developed countries should foot a large part of that bill, since they bear the greatest responsibility

Developed nations are not doing enough for climate justice

Earlier this year, the G77—which is actually a grouping of 133 de-veloping countries—called for 15 dollars billion to be put into the Green Climate Fund. U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres set the bar lower at 10 billion dollars. The failure to even reach that figure is likely to put strain on negotiations for a new multilateral climate agreement that is expect-ed to be reached in December 2015.

But it’s not just the headline fig-ure that’s important. Plenty of devils are likely to be lurking in the details.

Delivering on the U.S. pledge requires budgetary approval from

Imag

e: L

ucA

leria

for causing climate change.

The politics of responsibility

Determining who pays for what is an integral part of achieving an international climate deal. And so far, pledges from rich countries have tracked far behind previous requests and recommendations.

Back in 2009, developed coun-tries signed the Copenhagen Accord, which committed them to move 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 to developing countries. A year later, the U.N. climate con-ference in Cancún called for the Green Climate Fund to be set up to channel a “significant share” of the money developing countries need to adapt to climate change.

5

a hostile Congress, although a payment schedule stretching over much of the next decade could make that more politically feasi-ble than it initially sounds.

More concerning are the condi-tions attached to the U.S. pledge, which include a threat that some of the money could be redirected to other funds—likely those run by the World Bank—if “the pace of progress” at the Green Climate Fund is inadequate. Given that the United States is advocating

rules on how the fund makes de-cisions that would tip the balance of power in favor of contributor countries, the threat is far from innocuous.

France will provide a significant proportion of its share as loans rather than grants, while the small print of the UK contribution is likely to reveal that part of its money comes as a “capital con-tribution,” which can only be paid out as loans.

including the United States—are pushing for a fund that would support transnational corpora-tions and their supply chains, helping them turn profits from investments in developing coun-tries.

Despite its green mandate, the Green Climate Fund may also support an array of “dirty energy” projects—including power gen-eration from fossil fuels, nuclear power, and destructive mega-dam projects. That’s the subject

ties, it could also serve as a vital lifeline for communities already facing the impacts of climate change.

An important milestone was passed with the billions pledged to the Green Climate Fund. But achieving a cleaner, more re-silient world will take billions more—along with a commitment to invest the money in projects that mitigate climate change rath-er than cause it.

Photo: The White House/Flickr

Those restrictions could limit the scope of activities that the fund can finance, since much of the vital support and infrastructure needed to support community resilience in the face of climate change is too unprofitable to sup-port loan repayments.

Future of the fund

Looming over these issues is the larger, unresolved question of what the fund will actually fi-nance. Some donor countries—

of an ongoing dispute on the fund’s 24-member board and a persistent complaint from a range of civil society organisations.

That battle is not yet lost.

Despite its shortcomings, the Green Climate Fund has great potential to support a global tran-sition to renewable energy, sus-tainable public transport systems, and energy efficiency. And with its goal of spending 50 percent of its funds on “adaptation” activi-

6

Rio de Janeiro is one of the world’s leading cities injecting sustainability into its plan-ning. In 2011, Mayor Eduardo Paes enacted

an ambitious climate change law, setting a goal to avoid 20% of its emissions by 2020, based on 2005 levels. There was only one problem: the city wasn’t sure just how much it was emitting, or where its emissions were coming from.

Rio officials tried taking inventory of its 2005 emis-sions, but there was no international standard for how to do this at the city level. The result was incomplete and inconsistent with how other cit-ies were calculating their own emissions. So with support from the World Resources Institute (WRI), Rio turned to an early draft of the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories (GPC). By using the standard, the city figured out that transport and waste were the big-

gest contributors to its overall emissions – at 39% and 19% respectively, and that targeting emissions reductions in these sectors would help meet its 20% target.

A new standard for measuring and managing city-level emissions

Today, WRI, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sus-tainability are launching the final version of the GPC, which was developed over three years, incor-porating implementation lessons from cities around the world, including Rio. It’s the first internationally accepted standard for measuring emissions at the city level, and empowers cities to accurately identi-fy where their emissions are coming from, set cred-ible and achievable reduction targets, and consist-ently track progress.

More cities will take up Rio’s approach to measuring and reducing emissions

Photo: Chensiyuan/wikimedia

7

We can’t win the fight against climate change without cities

When it comes to the battle against climate change, cities are at the frontlines. For one, they’re the largest source of the problem: roughly half the world’s population lives in urban areas, and cit-ies produce 70% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions globally. Already, emerging cities are catching up to developed cities in their emissions. The Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, for example, have per capita emissions similar to those of large European and North American cit-ies. And the environmental impact of urban areas is poised to grow – cities are expected to gain 1.4 bil-lion people in the next 20 years and attract trillions of dollars’ worth of investments.

Yet cities are also starting to take action. Rio is one of 35 cities that pilot-tested the GPC, and the number of cities currently using it has risen to more than 100. These cities represent about 1.1 giga-tons of greenhouse gas emissions and are home to more than 170 million people, comparable to Brazil’s entire emissions and population. Leverag-

ing the networks of C40, ICLEI, and the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, the number of cities using the GPC is expected to grow in the coming years.

These commitments amplify those of the Compact of Mayors initiative announced at September’s U.N. Climate Summit, which convenes city leaders to set ambitious emissions reductions goals and publicly disclose their performance using the GPC.

Getting back to Rio…

As for Rio, city leaders haven’t rested since deter-mining the source of the city’s emissions in 2011. Officials launched a climate action plan directly targeting its two main emissions sources. To curb emissions from transport and limit the increased reliance on private cars, the city is expanding its bus rapid transit (BRT) network to include three ad-ditional lines by 2016, bringing the total BRT net-work to 150 kilometers (93 miles). In combination with efforts to improve fuel efficiency and expand the use of biodiesel, these measures are expected to help meet the statewide goal of reducing emis-sions from transport 30% by 2020. The city has also overhauled its waste management system, including closing one of the world’s largest open-air landfills, the Jardim Gramacho. This act alone is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1,400 tons per year.

The city is making progress, but it still has work to do. Last year, in conjunction with a GPC pilot test, Rio completed its 2012 greenhouse gas inventory. The inventory indicates that the city has avoided 378,000 tons of emissions so far, falling short of its 2012 target of avoiding 929,000 tons. And despite Rio’s expanded use of public transport, car owner-ship is still on the rise, with 47% of Brazilians be-lieving that owning a car is vital.

Still, armed with an accurate inventory and com-parative assessment against its target, the city can now take more ambitious, focused actions to meet its long-term climate goals and set it on the right track for a low-carbon future. As national leaders in Lima debate how to address climate change, they can look to cities like Rio and tools like the GPC for ways to advance the conversation and take action.

8

According to a UNICEF statement released on December 8, an estimated 230 million children live in countries and areas affected by armed conflicts.

Over 15 million children have been affected by the armed conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, the State of Palestine, Syria and Ukraine. These conflicts have created a domestic and international refugee crisis with many forced to flee the areas of intense conflict.

According to UNICEF, In Syria, where more than 7.3 million children have been affected by the civil con-flict occurring there, it is estimated that over 1.7 million children have been displaced. Through septem-ber of 2014, the United Nations confirmed 35 attacks on Syrian schools, which killed 105 children and injured nearly 300.

Still many of these children are unable to escape the brutal reality that they must face everyday. Ac-cording to Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director, “Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds; they have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves. Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality.”

Children in areas of conflict continue to be subjected to these horrors, as warring factions target schools and healthcare facilities. Most notably, theabduction of 276 female, Nigerian students by the terrorist group Boko Haram earlier this year is one such example of how militant groups often target children.

Boko Haram’s violence toward children is not limited to the kidnapping of the girls in Chibok. There have been numerous attacks on schools, including a November 10 suicide bombing that targeted a boys’

2014 is a ‘devastating year’ for children, says UNICEF

Phot

o: A

dam

Jon

es/w

ikim

edia

9

school in Potiskum, in the Yobe state of Nigeria, killing 58. Boko Haram, which means “western edu-cation is sinful,” has often targeted children in this manner in its attempts to create a hardline Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

In many places children are actively targeted for recruitment by armed groups. In the Central African Republic, in addition to the 2.3 million children gen-erally affected by the civil conflict, it is estimated that up to 10,000 children were recruited by militant forces in 2014. More than 430 of these children were killed or maimed in 2014, three times more than were killed or maimed in 2013.

This displays a troubling trend that is all too real-- the face of the conflict is increasingly becoming the fresh-face of a young child. According to UN verified data, in South Sudan alone, approximately 12,000 children have been recruited by the various armed factions.

In addition to armed conflict, things like disease, drought and famine take a disproportionate toll on children. On their own theses issues can be ex-tremely devastating, but when combined with pro-tracted civil conflict, disease, drought and famine are even more catastrophic.

According to UNICEF, in South Sudan, an esti-mated 235,000 children under the age of five suffer from severe acute malnutrition. The Ebola outbreak

in West Africa, has left thousands of children or-phaned and an estimated 5 million out of school. When coupled with the conflicts already occurring in these countries, the result has been “a devastat-ing year for millions of children.”

UNICEF has attempted to address these many emerging crises. In Syria and Iraq, UNICEF is working to ensure access to safe drinking water and is distributing medical supplies to those affect-ed by the conflict. In Sudan and the Central African Republic, UNICEF has been fighting to treat the rampant malnutrition among disadvantaged chil-dren, while working diligently to find safe spaces for them to attend school.

As Anthony Lake laments, “It is sadly ironic that in this, the 25th anniversary year of the Convention on the Rights of the Child when we have been able to celebrate so much progress for children globally, the rights of so many millions of other children have been so brutally violated… Violence and trauma do more than harm individual children – they under-mine the strength of societies. The world can and must do more to make 2015 a much better year for every child. For every child who grows up strong, safe, healthy and educated is a child who can go on to contribute to her own, her family’s, her com-munity’s, her nation’s and, indeed, to our common future.” If children are the future--we must do more to protect that future.

Phot

o: E

lizab

eth

Arr

ott/w

ikim

edia

10

British economist Milton Friedman once warned that if you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years

you’d have a shortage of sand. Whether govern-ments or free markets are to blame, it is possible to deplete abundant resources such as Irish rain.

Now thanks to global obsessions with concrete icons, fracking and poor resource management, even places such as Saudi Arabia are running out of sand.

Sand, it seems, is the epitome of abundance. There are an estimated seven quintillion grains of sand on earth.

That’s 7000000000000000000, count them! But as with oil and water and Helium, the second most abundant element in the universe, we are consum-ing sand with the false assumption that a very large number is the same as infinity.

Sand may be inexpensive compared to other natu-

ral resources but it is extremely useful, even crucial to certain parts of our modern life. Sand is used to make the glass and concrete used in dams and massive skyscraper construction projects in places such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia. It is also being used in 3D printed structures and other futuristic building designs.

The recent obsession with fracking has also caused a rapid rise in the consumption of this lim-ited resource.

In 2009 Green Prophet reported that the massive construction boom caused a shortage of the high quality desert sand used in construction.

So Bahrain and other Persian gulf countries be-gan to restrict the export of sand. Not long after this, sand was being imported to replenish eroded beaches in places such as Cesarea where man-made structures interfere with the normal inflow of sand from the sea.

Believe it or not, the earth is running out of sand

Phot

o: L

uca

Gal

uzzi

(ww

w.g

aluz

zi.it

)

11

Peak sand

And while some desert sands are excellent con-struction materials, these fine-grained sands tend to blow or erode too much to make for good beach sand. So Saudi Arabia has imported beach sand from as far away as Australia.

According to an article published in Der Spielgel, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that 40 billion tons of sand are consumed each year, 3/4ths of it in the production of con-crete– enough to encircle the earth with a wall 25 meters high.

Fracking requires yet another type of sand. Compa-nies which were previously focused on the relative-ly small market of sand for golf course have made hundreds of millions of dollars by strip mining plac-es such as the North American pine barrens where enormous flocks of passenger pigeons once lived.

This sand is then used in hydraulic fracturing

(fracking), a process where materials are pumped into the ground at high pressure in order to fracture rock and force the stubborn last few drops of oil out of geologic deposits.

Sand is also being used to increase and decrease the amount of territory belonging to certain coun-tries. Singapore has reportedly imported enough sand from Indonesia and Vietnam to increase its area by more than 20% over the past 50 years.

Hong Kong may be doing the same and China is pouring sand into South China Sea in order to cre-ate new territory in the disputed Spratly Islands. Poorer countries such as Cape Verde are smug-gling their sandy shorelines away to richer coun-tries in a practice that could complicate already difficult political situations in the Middle East.

So the next time you visit a sandy beach or desert, be sure to dump the sand out of your shoes before you go home.

Phot

o: S

umai

ra A

bdul

ali/w

ikim

edia

12

What can Barcelona teach other cities about public markets? Quite a lot.

The capital of Spain’s Catalonia region was planned so that every neighborhood has a bustling market — 43 in all, according to the Project for Public Spaces. It’s a relationship that’s mutually beneficial: The markets help revitalize sections of the city, which return the favor by maintaining and renovating the mar-kets.

Barcelona will have an opportunity to share its secrets when the 9th annual International Public Markets Conference is held there from March 25 to 28. Unlike other gatherings where attendees are sequestered inside convention halls, this conference encourages market tours. The event will be near La Boqueria, the city’s main emporium.

Barcelona’s markets specialize in everything from edibles to antiques and employ more than 7,500. Sev-eral are centenarians, Mayor Xavier Trias explains here. Project for Public Spaces is hosting the confer-ence in partnership with the Institut Municipal de Mercats de Barcelona, which operates the market sys-tem, and UN-Habitat.

Barcelona wants to teach you about its “market city”

Photo: Daderot/wikimedia

13

India could raise the average lifeexpectancy by reducing urban air pollution

There are signs that India is serious about confronting urban air pollution that by some estimates is more toxic than China’s notorious smog. Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the Uni-versity of Chicago, writes in the New York Times that there’s a “high chance” India will make seri-

ous pollution reduction commitments during global climate talks going on now in Lima, Peru.

India may be inspired by China, which has taken meaningful steps to reduce reliance on coal and other fossil fuels in response to a public backlash over filthy air. If India were to bring heavily polluting cities and regions into compliance with its own guidelines, life expectancy would rise an average 3.2 years for 660 million people, according to a study co-authored by Greenstone. The professor also is director of the the university’s Energy Policy Institute.

That makes the ongoing talks pivotal to the future of India’s cities. “If India follows China — and the countries make good on their pledges — it’s possible that history books will ultimately judge this moment as a turning point when the world first collectively took meaningful actions to confront climate change,” Greenstone writes.

Photo: © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar / CC-BY-SA-3.0

14

Ebola negatively affecting the fight against HIV/AIDS in Sierra Leone

The outbreak of the deadly Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone has dwarfed the campaign against HIV/AIDS, to the extent that patients

no longer go to hospitals and treatment centres out of fear of contracting the Ebola virus.

“It is a big challenge for us. HIV/AIDS patients now fear going to hospitals for treatment and our work-ers, who are also government health officials, are also afraid of contacting patients for fear of being infected,” Abubakar Koroma, Director of Communi-cations at the National AIDS Secretariat, told IPS.

Sierra Leone records one of the lowest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the West African region. For over five years, the country has managed to stabi-lise the figures at 1.5 percent, out of a population of 6 million, mainly because of massive countrywide awareness raising. The authorities also offer free medicines and treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS.

But all this may be reversed if the Ebola crisis is not contained soon.

Before the outbreak of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone in April, one key area of success in the fight against HIV/AIDS had been in curtailing mother-to-child transmission. Today, however, there are concerns that it may surge again because preg-nant women are now reluctant to go to hospitals for treatment.

In 2004, the prevalence rate among pregnant wom-en was 4.9 percent but, just before the Ebola in April this year, the figure had dropped to 3.2 per-cent.

According to Koroma, “between January and now, that service [for pregnant women] has dropped by 80 percent. We are worried that the Ebola crisis may worsen the situation.” From the point of view of those already living with HIV/AIDS, this is al-ready happening.

Photo: WHO/wikimedia

15

Idrissa Songo, Executive Director of the Network of HIV Positives in Sierra Leone (NETHIPS) ad-vocacy group, says that its members fear going to hospitals for care and treatment and that they are constrained by what he described as a cut in the support they were receiving from donors and humanitarian organisations before the outbreak of Ebola.

“Donors and other philanthropists have turned their attention away from the fight against HIV/AIDS,” he said. “Now it’s all about Ebola. Most organisations have diverted their funding to the fight against Ebo-la and this is badly affecting our activities.”

Songo added that the core activities of NETHIPS, which include community awareness raising and training of members in care and prevention, have all come to a standstill because of the govern-ment’s ban on all public gatherings following the Ebola outbreak.

Given the current crisis, the National Aids Secre-tariat and the Ministry of Health have set up tel-ephone hotlines to connect with people suffering from HIV/AIDS. The aim is to be able to trace and locate them and then get treatment to them. At the same time, HIV/AIDS patients are now receiving a quarterly supply of the drugs they need, compared

with the monthly dosage they were receiving before Ebola struck.

According to Songo, these measures are working because “that way, our members, who fear going to hospitals and treatment centres, can stay at home and take their medication. We know it is risky to go to treatment centres nowadays because of the pos-sibility of contracting Ebola, another killer disease,” Songo told IPS.

Notwithstanding the Ebola crisis, Ministry of Health officials say that they have not lost sight of the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Jonathan Abass Kamara, Public Relations Officer at the Ministry of Health, told IPS that attention is still focused on the fight against HIV/AIDS. “Even though Ebola has taken centre-stage, the Ministry is still very much focused on the fight against HIV/AIDS. We supply drugs to patients regularly and we try our best to give care and attention to them,” Kamara told IPS.

However, while Sierra Leone has made tremen-dous progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS and its success in this fight surpasses that of almost all countries in the West Africa region, it may well find it difficult to maintain its achievements in this sector if the Ebola epidemic is not brought under control.

Photo: UN Photo/Marlon Lopez

NB: Press Cutting ServiceThe Urban Gateway culls articles from daily press coverage from around the world. These

articles are posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and in no way

reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat

Photo: Dmitry A. Mottl/wikimedia