Water Management in Megacities

Cecilia Tortajada, Olli Varis, Asit Biswas, Jan Lundqvist

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415413633
• eBook ISBN: 9781317997313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Efficient and equitable water, wastewater and stormwater management for the megacities is becoming an increasingly complex task. The special issue will focus on water management in its totality for megacities, including their technical, social, economic, legal, institutional and environmental dimensions through a series of specially invited case studies from different megacities of the world.

At present, around one out of two of the earth's 6.3 billion people live in urban areas. Each year, the world population grows by around 80 millions. Practically all of this growth is urban, primarily due to migration. World's urban population is expected to reach 5 billion by 2030, which is nearly 2/3rd more than in 2000, and would mean that 60% of world's population will live in urban areas.

The case studies analysed include some of the most interesting and challenging megacities of this planet, Dhaka, Istanbul, Jakarta, Johannesburg, México City, Riyadh and São Paulo. They assess different aspects of how water is intermingled in the overall development milleau. The special issue will considers the magnitudes, nature and extent of the present and future challenges and how these could be meet in socially acceptable and cost-effective ways. The contributors are all acknowledged water experts from different parts of the world.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of Water Resource s Development.

Preface

ASIT K. BISWAS

 

Since around 1960, the speed, scale, scope and complexity of urban transformation processes of the developing world have become a formidable task to manage. It is now undoubtedly one of the most important challenges facing humankind. The urban population of the world never exceeded 7% until about 1800. The whole rural/urban dynamics was completely changed, especially in the developed word, by the Industrial Revolution. At present, nearly 75% of the inhabitants in the Western world live in urban areas.

With advances in medical and health services, and as life expectancies in the developing world started to increase during the post-1950 period, the urbanization process in developing countries accelerated and gained momentum. However, there is one fundamental difference between the urbanization processes witnessed by developed and developing countries. The urban growth rates in developed countries were gradual, and thus there was time to plan and manage this growth. The economies of these countries were also growing as they were undergoing urbanization. This ensured that financial resources were available to manage this incremental growth over a long period of time.

In contrast, the urban growth in developing countries has been very rapid. For example, the first megacity of the world, New York, had 150 years to plan and manage its urban population which increased by 8 million. In contrast, Mexico City witnessed doubling of the urban influx that New York had faced (16 million) but it had to manage this growth in only one-third of the time (50 years) New York had. Furthermore, Mexico City neither had the resources nor management capacity to manage this rapid urbanization.

With increasing globalization, acceleration of information and communication revolution and increasing chasms between the incomes and lifestyles of urban and rural population, the next two decades are likely to witness major transformations in the urban centres of the developing world, and perhaps some urban—rural conflicts over development priorities.

China is a good example of the urbanization problems the developing world may face. At present, 40% of Chinese workers are engaged in the agricultural sector but they account for only about 15% of the country's economic output. Unless the lifestyle of the rural Chinese can be improved significantly within about a decade or so, many Chinese from the rural areas are likely to migrate to urban areas looking for employment in the industrial and service sectors. In fact, the OECD has estimated that between 70 to 100 million rural workers are likely to migrate to urban areas between 2000 and 2010, looking for a better standard of living. If so, such massive rural—urban migration in about one decade in only one country will be unprecedented in human history.

Managing this rural exodus to urban areas in Asian countries like China and India, where urbanization has not been as advanced as in the Latin American region, will be a major challenge in the coming years. Provision of basic services like water, sanitation, education, health, housing, transportation, etc., will put accelerating pressure on the policy-makers to formulate and implement new and innovative policies which can ensure that poor people have a reasonably decent standard of living.

In order to objectively and comprehensively discuss water management problems of major urban centres of the developing world, the Third World Centre for Water Management, the Water Resources Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology and Stockholm International Water Institute organized a seminar in Stockholm. All the papers for this volume, except the one on Singapore, were specially commissioned from leading water experts from the selected regions. These papers were then discussed in depth during this Seminar, and the authors then revised their papers in the light of the comments received at Stockholm. The paper on Singapore is a much-expanded version of the one that was prepared for the 2006 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme. Together, all these contributions provide an overall picture of the current situations and future prospects for water management as a whole for major urban centres of the developing world.

I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the Water Resources Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology for providing intellectual and financial support to this activity, and to Stockholm International Water Institute for the technical and organization support that we received for the Seminar.

Dr Olli Varis of Helsinki University of Technology, Professor Jan Lundqvist on behalf of the Stockholm International Water Institute, and Dr Cecilia Tortajada from the Third World Centre for Water Management, were instrumental for the organization of the Seminar, and the subsequent editing of the papers. We are most grateful to these three internationally well-known water personalities for their support which made both the Seminar and this volume possible.

Water Management for Major Urban Centres

ASIT K. BISWAS

Introduction

From the dawn of human history, water has been an essential requirement for the survival of humans and ecosystems. Water has played a critical role in human development. For much of history, droughts and floods have periodically inflicted serious damage to society.

As the urban centres started to develop in a very serious manner, especially after the Industrial Revolution in the developed world, the provision of clean water and disposal of wastewater and stormwater became increasingly important issues. However, by the early part of the second half of the 20th century, these problems for much of the Western World had been solved. In addition, the Western economies had become stronger and more resilient than ever before, and thus floods and droughts had progressively less and less impact on such societies. When they occurred, they could either be controlled, or their adverse impacts could be reduced by the construction of the appropriate infrastructure and increasingly more efficient management practices.

However, the problems have mostly worsened for developing countries during the second half of the 20th century. Increasing population growth, rapid urbanization, inadequate levels of economic development and the absence of appropriate management and technical capacities meant that an increasing number of the urban population did not have access to basic services such as water, sanitation and stormwater management. At the global level, this issue received attention in 1976, during the United Nations Conference on Human Settlement, held in Vancouver, Canada. Subsequently, it was addressed firmly and directly by the United Nations Water Conference, held in Mar del Plata, in 1977. The Water Conference recommended that the period 1981–90 be declared as the International Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. The objective of the Decade was to provide clean water and sanitation to every person in the world by 1990.

A retrospective analysis indicates that the Decade had a major impact by putting water supply and sanitation higher up the international political agenda, in both developed and developing countries, than otherwise might have been the case. It also contributed to accelerated progress in terms of provision of clean water and sanitation to a large number of people, both in actual and percentage terms. However, in spite of this noteworthy progress, the goals for the Decade proved to be too ambitious to reach. In the end, the world fell far short of achieving its objectives.

The challenge was subsequently partially picked up by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one of which explicitly stipulated that, by 2015, the objective will be to “reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water”.

This MDG differs in three important aspects with reference to the Decade objectives. First, its objective is more modest: reducing by half the proportion of people who do not have access to a water supply compared to the universal coverage championed by the Decade. Second, the MDG, unlike the Decade goals, did not specifically refer to sanitation. This, of course, is somewhat surprising, since any water supply project introduces new water in the urban areas, nearly all of which subsequently becomes wastewater, which must be collected, treated and disposed of in an environmentally-sound manner. Provision of urban water supply, even if it becomes universal by 2015, will not be sustainable by itself, unless adequate arrangements can be made for wastewater collection, treatment and disposal. Third, the MDG has 50% more time to achieve its objective compared to the Decade: 15 years against a decade. However, current analyses indicate that even though one-third of the time period to achieve this MDG goal is over, pro rata progress has been much slower than necessary to achieve the final objective.

The sanitation issue was later considered and agreed to at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002. Accordingly, if the MDG goal for water supply and the Johannesburg recommendation on sanitation are to be achieved by 2015, accelerated progress has to be made during the next 10 years. Such an accelerated progress will require that the best practices in providing access to water supply and sanitation from different parts of the world be carefully analysed and assessed. These best cases could then be modified appropriately for possible application in other developing countries, in line with their social, economic, political, legal and institutional requirements. Regrettably, some 25 years after the Decade started, serious, comprehensive and objective evaluations of the best examples from different parts of the world are mostly still missing at present.

Urbanization and Water Management

Any discussion of urbanization should begin with a definition of what is ‘urban’. Unfortunately, there is no international agreement as to what is an urban area. It is almost universally agreed that any settlement having more than 20 000 people is urban. However, many countries consider areas of less than 20 000 people as urban as well. Thus, aggregating global statistics on urban areas and analysing them becomes problematical. For example, if the Indian government considered settlements of more than 5000 people to be urban, as some countries do, India will have a predominantly urban population.

Countries generally define ‘urban’ based on one or more criteria, which include population size, population density, social and economic factors such as percentage of people involved in non-agricultural activities, administrative or political status of the settlement or census designations. The UN World Urbanization Prospects, 1996 Revision, points out that 46% of the countries it considered defined urban on the basis of administrative criteria, 22% used population numbers and sometimes population densities, 17% used other criteria, 10% had no definition and 4% considered their countries as entirely urban or entirely rural.

Historically, human societies had a predominantly rural lifestyle. For example, in 1800, only about 3% of the global population lived in urban areas. This increased to 14% by 1900, when 12 cities had more than 1 million people. The urbanization process advanced dramatically during the next 50 years. Thus, by 1950, the world had become almost 30% urbanized, and the number of cities with more than 1 million inhabitants had increased to 83.

During the period 1950–2000, the growth rates of the urban population in almost all countries was higher than the rural population. However, the world is heterogeneous, and there were significant differences in growth rates in different urban centres. If the growth rates of the 524 urban centres that had more than 750 000 population in 2000 are considered, 41 of them had growth rates of less than 1% and six had negative growth rates during the period 1950–75. This trend of low levels of growth rates continued during 1975–2000, when 122 cities had growth rates of less than 1% per year, and 21 of them had witnessed negative growth rates. Most of these cities were in developed countries and China. This trend is expected to accelerate during 2000–15. Table 1 shows some of these trends.

General historical experience has been that as the population of a city increases, after a certain point its population growth rates start to decline. Accordingly, cities that tend to grow at higher rates generally have smaller populations. For example, during 2000–15, of all the major urban centres, only Dhaka and Lagos will have annual growth rates of around 4.0%. Eight other megacities will have growth rates of less than 1%.

However, there are exceptions. For example, the population of Mexico City was 2.9 million and that of Sao Paulo 2.5 million in 1950. Even with such large populations, their annual growth rates were 5.2% and 5.6% respectively. Consequently, their

Table 1. Population growth rates for cities with more than 750 000 inhabitants in 2000

Population growth rates	Number of cities
	1950–75	1975–2000	2000–15
More than 5%	28	3	0
More than 5%	130	51	6

Source: UN Population Division (2002).

Table 2. Population growth rates (%) of megacities in the sequence of their evolution, 1950–2015

City	Growth rate (%)
	1950–75	1975–2000	2000–15
New York	4.2	1.2	0.2
Tokyo	1.0	0.2	0.5
Shanghai	3.1	0.5	0.4
Mexico City	5.2	2.1	0.8
Sao Paulo	5.6	2.2	1.1
Mumbai	3.6	3.1	2.3
Los Angeles	3.2	1.6	0.6
Kolkata	2.3	2.0	1.7
Dhaka	6.6	7.0	4.0
Delhi	4.6	4.1	3.5
Buenos Aires	2.4	1.1	0.6
Jakarta	4.8	3.3	3.0
Osaka	3.5	0.4	0.0
Beijing	3.1	1.0	0.5
Rio de Janeiro	4.0	1.2	0.5
Karachi	5.4	3.7	3.2

Source: UN Population Division (2002).

population increased by a factor of four by 1975, making the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Preface
• 2 Water Management for Major Urban Centres
• 3 Megacities, Development and Water
• 4 Water Management in Singapore
• 5 Water Management in Istanbul
• 6 A Regulatory Approach to the Jakarta Water Supply Concession Contracts
• 7 Water Management in ArRiyadh
• 8 Water Management in Dhaka
• 9 Gold, Scorched Earth and Water: The Hydropolitics of Johannesburg
• 10 Water Management in Metropolitan São Paulo
• 11 Water Management in Mexico City Metropolitan Area
• 12 Megacities and Water Management
• Index