Sustainable Development Goals and Indian Cities

Inclusion, Diversity and Citizen Rights

Ashok Kumar, D.S. Meshram

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032332437
• eBook ISBN: 9781000532043
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Social Sciences

This book critically examines Sustainable Development Goals and cities in developing countries with special reference to climate change, inclusion, diversity, and citizen rights in India. It discusses global issues of sustainability and climate change in the context of rapid urbanisation and focuses on the role of equitable and just processes of urban development aimed at protecting social diversity, redeeming natural environments and, pursuing economic growth geared towards improving the quality of life.

The volume looks at the nature of opportunities and future challenges presented to cities and codifies ways to transcend these. It explores key themes such as mitigation of risks from heat island effects, devastating floods, and extreme weather events like droughts; improvement of air quality; compact development; reduction in urban sprawl and protection of agriculturally productive lands for long-term food security; growth of small and medium towns; protection of rural landscapes; access to basic services like water sanitation, primary education, and housing; protection of forest and green spaces for the conservation of biodiversity; renewable energy sources; enhancement of mobility through efficient public transit systems like metro systems or suburban rail; effective and equitable governance for the vulnerable; balanced regional development; inclusive human development; securing the right to the city; and climate risk and resilience. Based on new research and data presented by global experts on climate change and sustainability, this book advances multiple discourses of sustainable urbanisation by connecting social challenges such as democracy, equity, diversity, and inclusion to create an enabling environment for a better future for cities in the developing world.

Lucid and topical, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban planning, development studies, sociology, public policy and administration, political sociology, city studies, geography, architecture, and economics and also to professionals and NGOs.

1

INTRODUCTION

Sustainable Development Goals, New urban agenda, and climate change

Ashok Kumar

DOI: 10.4324/9781003248781-1

This book investigates complex and variegated relationships between the city and the ratified Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN), where SDG 11 specifically deals with the city and connects with various other SDGs. A critical analysis of SDGs is set against the backdrop of other important initiatives undertaken by the UN, beginning with the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972.¹ A companion volume entitled Future of Cities: Planning, Infrastructure and Development focuses on the multiple relationships between planning, infrastructure, and development. These two volumes are deeply interrelated. For example, climate change impacts cities, and in turn, cities greatly influence the climate in various ways. As we know, environmental pollution adversely impacts city residents. Simultaneously, the built environments and activities undertaken by city residents over time and space impact the environment. Another crucial point is that while urban infrastructure provision is a critical task ahead of us, the protection of that infrastructure from extreme climate change events is equally significant. From another perspective, we might argue that increasing wind velocities could increase hazard intensity when city residents, infrastructure, housing, and transport networks become highly vulnerable. The infrastructure vulnerabilities would certainly reduce people’s capabilities to be healthy and productive. Not only does the new urban infrastructure itself need to be protected, but we also need to build protective mechanisms within it.

Global scholars now argue that the impact of human activities on the climate has become so foundational that we have reached a new era called Anthropocene, a name denoting “the human-driven age of the planet”.² Admittedly, the reach of human influence on the natural world is highly significant, but it is not a one-way stream because human-built artefacts like cities have considerable influence on the natural systems of the planet. Equally important, however, are the impacts of the physical world on human creations through floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Thus, it could be argued that natural- and human-made disasters are inseparable and enfolded into each other.³

Increasingly, escaping human and natural world global challenges has become inevitable, and the world community has created global organisations to combat these challenges. However, these global efforts are not new. Since its inception in 1945, the UN has been engaged in “protecting peace and promoting welfare” worldwide.⁴ Providing humanitarian aid during disasters, assisting human health, and working for environmental protection are some of the prime ways the UN has attempted to protect global peace and human welfare. Debates about sustainability started in the early 1970s when the UN Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm in 1972. At this conference, the UN cautioned the nations about possible negative side effects of pursuing economic growth, echoing the sentiments published in The Limits to Growth, which was written by a group of global intellectuals called the Club of Rome. Based on a large-scale model, the Club of Rome forewarned that economic growth could not continue unabated and argued that if accelerated industrialisation, population growth, environmental pollutions, extreme poverty and hunger, and depletion of renewable resources continued, then within the next 100 years, humanity would reach the limits to growth and humanity would be irrecoverably devastated.⁵

As we know, these and other warnings were not heeded by the global community. The key messages of the Stockholm conference – that is, protection of the natural environment, intergenerational equity, fair sharing of global resources and wealth, and maintaining a sustainable level of population – were largely set aside by developed countries. Instead, most industrial countries were quick to adopt neoliberal models of economic growth in the wake of an economic slowdown that started in the mid-1970s. Nevertheless, the Stockholm conference made it clear that economic growth could not be sustained limitlessly and that we have to stop the depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation.

In 1987, after one and a half decades of the implementation of neoliberal economic policies in developed countries, the sustainability agenda received a critical boost through the UN-mandated Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Commission report. As in previous efforts, the UN strongly pledged to pursue economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In the Brundtland Commission report, cities were presented as part of the urban challenge. The Commission noted that cities in developing countries face several major challenges, describing, for example, that “Cities are filling with people, cars, and factories”. Moreover, it noted that economic development gaps and income inequalities are widening between industrial countries and developing nations, and that dominant industrial nations have already used up “much of the planet’s ecological capital”. Ultimately, the Commission found that “inequality is the planet’s main ‘environmental’ problem; it is also its main ‘development’ problem”.⁶

Thus, the Brundtland Commission report marked a radical departure from previous thinking in the UN as it directly blamed developed countries for damaging the planet’s natural systems. The Commission was worried about environmental depletion that was taking place alongside the marginalisation of a large percent of the global population. Another key message of the Brundtland Commission report lay in its presentation of the various aspects of sustainability – that is, environmental protection, economic growth without harming the environment, and social equity – as an integrated regime, where progress in one area could not be achieved without working on the other two.⁷

Following on the heels of the Brundtland Commission report, in 1992, the UN convened the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, also known as Earth Summit I. An outcome of the conference was Local Agenda 21, focused on “thinking globally and acting locally”. Here, social and intergenerational equity were echoed again. Indicators were developed to evaluate progress on sustainable development based on hard evidence, and Local Agenda 21 appeared as a detailed action plan based on the indicators. It was expected that governments world over could frame policies and programmes based on these indicators of sustainability. Yet the global implementation of Agenda 21 was partial at best. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development established in December 1992, as the reviewing agency, reported its findings at the UN General Assembly Special Session in New York in 1997. Often called Rio +5 or Earth Summit II, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development found “uneven progress, with some nations having established a conceptual framework for sustainable planning, while others were still defining problems”.⁸ Another major reason for the partial implementation of Agenda 21 was that developed countries did not fully honour their financial commitments made to developing countries.

In countries like India, the implementation of Agenda 21 was fragmentary because of limited capacity at the municipal level. For example, Pimpri Chinchwad in India, a municipality with a population of over 600,000, attempted to implement the agenda through a multi-stakeholder partnership mechanism. Expectedly, it was found daunting even to set up a stakeholder group. Further difficulties were encountered specifically because of the non-availability of “politically neutral leaders, complete absence of any database regarding community-based organizations, absence of environmental activists, and lack of interest from large industrial and business groups”.⁹ In India, acting locally was not possible immediately because, in 1992, urban local bodies were being restructured and reorganised through the 74th Amendment to the Constitution of India. Furthermore, India had just overcome a national financial crisis, and it had introduced structural changes to the economy in July 1991. Although the GDP growth rate began to increase, investing funds in cities would still take some time. It was only in 2005 that the Government of India launched a massive investment programme – Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) – for creating state-of-the-art infrastructure in cities along with public investment in housing for the poor.

Partial implementation of Agenda 21, inadequate funding by developed countries, and increasing concern with deteriorating environmental indicators led to the formation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved from 2000 to 2015. Represented in eight goals, the MDGs concentrated on selected aspects of human development, including the elimination of extreme poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality and empowerment of women, securing environmental sustainability, enhancing human health (reducing child mortality and improving maternal health), and attaining universal primary education. These eight goals and 21 targets were relevant only to developing countries, except for environmental sustainability. One of the strengths of the MDGs was their simplicity and the precision with which they concentrated on extreme poverty reduction, valorisation of diversity, and improvement in basic health and education, among other issues. So, the “success of the MDGs is related to their concise nature”.¹⁰ Besides, the “MDGs were particularly helpful in communicating a clear purpose of development aid to mobilize public support”.¹¹

The plan was to achieve all the MDGs through global collaborations between...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• List of figures Page
• List of tables Page
• List of contributors Page
• Acknowledgements Page
• 1 Introduction: Sustainable Development Goals, new urban agenda, and climate change
• Part I Sustainable development, climate risk and resilience
• Part II Rights, diversity, inclusivity, and quality
• Part III Housing and shelter
• Part IV Carers of Indian cities
• Part V Interconnections and interdependencies
• Index