5. Urban poverty and the environment
Urbanisation can be beneficial to human health, but this depends on good environmental management. The most severe environmental health problems are closely interrelated and found predominantly in low-income homes and neighbourhoods. These include poor access to water, bad sanitation, contaminated food, uncollected waste, smoky kitchens and a range of insect vectors.
In urban areas the poor are engaged in urban agriculture, which has resulted in the destruction of green belts. Stream bank cultivation has contributed to the siltation of the urban drainage systems.
Most urban poor to very poor households use firewood for cooking. Illegal sales of firewood are increasing. The energy needs of peri-urban communities are of great relevance in resource use and management in the SADC region. As the number of people grows, so does the demand for energy. People invade forests, mainly near urban areas, to collect fuel wood to meet their energy needs. While the poor cannot easily afford the energy sources that are readily available to the middle and upper class, they often have no alternative but to log forested areas for fuel wood and charcoal. Malawi for example has a deforestation rate of about three percent annually although the use of the harvest is not entirely for firewood but also for curing tobacco.
Most of the urban poor live in unplanned squatter settlements on the periphery of urban centres, where their lack of illegal status and inadequate service provision make them extremely vulnerable. That vulnerability is made worse by insecure, low-wage employment. The vast majority of the urban poor work in the informal sector in a variety of activities, including petty-trading and casual labour. There has been an increase in the number of “street kids” who run away from poor homes to fend for themselves on the streets of major centres such as Lusaka (Zambia) and Harare (Zimbabwe).
Urban residents generally consume more renewable resources than rural people, placing heavy demands on the environment. Large concentrations of people also generate huge volumes of waste, resulting in pollution and health problems. Cholera and other water-borne diseases are often found in water contaminated with untreated human waste and sewage. In the SADC region more than 171,000 cases of dysentery were reported in 1994 for Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, with at least 600 lives lost.
Some of the challenges of urbanisation in the SADC region today include, among other things, proper urban planning, provision of safe drinking water, infrastructure, waste handling and other services. Many of these are often sacrificed due to unplanned settlements.
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