Informal Settlements
This is a page on informal settlements, informal urbanism.
Seed content[edit]
Kenya[edit]
In addition to supporting the Great Innovation Challenge where UNDP provided close to $70,000 over last the 9 months, the Accelerator Lab has also initiated 3 other innovation challenges; 1) a Disability Inclusive Innovation Challenge, 2) a Creatives Innovation Challenge, and 3) a youth innovation challenge under GenU, where the Green Project Initiative – Kenya won, a social venture group from Mathare, that seeks to engage unemployed youth in providing their communities with clean, affordable, accessible, and reliable energy through the production of organic briquettes from existing waste in slums/informal settlements. The project will solve the high rate of unemployment among the youth, contribute to the fight against climate change by providing cheap renewable energy and help pioneer efficient management of waste which will contribute to cleaner environments.
Source: AccLab Blog
There are, however, positive signs of change from both the public and private sectors: in Kenya, the Ministry of ICT Innovation and Youth Affairs is leading the way on closing the digital divide, and telecoms giant Safaricom has introduced a pricing model for 4G phones for as low as 0.20 dollars a day. But it’s clear that more stakeholders must come on board to make the acquisition of smartphones easy and affordable and likewise, for internet penetration to increase to the level where Kenya can fully tap into the economic gains digital solutions can bring, the cost of data must be affordable to the average Kenyan. With 1GB of mobile data costing between USD $0.50-1.00 per day depending on the service provider, this is more than many Kenyans living below the international poverty line can likely afford. Other significant barriers such as limited and inconsistent electrical power in many areas of the country must also be addressed, as should the accessibility of digital devices and education to historically marginalized groups such as people living in informal settlements, people without access to education and people living with disabilities.
Source: AccLab Blog
Pacific-Fiji[edit]
The UNDP Pacific Accelerator Lab together with UN-Habitat is testing the adoption and uptake of hydroponic kits as farming methods to increase food security in informal settlements as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate resiliency.
Source: AccLab Blog
The increase of informal settlements [1] [2] and urban informality is a global phenomenon accompanying the growth of urban populations, with an estimated 25 percent of the world’s urban population living in informal settlements [3]. People living in informal settlements suffer spatial, social and economic exclusion from the benefits and opportunities that are available in the broader urban environment. Characterized by inadequate housing conditions, limited access to basic services, and high levels of poverty, informal communities are particularly vulnerable to the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19. Furthermore, many informal settlements are on the frontline in the battle against climate change as they are located in areas which are highly vulnerable to climate-related disasters, such as flooding and cyclones. Yet, these informal settlements are also warehouse of innovative ideas and concepts.
Source: AccLab Blog
This excerpt is also potentially relevant to: Informal Groups
For Fiji, informal settlements in cities such as Suva and Lautoka, and towns like Sigatoka and Nadi are witnessing a rapid growth in household [4] numbers. The Accelerator Lab Pacific partnered with UN-Habitat and carried out a solutions exploration tour of thirteen informal settlements in the central and western parts of Fiji (in Lami, Sigatoka, Nadi and Lautoka municipality) to identify food and income coping mechanisms/strategies implemented by locals living there [5] and if the AccLab could subsequently venture into testing the adoption and uptake of hydroponic kits as an additional farming method to increase food security.Upon entry to majority of these informal settlements, we were greeted by COVID-19 billboards, which have been painted and erected by the individual communities in collaboration with UN-Habitat under a COVID-19 emergency response project.
Source: AccLab Blog
Our solutions exploration tour in many of the informal settlements illustrates the creativity of empowered communities in the face of disturbances such as COVID-19. As we walked through and immersed ourselves with the informal communities, we were reminded that ultimately, a more practical and sustainable solution in informal settlements would be to empower households to develop their own ingenious concepts and ideas and shape them into realistic and quantifiable plans. As development practitioners, we need to provide the right tools such as voice and stake in development that can put communities on track to implementing their own solutions.
Source: AccLab Blog
This excerpt is also potentially relevant to: Informal Groups
Nonetheless, since after the solutions exploration, The UNDP Pacific Accelerator Lab team together with the UN-Habitat and the Ministry of Housing and Community Development in Fiji have embarked on testing the adoption and uptake of Deep Water Culture (DWC) hydroponic kits as an additional solution towards increasing food security for the at-risk and vulnerable households in the informal settlements, using a positive deviant hydroponic farmer [8], the learnings from it which will be produced later in another blog.Acknowledgements: Sara Vargues, Sunishma Singh, Kolora Qativi, Kamsin Raju, and Geeta Singh of UN-Habitat and Zainab Kakal.
Source: AccLab Blog
[2] Informal Settlement means a cluster, or area, of dwellings occupying state, freehold or customary (iTaukei) land with or without some type of informal consensual arrangement with the landowners and without any legal form of security of tenure. Standard definition of Informal Settlement used by the Fijian Ministry of Housing and Community Development.
Source: AccLab Blog
This excerpt is also potentially relevant to: Other
Tanzania[edit]
According to the city’s official records, Mwanza city generated 357 Tonnes of solid waste per day, of which 70% comprised organic waste. Despite relatively good collection system, it is faced with numerous challenges including shortage of sufficient transport facilities, low investment in collection system, lack of recycling systems, emerging electronic waste problem and absence of system-based approach for disaggregating solid waste into different components. Furthermore, there is minimal community awareness on good solid waste management practices also unwillingness of some users to pay service fee for refuse collection. Moreover, rapid population increase and urban concentration, financial and technological limitations, fast increasing informal settlements and illegal dumping of waste are among top challenges. At the time of writing the City Council had contracted four private companies (aggregators) and 5 community-based organisations dealing with waste collection.
Source: AccLab Blog
This excerpt is also potentially relevant to: Informal Waste Management
Zimbabwe[edit]
World Bank figures show that around one-third of Zimbabwe’s 16 million people live in urban areas, and that its urban population is growing by about 2 percent annually. As more and more Zimbabweans migrate into urban centres from rural areas, informal settlements have started to dot themselves around the country as urban spaces become more and more populated. Rural to urban migration, as we know places increased pressure on local government's ability to respond to the social service needs of urban populations. One of the biggest pressures on social services is the pressure of space. This has given a rise in informal settlements being built on wetlands, and slowly but surely wetlands are disappearing from Zimbabwe (1,115 wetlands in Zimbabwe) largely due to human actions. We are also seeing an increase of land barons taking advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown to invade wetlands, as security and surveillance is at its minimal.
Source: AccLab Blog