Ministerial - Panel 3: Housing for Environmentally Sustainable and Resilient Urban Development (WUF13)

Can you just grab your seats? We're now going to have the keynote speaker to do the third panel on housing for environmentally sustainable and resilient urban development.
Thank you if you are leaving.
Could you please do that quietly and quickly.
I will now introduce Mr.
Edgar Peters, Director of African Center for Cities.
Thank you.
Thank you, moderator and as the audience starts to quiet him down, just to say what a pleasure it is to be here, Madam Moderator and ministers that will be on the last ministerial panel this afternoon, all protocol observed, and I look forward to engaging with you this afternoon about our important theme.
The focus of this session is really to take stock of where we are collectively as an urban community in connecting the housing and the climate question.
Now, since the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, the sustainable development goals that were also defined within the same year, and of course, the New Urban Agenda developed and defined the following year, we've been in this really important political and policy process over the last, what is it now almost a decade.
And essentially at the heart of this process has been an attempt to achieve a certain degree of confluence between conversations at the national and the global scale and how that might perhaps land at what many of us would consider the most important scale, which is cities and urban areas.
And at the heart of this confluence is a very unique and very special political mechanism.
It's called national Determined contributions.
This is, of course, the mechanism that is trying to help member states but increasingly also the key drivers within national systems to define the exact trajectory of decarbonizing our economy to achieve the 2050 goal of net zero.
The truth of the matter that we have to confront this afternoon is the fact that we've made very little progress in the right direction.
When we look at it from the perspective of our cities where the majority of urban dwellers will make their fortunes and their futures, we've seen even less progress.
I'll just give you one data point to illustrate this fact.
That is the reality that less than 1% of the total flows of climate finance actually lands within cities on the basis of the priorities determined by cities themselves.
This is clearly untenable.
It is a political crisis, and we need a different kind of leadership to begin to call this out, but also put in place alternative mechanisms.
The provocation I want to leave with you this afternoon is that, yes, we've seen nationally determined contributions defined has become a very powerful tool.
We've seen an iteration on that, particularly in Indonesia, Brazil, India, which is, of course, just transitions to anchor these processes so that we're not just looking at the decarbonization question, but we're specifically looking at the social justice dimension of decarboniizing our economies and our industrial systems.
Within that context, when we keep in mind that in Africa and in large swatthes of Southeast Asia, we will have to build future cities for another two to 3 billion people.
It is crystal clear that we have to figure out how to get cities more centrally involved in this conversation.
But in that process, it is so important to underscore that the climate question, the decarbonization question is fundamentally an inclusive development question and fundamentally an inclusive growth question.
I think that there are a couple of ways in which we can think about this and think through what the articulation between national plans, national country platforms, and what I call urban portfolios might be that should be docking into these national country platforms.
There's at least five dimensions to this.
The first is our urban transitions, the provision of infrastructure of adequate housing, of a dignified life for the majority of urban dwellers across the world.
That process has to be energized.
We now know, of course, that renewable energy delivers a much more competitive and effective price point to ensure that that transition unfolds.
But how that is done has to recognize that distributed systems that are anchored in urban and regional economies is going to be fundamental to both infrastructure design, technological choice, but also the financing frameworks that will underpin these processes and keep that in mind in relation to scale.
The second piece is industrial policy.
As we've heard in the previous panel, industrial policy with regard to construction value chains, both in the formal and the informal sectors is going to be absolutely vital to ensure a decarbonized or low carbon performing urban environment.
There's a lot to be said about that and if I have time, I'll come back to that very briefly in relation to some empirical work that I've been doing.
Third piece, of course, is our mobility policies.
Here they are two kinds of efficiencies we've got to pursue.
One is energy efficiency.
The second is economic efficiencies.
We know that when we bring those two imperatives together through as habitats work on densification and design and transit oriented development has told us for the last 20 years, at least, we can achieve a fundamentally different quality of life and a form of economic inclusion that is frankly not the case in most of our urban contexts around the world.
But think of it in this way.
It is also the mechanism within which we can incorporate large swathes of the informal economy because in cities of the global South, we know that mobility needs are met through informal economic systems.
If we think of the motatos of East Africa, we think of the minibus taxes in Southern Africa or the border borders that transverse most global South geographies, what would an EV revolution look like, both in terms of economic empowerment, but also thinking of new value chains to support those systems.
None of these innovations, which are fundamentally industrial, economic, is possible without embracing an open source digital transformation.
This is the last piece.
Of course, the devil is in the detail here because we know data centers are one of the greatest drains on energy at the moment and is thwarting the kind of development that human habitat and the global urban community has been talking about for a long time.
How do we square that circle? That's up for grabs at the moment because cities are not at the table.
They're not part of the conversation of how are we going to regulate AI and how are we going to regulate these industries, in particular, how are we going to sequence investment in data centers? It means we are not squaring the circle with urban imperatives.
Now, at the bottom of this is, of course, an issue that maybe doesn't come up often enough in fora like the World Urban Forum and various UN driven forums.
This is the question of political economy.
It is the need for us to acknowledge and to confront that there is a profoundly asymmetric dynamic to power relations in how resource allocation priorities are set, our financing are stacked, what the democratic oversight mechanisms are, and how we assess the performance of these.
We often gloss over these dynamics, but my contention today would be that the moment calls for a different kind of urban leadership that can put cities at the center of the decarbonization debate, not because it is the politically correct thing to do, but it is the only way we're going to ensure the survival of the species and that we are going to figure out what it means to develop within planetary boundaries.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
That was great to have you and give our keynote speaker, Mr.
Edgar Peters.
Thank you.
I'm now going to call up the third round of panelists to come onto the stage.
The first one is Madame Retin Amasodi UN Special Envoy for Water.
Please come to the stage.
Thank you.
Next is Her Excellency, miss Sophie La Gutz, ambassador of France to Azerbijan.
Welcome.
Next is His Excellency, Mr.
Hamad NK Barr, Minister of Land, Regional Government and Religious Affairs, Gambia.
Welcome to the stage.
Next is His Excellency, Mr.
Ampoza Manoa Tehulu, Minister of Public Works, Infrastructure Development and Water Tevalu.
Welcome to the stage.
Hello.
Next is His Excellency, miss Klein Kroll, Minister of Housing, Guyana, welcome.
And last but not least, His Ecellcy Mr.
Tomash Taba, Minister of Environment of the Slavic Republic.
Welcome.
My shoes my shoes is very wet.
That's okay.
So you're taking them off.
Thank you all for joining me on the stage today.
We are definitely intrigued to hear what you all have to say, but just to make it very clear, we are very short on time, so if we can limit to 5 minutes, that'd be great.
If I send you this direction in my eyes, I go like this, means wrap up very politely.
Well, I'm going to ask the first question to Madame Reno Masudi in relation to my first question.
That is, how do you see the connection between the issue of water and the issue of housing environmentally sustainable and resilient urban development? Right.
Well, thank you very much, Nadia.
Is that possible if I stand up? Of course.
I'm sorry because I stand on barefoot because my shoes is very wet.
I stand on barefoot.
Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, thank you very much for having me and thank you for including water.
On the discussion of this session today because we all know that water is the invisible foundation for a sustainable and resilient urban development.
At the same time, we remain seeing that most of the time water is overlooked in urban planning.
Let me start talking about a resilient city.
What is resilient city? Sometimes resilienity is only measured by number of homes that b.
But actually resilient city also have to consider the safe drinking water, sanitation, drainage, protection from climate resilience related risks.
We all know colleagues that today more than 55% of global population lives in cities.
And by 2050, then the number will rise nearly 70%.
We all know the data that more than 2.2 billion people are still king of safe drinking water and around 3.5 billion people lack of minute sanitation.
If we look at those living on the urban Then the number of leaking safely managed drinking water increased by over 50% since the year 2000 and millions lives in informal and unplanned settlement without adequate water and sanitation.
The gaps here is not only water challenges, but it is also housing and human dignity challenges.
We are talking also about climate change that further intensifying the pressure on cities.
Flat, drought, water pollution increasingly threaten urban settlement, especially informal and low income communities.
On the socioeconomic aspect, water responsive policies and urban agenda are key in ensuring public health, inclusive empowerment of policies and economic development.
I would like to pick up just one data that global economy could lose up to 18% of its GDP by 2050 and with majorities of its loss is in urban areas.
The question here is, what should we do? What should we do? The answer is very obvious.
Housing policy can no longer be designed separately from water policy.
I have three priorities to be proposed.
Number one, these priority are very essential.
Number one, we must better align housing, water, and climate policy at all levels.
Number two, we need greater investment in resilient urban infrastructure and basic surfaces, especially water and sanitation.
And third, we must strengthen partnership across governments, cities, utilities, development banks, communities, and private sector.
So colleagues, let me conclude with a simple message.
There is no sustainable housing without water.
And no resilient water system without inclusive urban development.
If we continue to plan them separately, we will fill both.
If we integrate them, we unlock one of the most powerful pathway to climate resilient, sustainable development, and social equity.
Thank you very much.
Back to you, Dada.
Thank you.
That was great and with no shoes, commendable.
Thank you.
Okay.
The next question goes to Her Excellency, miss Sophie La Goutes.
The question is, what policy approaches or governance arrangements have proven most effective in aligning housing systems with climate and sustainability objectives while addressing affordability and inclusion? X.
Thank you very much.
In Frank, we are implementing for numerous years now, a inclusive housing policy that aims to articulate the objectives of social mixed and sustainable development with the objective of allowing everyone to have access to an adequate and affordable home.
We devote each year between 1.5 and 2% of our GDP and we have just launched a housing plan that was to create a shock in the terms of offer by building two millions of new halogens until 2030.
There's lots that still remains to be done to adapt our governance to a decentralization, a growing decentralization, better integrate the groups and the neighborhoods that are the most disenfranchised, but also meet the new needs and by creation a new offer of housing without contributing, of course, to soil artificialization, and the major a challenge adapting existing housing to the climate challenges.
We have some efficient policies that have been implemented, which I wanted to underline.
The first one being, of course, the development of a social renting pool.
We have a 16% about of our main housing that are in private rental agreements.
They are financed by a robust system with long term credit plans over 80 years with bona fide rates, public subsidies, fiscal exemptions, and helps for employers on the building of these new social housing.
They're managed by non profit organizations that need to have managed more than 12,000 housings.
Some of these organizations manage more than 300,000 lodgings.
Their rates are far below market, their rents, and they are given in all transparency to the most modest households.
That is the main pillar, social housing is one of the main pillars of any housing policy.
It allows in the first stage to provide the households with a housing solution, even those who do not want or do not can access if they want to buying a property for young couples who are it also allows to work with professional operators that manage a significant number of housing.
These professional operators, they can ensure the building, the management, the rental, and particularly the sustainable maintenance of these buildings and housings.
It also allows to structure and ensure long term financing that will meet the needs of the financial institution and to provide the necessary ROI for the maintaining the quality of these housing.
Some other pillars I wanted to mention on the way in which we try to reconcile and articulate the social challenges and the environmental challenges the first one being the technical support to modest households so that they can renovate and adaptate the existing housing lodging to make them more sustainable, more climate resilient.
The thing to distinguishing the built environment from the real estate that allows to quickly renting on very long rental to the public organization.
The real estate on which they can build the housing allows to reduce the real estate cost and in extent so by the housing cost by investing in higher quality of housing and our environmental regulation in terms of building takes into account this lifecycle analysis that includes the carbon footprint of the building in order to ensure that we meet our Paris Agreement objectives.
All these programs and many others seem to us fairly adaptable, scalable and meet the needs to ally the social challenges, the environmental challenges, and the economical challenges, and we are at the disposition of the delegation that would like to discuss with us together these different pathways in order to bring together all the sustainable development objectives.
Now moving over to His Excellency, Mr.
Hamad and Kb Minister, I'm going to ask you the same question and I'll just repeat it.
What policy approaches or governance arrangements have proven most effective in aligning housing systems with climate and sustainability objectives while addressing affordability and inclusion? Thank you.
Let me appreciate you from our last encounter in Nairobi during the African Urban Forum.
I must say that it's a very important question, but I believe that we need to see as human beings, what we are doing.
Because if human hostility continue on nature and environment, lack of planning, governments have no systematic planning of cities and municipalities don't themselves plan in making sure that cities are built.
Then of course, the issue of having unsustainable cities and cities that are vulnerable to climate change and climate disaster becomes possible.
However, I think it is important that we understand today that affordable housing is not only a right but a necessity.
We've seen today, mostly in Africa, particularly in urban Africa.
Where broken marriages are subjecting to single parents to the trouble of even raising of their children in a decent house where to live.
I'm sure we all know that this is not unique to any specific country in Africa, generally, a growing middle class, where our single parents are finding it extremely difficult for them to be able to house their children and families whilst they are trying to educate the kids.
They are left alone to pay the house rent, pay the school fees, manage how to feed this.
It's becoming a necessity for governments to create this affordable housing.
Now, how do we go about this affordable housing? Government must explore the possibility of financing it without borrowing money.
I think that's why the Kenyan program looks extremely interesting.
Where the monies are raised, they are not raised 100% from private people.
The state raised the money by way of taxation, a levy, which have proven beyond any other program in Africa to be one of the most successful ones.
But I think we need to commend the Kenyan government and I think a lot of African countries need to learn what Kenya have done and the success that Kenya is inquiring.
I remember President Ruto last time when he said, In any successful housing program, the highest authority, that's the head of state must take the lead and demonstrate resilient willingness to be able to implement it.
I believe cities they are well planned, well run, well organized, and human nature Human nature must change to human behavior must change towards human nature and nature as itself an environment.
It's a confluence of issues that need to be managed, that need to be studied, that need to be analyzed, for us to be able to put in place the regulation, the legal framework in order all for municipalities, for central governments, for regional government to work on, for us to be able to move forward.
Then, of course, as I say, let me conclude because the rest I would allow others to ask question.
In the absence of a proper housing policy, in the absence of a proper land policy, it is almost impossible to have a sustainable housing development.
I think that should be the starting point for any government that wants to get involved in this matter.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Your Excellency.
That was very good to hone in on that and obviously to highlight Kenya's success and what that means for the continent of Africa.
I'm going to move on to asking the same question to His Excellency, Mr.
Aposa Manoa Hulu, in relation to that and I'll just repeat the question again.
What policy approaches or governance arrangements have proven most effective in aligning housing systems with climate and sustainability objectives while addressing affordability and inclusion? Thank you W Thank you, Moo.
I came from a very small line at Island, and I really appreciate the opportunity to have a voice.
I understand that we are totally in two different worlds.
Like we are like a land.
And climate change is our number one enemy.
So, Madam Chair Toro has made an approach.
The approach is that to build more lands, reclaim land.
Now, when we build these lands, infrastructure, water, people, they must all work together.
Without these people, there's no need for a resilient housing.
Madam audience, every day we are facing a threat from climate change.
The highest point that we have is meter from the seawater.
You see, Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen, it's not an easy task and there's nothing funny about it.
It's a threat and it's causing our human threat to our lives.
Not to mention our sovereignties.
So, yeah, despite the idea that we're trying to push for affordable housing, we need the proper financial assistance support in terms of land because without land, we cannot do anything further than housing.
Madam Chair, I think that's basically the picture that I'm trying to lay out to every one of us.
I was just listening back in the back row.
I felt really, really small.
And I don't think so that they have hope for a better tomorrow for my people.
So I want to raise in this platform and this opportunity to anyone who could feel could understand what is meant by human being then we need your system.
Thank you very much, audience, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much to His Ecellcy.
I just want to say you just sharing that with us and the audience just proves to show exactly how important this World Urban Forum is for housing, for people's lives, and for sustainability in the long run.
As you mentioned, climate change is a big thing, but you need land.
I just hope that that message really hits home to many more people to help and figure out how we can make sure that this challenge doesn't stay a challenge for much longer.
Now moving over to my next question and that is for His Excellency, Mr.
Thomas Taba, Minister of the environment of Slovak Republic, the same question I'm going to ask you what policy approaches or governance arrangements have proven most effective in aligning housing systems with climate and sustainability objectives while addressing affordability and inclusion.
Thank you so much.
Slovakia is a member country of the European Union, so we are using certain framework that is being lied in the EU.
But what is very important to say that we have to fight, of course, climate change.
We have to support all the households that they increase their level of sustainability in living.
But on the other side, we have to understand that increasing the standards, it means very often increase the prices of the new constructions and by pushing this agenda, we can create also a lot of problems on a social level and very many people cannot afford new housing, they may not allow any significant increasing of their living standards.
We have to balance very good to this mixture.
In Slovakia, we've got also very climate sensitive approach by housing.
Just only during the previous year we invested more than 400 million euro, mainly to renovations and modernization of the housing for people that are not affluent.
And this is a very good mean how to save the energy, how to decrease costs for people, and how to, let's say, increase the living standards and also to fight the climate change.
We've got very good examples and a lot of expertise in this sense, and we are very happy to share it because 27,000 houses have been reconstructed just only during previous year, and this is the way how we can tackle this problem.
The second important issue is we've got a state agency that provides loans to the people with lower interest rates and we want to support people to take this money.
For the renovation of their households and apartments.
What will bring also the saving of the energy and in this way to afford them a better quality of life.
In Slovakia, 60% of people approximately live in the houses and 40% in the apartments and our attitude is very clear that we may not rebuild every infrastructure that is on the market.
We can help people to rebuild it, but not everything can be done in a very short period of time, and In the European Union, we are talking now about implementing so called ETS two system.
It is something like bringing emissions and the prices for emissions to the cost of the living.
And we are trying to balance this approach because we really need to defend also poor people and fighting climate is not just only social policy that should be affordable for the rich.
And also on this forum, we would very support everyone to talk frankly because we always have to put on the balance what is manageable, what is not, what is too costly, what doesn't bring enough benefits, and to keep the social piece in the society extremely important.
And this is how we try to do it in Slovakia.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
His excellency, Mr.
Tomeshaba Finally, I'm going to open this question over to His Excellency, Mr.
Colin Karal on this topic and just to give your thoughts and insights into this as well.
Sure.
Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to join this session, be part of this panel.
First of all, I want to say that when you're talking about alignment and collaboration, whether from both national and local governments, to be able to have effective collaborations.
You have to be able to align yourselves and aligning in the sense of policy because the policies must align, and in achieving any objective will also bring bear on financing.
And so one has to also look at the planning.
Likewise, you can look at the implementation in terms of a wrong shear climatic and both from a climatic and urban development framework to ensure that all are on the same page.
And it's very important to When you're looking as a government and then when you have to implement at the local level, that both policies and the direction in both parties want to move in if they are not on the same page, then it will not have the effect that one would like.
I personally would like to narrow around six key areas probably we can see that governments can collaborate when you're working with the local governance and the local government structure.
One of such I would want to see is aligning your national climate goals along with the local plans.
Because national governments often look at targets, look at emissions, look at the policies, but it is a local governments that has to implement.
It's a local government that has to deal with the land use.
There's a local government that has to deal with approvals, it's a local government that has to deal with the actual infrastructure work that is happening on the ground.
And so the alignment ensures that development contributes to directly international and both global climatic commitments.
I want to also proffer the aspect of profit stable, both for providing a stable climatic and housing finance.
That is very important because financial coordinates allow cities to state and scale their resources that they may require, as well as to retrofit for their housing stock.
Similarly, you have to look at the building codes and the standards, strengthen them.
That's very important.
National governments on development, look at sustainability in general, but local government, again, has to be the one enforcing.
I want to also proffer sharing data, the technology and expertise is very important on both sides of the divide and likewise, empowering the local government to be able to maintain the national support and work collaboratively.
The final one I want to proffer is to promote nature based and resilient urban development.
But I want to quickly because I see the time is winding down.
I just want to quickly go to Guyana's scenario though, because we operate in what is called the for 2030, our low carbon development strategy, LCDS 2030.
But this is actually a revised program where we will be able to package our country and to be able to show we can utilize resources and at the same time protecting the environment and we have been able to earn from our LCDS and we have been able to earn on carbon credits, and we have been leading all of a small country, 83,000 square miles.
We have been leading in this direction.
And this is only a revised because our first one is in 2009.
But I also want to use an example of what we've been doing in terms of housing.
We have had adaptability in terms of ensuring that we're catering for the climate or climatic conditions.
We also have what is called hinterland or in the indigenous communities, utilizing the local materials that they may have for home construction, whether it's in the more in the forest will then utilize more of the wood.
In some of our cases in another part of our country, we have clay type materials, so we've been able to utilize that to build clay type houses.
Similarly, we have been able to devise a program that is called homestead houses targeting single women led households.
That is to be able to mesh between having a comfortable home as well as being able to utilize the natural resources.
I see you.
Yes.
We've here.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Your Excellency.
I just want to say, very quickly to thank all our panel guests today and thank you so much for being able to contribute exactly what's going on in your individual countries and what you feel is most important when it comes to housing resilience, human population, making sure that they get the sufficient housing, especially vulnerable groups as well, and water is very key to all of that, as well as climate change.
Thank you very much and thank you audience if we just want to give them a round of applause before we leave.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.