ONE UN - Remove the risk, not the people - Slum transformation as key to housing justice and climate resilience (WUF13)

Hello everybody.
Welcome.
If I can invite you to take a seat.
Remove the risk, not the people, a sentence that comes from Brazil, that we have our colleagues from the Secretary of Piphees that have inspired us with the slogan to put at the forefront of our conversation today, slum transformation is key to housing justice and climate resilience.
We feel that the nexus between a the transformation of informal settlements, climate adaptation, and evictions is a critical nexus that we need to address straight on because we are seeing the growing numbers of maladaptation happening in informal settlements leading to displacement and evictions, where Interventions are coming in the name of climate adaptation and compromising one of the key elements of the right to adequate housing, which is security of tenure.
With that in mind, we wanted to discuss with all of you what can we do about this particular topic.
This session has been convened by the informality Task Force.
My name is Alisandre Absen Freiani from the International Institute for Environment and Development, IID, which is a member of the informality Task Force.
ITF brings together a series of different organizations, different types of organizations being from the UN system, NGOs, government organizations as well, local governments networks like UCLG.
It's a really interinstitutional dialogue space which is facilitated by CDS Alliance, a very important place of articulation of relationships and strategies to advance the transformation of informal settlements.
This network has been at the core of developing the global action plan, accelerating transforming formal settmentsumps by 2030, something that an output that came through dialogue.
Through collaborations of those different stakeholders, which was critical to drive the UN Habitat resolution approved in the Last General Assembly around the transformation of informal settlements.
Our work here is critical to continue the discussion of the implementation of this resolution and what we can do in a way that advance the right to adequate housing.
So with that in mind, just to frame a bit this discussion, I'm going to ask my colleague, Paolo Ceviga to make a short presentation about some research that we have done around this intersection between informal settlement upgrading, climate adaptation, and forced evictions.
Paula.
Thank you, Alex.
Hi, everyone.
I know it's Thursday in a very long week, so I appreciate you all being here.
I won't repeat the background that Alex has provided, but this idea of how climate is being used as an excuse, climate adaptation, as an excuse for evictions was what motivated us to look a little bit at this, um, um, connection between forced evictions and climate change and really understand what is the role of forced evictions in contributing to climate adaptation or contributing, on the other hand, to exacerbating vulnerabilities and hindering climate efforts.
We started working on an action research agenda that tried to document a little bit the different factors that contribute to to this relationship.
Ultimately, the main conclusion is that forced evictions are not just a violation of human rights, but they actually represent a handbrake to efforts to contribute to addressing climate change, both from the emissions that they contribute through demolition and forced evictions, but also in the ways that they exacerbate vulnerabilities and risk of the communities that they displaced.
We looked at different ways of demonstrating this, and of course, when it comes to informal settlements, there's quite a wide gap in terms of data, Um, but even with the data that we were able to gather, we could find some of these clear linkages that can be used to demonstrate the harmful impacts of forced evictions on climate adaptation.
So one of the first messages that comes out of the research is that, emissions emissions from forced evictions are actually contribute don't, hinder the ability of local governments of cities and national governments to advance their carbon emissions reduction targets.
We looked at what were the emissions from forced evictions in informal settlements in Nigeria for the past 25 years and we calculated that those emissions were equivalent to what would take a forest the size of Paris 11 years to absorb.
It's quite a considerable quantity of emissions.
Also that upgrading and retrofitting of informal settlements can save up to 66% of CO two emissions compared to demolition and resettlement options.
I won't go into the details.
You can read the report and everything in there, but the way that we did it was understanding these different scenarios.
What happens? What could happen when there are forced evictions and people are relocated, when they stay there, or what would happen if we actually contribute to in situ upgrading.
This was also fed by a lot of the work that some partners like Bill Change are doing on retrofitting.
Um, the other important aspect of this is what happens to the communities.
Forced evictions increase people's exposure to risks, and what we did is that we examined six dimensions that are reflected in the IPCC's framework on the determinants, uh, of risks.
So vulnerability and exposure, and this ranges from environmental and physical dimensions to education, health, cultural, economic dimensions, and of course, intersectionality.
There are different ways in which the impact of evictions on these dimensions then hinders the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change.
I won't go into the six dimensions because we don't have time, but I will give an example.
For example, on the economic dimension, the impacts of forced evictions range from the loss of sources of income, whether because they lose the businesses that they were working in in those informal settlements or because they become further away from jobs, also the losses of the assets that they have invested in in the informal settlements that are then demolished and destroyed and the amount of investment that is required to them rebuilding their housing elsewhere or sometimes in the same informal settlement later.
This impacts their ability to adapt to climate change.
For example, with the loss of income, it makes it harder for them to expend whenever there's a climate shock, to have that amount of money and resources that is needed to react to climate shock.
So this is of some of the relationships that can be seen between forced evictions and communities ability to adapt to climate change.
This is cumulative because residents of informal settlements are often evicted multiple times and they face this threat continuously.
This is not just a one off occasion, but actually it is a vulnerability and risk that accumulates over time and compounds.
So What do we do with this? We have to understand that communities hold many of the answers to adapt to climate change, to retrofit and upgrade informal settlements, but they cannot bear the burden of it on their own.
This is why incorporating issues of the global action plan of informal settlements to bring in the different stakeholders is so important.
But also, it is important to note that protecting and supporting low carbon approaches to transforming informal settlements can help cities prevent maladaptation efforts and carbon intensive forms of urban development, whether it's through urban sprawl because of the displacement of the population or the use of those where people have been evicted for other types of carbon intensive constructions such as luxury or property development.
So what are some of the consequences for climate action and for bringing this agenda together that I hope we can pick up in the discussions.
First is that institute upgrading and retrofitting is a pathway that advances low carbon citywide objectives, and so we have to do a lot of work in incorporating elements of the gap into climate action policies.
And we already see some efforts to bridge these linkages together, for example, from habitat for humanities reports on the inclusion of housing in national adaptation plans and NDCs, and this linkage is critical.
But also, when we bring housing and climate conversations together, which is a positive thing, we also have to be aware of the risks.
Most recently, in Cp 30, one of the key outcomes of the climate conference in Blem in November was the agreement or the presentation of some indicators for the global goal on adaptation, where countries were discussing how to measure our impact, how to measure the impact of efforts on adaptation.
One of the indicators that was presented was actually a quantitative measure of relocation.
And so this is quite problematic because it might actually incentivize further displacements and further relocation.
So when we're having these conversations, we have to make sure that climate debates also incorporate housing rights into the conversation to ensure that we don't actually encourage maladaptation efforts.
With that, I'll leave it and looking forward to the discussion.
Thank you, Paula.
Thank you for this presentation.
Fantastic.
Can I invite the panelists now to come to the table, please? If you can join me so that I'm not too lonely up here.
That will be very nice.
We have a strong winds coming in, so it's maybe a bit warmer when you are here with me.
Are we missing a chair.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Great.
Okay.
Are we comfortable? It's okay.
Great.
We have a great panel today with us here and distinguished audience as well.
I think it's a great space for us to have a strategic conversation around this topic.
We have Samia Asimo Suleiman, general Coordinator for the Department of Risk Prevention and Mitigation of the Ministry of Cities in Brazil.
Thank you, Samia for being with us.
Sebastian's Herod, Senior Policy Officer.
German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation.
Thank you here.
We have Juan Carlos, CEO of Bill Change right there in our corner.
James Shell from Senior Director of Program Partnership Habitat for Humanity International, Sarah Uduo, Vice Chairperson of the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda, and Greg Monroe, Director of ST Alliance.
So thank you all for being here with us today.
I would like to start with a question to get us warmed up, which is Well, from your perspective, how does the conversation here at the Wan Forum outside this room, how does it relate to this thing that we have introduced here in this panel? How do you feel it connects the dialogue on the informal the transformation formal sement that we had in other sessions? Just give us some perspectives from your side.
I'm going to put James on the spot here.
I'd ask you to share with us how do you see some connections so far? Thanks, Alex.
Hi everyone.
James, it's good to be here and looking forward to our conversation, but I'll keep it brief.
I've got a few thoughts, but maybe one or two.
One, primarily You know, we often consider, you know, informal settlements as isolated isolated incidences.
And I think what came out of watching the panel yesterday and just broader conversations is it's like we know it is a global long term phenomenon, and we need to treat it as such and address it as such.
And I think, therefore, kind of institutionalizing our approaches to ethically address this reality is kind of what we're all calling for.
So that would be one.
And the other, and this has come up a few times, and I'll leave it at this two, is, you know, we often look at investments or upgrading of informal settlements as annexed and as an expenditure.
And it is, that's a reality.
However, it is absolutely an investment.
And one thing I want to call out here is so habitat for humanity had, um has a campaign we call Home equals, and that's mixing with research and what we call demonstration projects across various countries.
We did one piece of research, and what it identified was that at a macro level, if a country has a very large incidence of informal settlements, if we or if those informal settlements are formalized and upgraded, there can be an up to 10% impact on GDP.
And there's a whole data set underneath that, which I won't go into, but just that top level figure was so interesting, and I think that cuts across everything in this forum.
Thank you, James, for this.
Sama, what did you pick up so far that relates to this agenda? Hello, everyone.
Thank you for the invitation.
If I can start with the name of the panel, remove the risk, not the people.
It's not a slogan, but it is a mission because in Brazil, all the problems, the communities and risky areas, they don't receive the infrastructure or support, but they took from the risk.
They take the people and don't respect the right to be there because they build the place.
Of course, some risky areas, there are problems, but we are discussing how can the government can help them with the infrastructure, with education, with the infrastructure to be there in a safe situation.
I'm glad to have this name in the panel because we are discussing how can you connect the Urban agenda, the informal settlements, investments in adaptation and climate perspective? About the point that you asked us about yesterday, I was impressed with two participation from South Africa and Kenya.
They are from the national government, so it's connected with me.
I'm from Minister of Cities and they discuss two points I think can be shared here.
Don't use Islam upgrading.
But informal settlement improvement program.
I know the words matter, but you have to discuss how can you not eradicate favelas discourse and an action that we are still working on and how can you provide infrastructure and be better and urban in environmental situation for the people to be there in a good condition.
How can you do that? I don't know exactly name to use this, but I think it's important to discuss what you are trying to do in form of settlements in favelas.
We want to change everything or not? Because this is a kind of landscape too, it's identity.
How can you provide infrastructure but respect the density and the the people who lives there.
It's important to have the social participation in this process.
At the second point, they are discussing why we don't think the informal settlements can be opportunity for socio economic and environmental development.
How can you introduce this as investment, design the projects? I'm glad to share with you our program, Pipheaviiva.
It's urban integrate urbanization program, and we are discussing with the people what kind of infrastructure and actions we can do in the community is important, the social participation, but not only with the community, but the local government because you are national government.
How can you work with the local government together, which kind of projects they are and they can use in the same area? In the third level, it's important we have a connection inter ministerial committee.
Minister of City invest in infrastructure and urban infrastructure, but we have a Ministry of Environment, culture, and social education together because you can use all these programs and the resources to the same area.
We are trying to connect this perspective, not only urban infrastructure, but bring integrate policies for that.
I think this is a good point to discuss how can you open your mind and investments and discuss the development of this area in informal settlements that we are doing in Brazil.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sam.
I think the issue of the integration, I think we're going to be hearing that word quite a bit today, so thank you for bringing it.
Greg, what are you picking up? What are the things that you'd like to share with us? So this is my last woof.
I've been to many, many woofs and we're still discussing informal settlements, and it's changed.
The conversation has changed a bit.
It now includes heat, it now includes climates, but the informal settlements are still there.
And I would suggest at the next Wolf that we won't be present, that informal settlements, you could only discuss implementation, what you did, how you paid for it, and how the community was involved.
No situational analysis, no more discussing theoretics.
How did you do it? I mean, the session that I've just come from which is around the financing, there was one person from a development bank in the whole room, only one.
And we haven't cracked this nut about the financing, and so we speak about inclusion of communities and we talk about building materials for climate, but we've got to crack the finance nut.
So that's my suggestion for the next wolf.
I was impressed with the session yesterday.
I thought that was a really nice session.
The exercise was very good, making people stand up if they had pretending that you were someone from an informal settlement that showed you how big the issue is.
But I think we need to have practical limitations.
So you've just given an example from Brazil.
Maybe at the next wolf, you show exactly what you did and how you paid for it and how the community benefited.
Sarah, I really want to hear from you because you're in the front line of these issues on the ground.
STI has been also around many wolves.
How do you see the agenda being articulated, picked up in this space? Is it useful, not useful? We are talking a lot about scaling locally led processes.
Are you picking up any messages of hope or frustration? Share with us your thoughts.
Thank you.
He's already mentioned my name.
I am a member of slum dealers International, but based in Uganda and allow me appreciate Cities Alliance.
Cities Alliance has been part of SDI family for years, and our interventions, many of them have been supported by Cities Alliance.
The discussion here partly mentioned what I've just said.
I think it's time for us to come and deliver the tangible results because so many of these wolves, I think from the beginning, we have come and mentioned the same things.
Most of the events are talking about informality, informality, informality, inclusion, inclusion, housing for the wild housing.
These have been things we mentioned over and over and over and today's topic actually makes me very happy.
This is the exact message that SDI is passing all over.
Please do not remove people, remove the risk.
Because we are not dealing with people know the problem.
The problem is the informal settlements.
The problem is the slums and these are problems in our own cities, but we put a blind eye and we do not want to look at them.
So for me, the message passing around is very clear and has always been very clear.
We have heard about inclusive development, but when we come to Wolf, it ends in Wolf.
The next day you see a bulldozer clearing the whole settlement of the urban poor.
When are we going to implement what we discuss at Wolf? When are we going to implement the ideas? Because each and every time we have we declare the actions, time to act, time to act.
We are acting, we are acting, we are not really putting the actions in reality.
They're not tangible actions.
Let me add a voice to him and say, I think all the discussions are very clear responding to what we are discussing now.
But the question is, when do we implement? When are we seeing the results? Thank you.
Thank you, Sarah.
It's a very important, call for action.
I want to bring in Juan Caballero.
We often hear the excuse and there are limits to adaptation in a particular place.
We cannot upgrade this area because there's too much risk.
But actually, the experience of your change particularly draws on techniques, approaches that build resilience, that build resilience through upgrading, through housing.
Tell us Now let's start moving to more concreteness of what does look like? What are your experience, those mechanisms and opportunities to do resilience housing in informal settlement? How do we drive this locally led process? What are the opportunities to scale it up and some of the challenges you face? Could you share in your perspective some of those issues? Well, the good thing about physical risk is that it's scientific.
It's measurable and it's in many cases, mitigable and there's technical ways of reducing it and overcoming it.
The non physical risk is the one that's harder to tackle, the political and economic interests that drive these situations.
In terms of the possibility of upgrading existing neighborhoods, be them informal or not, be them at higher or lower risk, there are many, and our experience shows that it's economically feasible most of the time.
It makes a lot of sense from carbon savings and environmental approaches, but the most sense it makes is from a social one.
If we've worked in communities that are formally displaced communities or people who have settled informally or illegally in a place they've been there for two generations.
Slowly but surely, they have adapted to the place.
They have found ways to make a livelihood work in that place.
In many cases, like in Colombia, for instance, these families have paid three or four times for the land that they've been occupying, to illegal scammers and irregular groups and people like these until finally, they were able to regularize and secure tenure by paying yet a fifth time for that land.
But that has come with neighborhood improvement and services and the rest in places that were referred to as, that's the hill, that's the mountain, that's inhabitable.
Yes, sometimes you need to get out because if you are in the lava path of a volcano, you probably need to get out.
But, um, a blanket approach of saying we need to relocate this community is rarely from a technical standpoint, what needs to happen.
A lot of the risk can be reduced, but science and investment that we know that investment generates economic activity in every segment, not just at the lower or higher ends.
In terms of economic activity, I'd like to quote usually when we're talking to cement companies, One thing that I heard from one of them is from the cement company conglomerate is that this is just a fun fact.
In Colombia, 60% of the sales of cement happen at the neighborhood level for self produced construction.
This is people who used to be informal or who are informal upgrading their houses on their own.
That's 60%, that's their biggest one client.
It's not the bridges, it's not the big apartment buildings.
It's the informal sector.
In Mexico, that jumps up to about 75%.
Where I'm from in Honduras, it's about that too.
So that people have always built their own houses in the best way they could.
They're not waiting for the government, they're not waiting for the market to catch up.
The formal market in Latin America, at least, we've been trying to build new housing from the formal sector and market for the past 75 100 years.
With that, we have been able to supply to meet the demand in a formal economically legal way for about 30% of the population.
The rest has resolved the problem in the best way they could when they could do it.
To me, that's economic opportunity.
They're not waiting for anyone.
I mean, the formal sector, the Wolf and everybody else needs to catch up with them, not the other way around.
But just going back to the original question, I think I do see hope that the fact that we're having this conversation here maybe is a good indicator.
Many governments like Brazil and others in Latin America and Africa and other places have recognized this as their reality because they cannot escape from it.
Thank you, H.
I cannot help from also sharing that when we're looking at a bag of cement, bought an informal setment in free town, you know, it's 50% more expensive in informal settlement than anywhere else in the city.
Yeah, because the cement comes to the board, the informal settment and all the cost of bringing that in, it's absorbed by that household.
Sometimes you have to pay what the bag of cement costs at the hardware store for somebody to bring them on their back up to your house.
So this is poverty penalty, which we need to consider this injustice in the value chain of construction materials.
Anyway, don't get me started here.
It's a very juicy topic, but I want to come back to the point that we're talking about the decision making process and the importance of social participation in even defining risk defining adaptation strategies.
Because as you've just noted, there is a physical assessment, but there's also a lot of things that can come up through participation, through collective ways of trying to address that risk.
To some extent, it's also socially constructed that process.
Samia, could you tell us a little bit more about your experience from Brazil in terms of the kind of social participation that is recommended to identify the scale local solutions for climate adaptation and risk reduction in informal segments? Thank you, Alex.
If I did something for the other question.
We are discussing all this stuff, the periphery and Brazil is doing because we are under Lula's presidency.
Yes.
The other president takeoff Ministry of cities.
This was made by Lula in the first mandate and the second and what do we need? We need decision making, decision taking.
So Because of him, of course, he always said the poor people on the budget in the budget.
Because of him, we have the Minister of city and you have a national Secretary of peripheries working exactly informal settlement in Favelas.
We had a national secretary from Favela, from informal settlements, from social movement that and organize the secretary with this perspective of social participation.
He always says in a participative methodologies that everyone says we have to give voice for people, have space for people.
He says, No, the people has, have voice.
Have opinion, have knowledge, but we need to listen then.
This is the principle the main point of our discussing here.
We just not include the people in workshops and participations to organize this.
We use the spaces to discuss and take the local knowledge about what they are leaving, what they expect, and discuss with technical scientific perspective.
How can you improve some investments and projects there? We have a lot of experience like that is not only the methodology, but this perspective that you are building.
The people was not called to give us some data, their history, but we are discussing what they want and what we can do and what we can do together for the initiation for the investment.
An example I can share and we have different projects like community plan for risk reduction and climate adaptation.
We choose some communities in risky areas and discuss of then what the perception of the risk there, the problems, but the solution is true.
In this process, we decide and design a project and an intervention.
So The people is not giving information or discussing what can do they do in the same moment in the same project.
It's not only a point in the city.
It's public policy.
We use this data, use our resources from the national government together with entities, social movement, university.
We have arrangement like that, not only with local government, with the community, in this connection.
In the social participation process, we discuss what we can do.
Of course, all the social participation process becomes some intervention, have meaning for the people who lives in the place.
I think this is really important because we have a lot of strategies to social participation.
They are connected, share their knowledge, understand the process, but nothing keeps in the community.
I think this is the main point that you are changing.
This is not only a methodology.
This is the structure of our public policies.
Wow.
Exciting.
Very interesting in seeing how do we take that type of lesson and inspire other governments, other localities, other spaces to integrate that from such perspective.
I wanted to hear from Sebastian as well, what your views, what you're picking up? What is that is in your mind in relation to this agenda.
Yeah, thanks.
I think it very much depends on which panels or what you participate in this wolf because it's so big and such a lot of different panels.
I participate in a lot of discussions on infrastructure and b finance, and I think often I think there's another micro could it be this small echo? No.
I think a lot of this just referring to Greg and saying what the next wolf should frame this informality discussion about, I think the economic dimension is really important.
I think we have a a strong link now between the climate debate and the infrastructure debate when it comes to urban issues, which is great.
It's good to have.
This is what we need, and this is how understood the study here as well to see the relevance of insitu slum upgrading in comparison to forced eviction.
But I think the social dimension and especially the economic dimension is the one that is often left out of this debates and that just needs to be brought in.
My proposal for the next Wolf in this debate would really say the economic side of the economic potential and that's been addressed by others here beforehand of informal settlement and the urban poor needs to be addressed much further.
There's one example just from our ministry now that we are more confronted with proposals for planned satellite cities and ask any chance to support through our channels.
So we were looking at we ask our think tank s on just writing an internal paper on how all these different planned, huge city projects ended up, um.
What they found out that there's just a lot of empty space being produced, and that's because basically it lacks adequate housing and it lacks the basic integration of the existing, um, um, structure, urban structure, which often is informer settlements into these processes.
Um, and then what you end up with is a not functioning city because we often talk now about service delivery also for the informal settlement, but we don't talk too much about all the service delivery from the informal settlements for a city.
And a city doesn't work if you integrate the poorer population into the whole system because they are huge, like they provide the city with a lot of the service itself.
So I think that's part of this maybe turning the narrative to a more economic and potentially oriented discussion, which I think could be brought forward for the next Wolf.
Thanks.
Great.
I think we can send an email directly to the executive director straight after this with the agendas that we are conspiring here.
I think in light of this, I think one key element of many of the topics we are discussing here is partnership.
It's a partnership to gain power, to gain a collaboration, to be able to influence decision making partnership is at the core of it.
Sarah, I wanted to put you in the spot.
It's a bit out of the logic here, but I think I couldn't start talking about partnership without hearing your voice first.
Could you tell us more about what has partnership meant to organizations, federations, and other movements in trying to bring informal settlement upgrading to reality, to secure tenure, and to think about the transformation that we are discussing? All right.
Thank you very much.
Actually, just a small thing to the previous discussion you had the power of social participation and engagement to scale up local solutions is one of our key pillars in the work we do.
And like he stated, it's not just participating, it's just being part of, not just attending, but taking part in whatever is happening.
And I'll draw this from what we are doing and what I'm saying is going to respond exactly the question you've said.
And I'm going to relate a practical example.
We have implemented a number of projects in the Federation in Uganda that I mean in informal settlements, and one of its kind was supported by Cities Alliance in 2010.
This was transforming settlements of the urban poor in Uganda, one of its kind that never existed anywhere in our country.
In this project, it brought in a lot of partners who work together, bringing together their communities, and then bringing together the government, bringing together local government.
This was supposed to be implemented in five secondary cities which are now cities operating as cities.
It taught us a lot of things.
One, empowering communities to undertake their own projects.
That led to sustainability.
From 2010, it allowed us to mobilize ourselves to take a lead in implementation of this project, but also to engage and draw our own community led data, which was the pillar to understanding our challenges, but also work on them by prioritizing the most pinching one.
And this could not have happened unless there was partnership from a partner like cities Alliance and government as well as local communities.
So partnership is something that we can't do without because it brings strength where there is no strength because if we did not have cities Alliance, we wouldn't have successfully done this project.
Not only that, right now we are talking about housing, but the major component of housing in informal settlement is the issue of land, where we have been struggling a lot, One, to get a land title is a nightmare in that you need to have a lot of money to pay for a title.
But with partnership with UN inhabitant and the OT program, We have had to deliver over 5,000 land titles, which are customary occupants to over 5,000 families in informal settlements, which has never been there before.
The power in partnership helps the marginalized communities to deliver.
Again, through Cities Alliance with European Union, Uganda is supposed to deliver a big infrastructure project an express highway from Kampa to the eastern part of Uganda.
It was through our engagement that the government of Uganda could have access to the communities that are going to be affected.
These are huge slum settlements.
Government had tried and had failed.
But through engagement of these partners plus what communities felt needed to be done and engaging through development forums, which again, through the first project I mentioned, we were able to put in place.
That is the municipal development forums, settlement forums, and then countrywide forums.
We were able to settle down and agree on how best the project can be delivered.
Hence, accepting on key delivery was like assign land, do not evict because the project was going to evict the project affected persons before the road could pass.
But as we speak now, resettlement is going to happen, people are going to maintain their houses.
There's going to be a lot of development.
They're looking at livelihood component where markets are going to be built, and then social services like hospitals and schools and roads, infrastructure, water, and power lines is going to be developed.
That is the power of partnership that I'm speaking about.
Thank you.
Oh, I'm so glad I went off script.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it goes terribly wrong.
But, Sarah, thank you so much for this.
James, I want to take you to Freetown again.
Let's go to Freetown, a settlement called Cocoa Bay.
It's a settlement in the Safron.
Sea Tower is a city that is in front of a big hill on the back.
And the local government, the planning officer from Freetown when I started working there, he was very good guy, with good heart.
But he was telling me, there's no way we can upgrade.
We cannot mitigate the risk here.
This is just impossible.
If we do anything here, we're just going to put these people at risk.
Then you have local residents saying, No, we can adapt here.
Then we have some of the local planners, like the plans from the Seattle Leon Urban Research Centers who are saying, actually, the problem is not with the informal settlement.
The problem is up the hill, all the real estate development that is putting cement all across the mountain, the water hits the mountain and comes down with a huge strength and then putting the informal settlement at risk.
If we want to reduce risk there, we need to control the development uphill.
It has nothing to do with the informal settlement.
We have conflicting interests, conflicting rationalities, conflicting ideas of what is risk.
In the middle of all this, we are trying to build the type of partnership that Sarah is just Habitat for humanity is one of those organizations that have operated in complex situations like this.
Tell us a little bit.
How have you managed this type of complicated, complex partnerships? What strategies do you put in place? Tell us a bit about that.
How long do I have, Alex? No.
Well, I'm going to go a bit off script too.
I will share some things though as habitat for humanity as all of us, sometimes we've got it right, sometimes we've got it wrong.
I'm going to where we did get it wrong.
But allow me to share exactly as you said.
There's this interesting.
Yes, it's a technical challenge, but it's also just as much, if not more so, it's a governance and it's a partnership challenge.
You have how many different actor groups with different interests, different visions.
Communities seeking dignity, governments that are balancing fiscal pressures representing or responding to their constituency.
You have private sector, and civil society ourselves is one where we attempt often to facilitate and hold a space.
I'm going to mention one time in the last two decades, I won't mention the country where we got it wrong, where we were looking at an institute upgrading initiative along the banks of the river and we mobilized community, we mobilized resources, we engaged local authorities.
But what we got wrong or what didn't work is becoming acutely aware of the relationships between federal, state, and local governments and that they're also occasionally in conflict.
So we had started an initiative of upgrading with resources with local government engagement, a few months into the intervention, which one was attempting to bring in formal settlements residents along a continuum of tenure security and upgrading.
They were given a 72 hour eviction notice that were removed and bulldozers went in, and that was heartbreaking.
It's happened and it continues to happen.
So I'm going to pivot to an example from Brazil where habitat has worked, and a lesson that we'll take from here is the need to work at multiple levels simultaneously.
Mobilizing community, engaging very effectively with government and one thing as well, which the team in Brazil have done really well is engaging with the public narrative.
Our elected officials respond to us and the sentiment and often, that's something that can be overlooked.
Really intentionally engaging Well, really intentionally raising awareness within the larger constituency to say, Hey, these informal settlements, coming back to our sort of investment discussions earlier, they're absolute contributor to society.
We know that, but we often have to state that really clearly.
And so this was something that our colleagues in habitat Brazil have done really well.
The last thing I'll say with this, and I'll skip some other things is within this coalition approach that habitat Brazil have engaged with, it's called the Zero eviction campaign, and they brought together over 175 civil society organizations, under the premise of, of course, a single voice is relatively ineffective compared to a multitude of voices.
So they've done some great work there.
I have some other examples, but I'm going to pause, and I know we've got a lot to get through.
Thank you.
Yeah, I wish we could be.
Anyway, let's keep going because we have a few things.
Greg, do you want to give us some inputs here around partnerships? Because CDS Alliance is a partnership.
And you have that experience of bringing national governments, civil society, local governments, grassroots organization.
What has been the lessons learned here about partnership building from your experience in CDS Alliance? Thanks for that.
So if you ask me what is the one benefit of cities Alliance being here, it's precisely that, that we bring the multilaterals, the bilateral governments, organized local government, civil society, academia.
There is a space for the private sector, and we've never cracked that.
We also have around us, our calls are not members, but the stakeholders and the banks are there as well.
Again, this is also work that's difficult.
How do you de risk the investment that they can feed into the cities Alliance agenda? But I'm on dangerous territory when I say this and it does sound like a little bit of a two person support group here.
But if you took SDI and the habitat for humanities and you took the soil society and you took local government out of cities lives, we would have no value.
It's having the implementers and the people at the call face that I think adds a lot of value to the governments that sit around the table.
I'll tell you now that the SDR for example, SDR is not there just for window dressing.
The lessons that I have learned personally from working with SDR in the field have been phenomenal.
How do you actually work around with the different spheres or tiers of government and the private sector, they don't all want the same thing.
I'll use an example from Uganda, which was one of the big learning things that we did the program together with SDI, near Ginger and communities that live in extreme poverty and they have nothing, no water and electricity.
They've been there for decades.
We worked with SDI and we walked in with the expectation that the community wanted water and electricity.
The response was, if you want to put water and electricity here, then we don't want you here.
We don't want you.
And then when you start saying why, they said, Well, the moment you put water and electricity here, in two weeks, a big car is going to arrive and we'll be evicted because the value of the land will have gone up.
And what they really wanted and had wanted for 50 years was land tenure.
The together with SDR we said, Well, 50 years, why haven't local government done the land tenure? So then we go to local government.
And because the community had been there so long, People were buried on the land as well, it became ancestral land and the land was contiguous, I think is the right word.
I will walk through your property to get to your property, you want to get to my property, get tenure, you need road access to every plot.
The local government went too, too difficult, graves.
There was a second lesson, never underestimate the creativity, the determination to find solutions, and the sense of communalism amongst people living in informal settlements.
Because that community sat around the table together with SDI and they carved up little pieces of their land to make words.
In the end, we've got road access to all those plots.
These are lessons.
You don't learn these lessons when you do a master's in international development.
I love talking to young development professionals who are starting out.
The first thing I tell them it's like driving a car.
When you get your license, that's when you start to learn.
When you've done your degree in international development, you still know nothing.
If you want to learn something, and you speak to people living in informal settlements.
I think that's the lived experience of the partnership rather than an academic one.
Great.
Thank you.
Well, Card, I want to come back to you now.
Unfortunately, things are going to get worse before they can get better.
Climate change is happening.
Climate hazards are going to increase.
We're going to see heat, it's going to be hotter, it's going to have more rains, we're going to see floods.
I think the pressures in territories are going to increase due to climate change.
I think that's inevitable.
And unfortunately, we're not seeing when we see the progress for the indicators to achieve 11.1 S 11.1 that is related to the transformation of informal setments the progress is not happening at scale that we need.
So informal settlements are increasing.
That's the major form of urbanization that's going to happen.
So the pressures over those territories are going to increase.
Do we approach this topic in a way that we engage with the challenging question about the limits of also upgrading in this very complicated context that we are living? What are the lessons from your work of what are some of those limits and how do we even approach the limits that we might face collectively when thinking about upgrading, when trying to do upgrading in a very challenging situation that we find ourselves at the moment? I wish I had a good answer for that.
But look, I guess we go one step at a time, but We advocate for people whatever we do, we try to do it homeowner driven is what we call it, but it's basically people managing their own if they have access to any resource that's coming their way, managing it themselves as close as possible to the need and letting them make the decisions.
But providing, which is what we do, the technical assistance and the guidance so that those decisions can be well informed.
I've been saying quite a bit in this forum that many times perfect is the enemy of good.
And then transforming informal settlements that sometimes we've seen that to be the case.
I reconstruction processes also where, you know, the masters in international development and the people that come from the architecture of urbanism school want to do things well.
And sometimes that becomes a good excuse to delay and delay and wait and people who are solving their daily problem are just left waiting.
So mobilizing things quickly, even if they're not perfect is probably a good idea most of the time.
I guess, you know, that's the best I can offer at this point.
It is getting worse.
There is cause for hope, I think so.
I There has been progress made in many places.
There's still a lot to be built.
I think the fact that there's still a lot to be built and there's so much housing stock that needs to be improved is a great opportunity.
That is, to me, that is a huge market for those who are trying to sell cement, who are trying to sell construction materials.
For those who are trying to have a better transition into energy use and efficiency.
Since there's a lot to be improved anyway, if we play things well, those improvements can go in a positive direction rather than generating more vulnerability and more risk.
Sarah, from your perspective, how do you see communities on the ground then responding to some of those increasing risks that you're facing and how do we approach those type of limits from your experience from community led processes? Yeah, I think with SDI, we have a slogan which says we are the problems and we are the solutions.
I think we have been more than ready for so many years ago, but the problem is where do we get avenue, opportunities, and support to implement some of the challenges that we go through, especially when it comes to climate risks.
We know and in most cases, most of our slums are based in areas that are prone to disasters like flooding.
We have, in many of our countries, tried to negotiate with governments to support relocation processes by availing land.
The only biggest challenge is that governments will always say we do not have land.
But even if you identified a piece of land, Maybe through our savings to buy it, you realize that we get disadvantaged because then a piece of land may not be in the city and that means your livelihood will be shattered, your social network is gone, everything that you've acquired around you, friends play a very critical of the networks, the saving groups, the social areas you've been going to schools, it all vanishes because you have to move.
In our perspective, we are trying our level best to negotiate with government.
To a certain extent, when we wanted to implement some of our projects, it has provided land, especially sanitation, water, provision of drainages.
However, to a larger extent, when it comes to housing, we are still struggling, and I think this is where we should Bring in different partners to support this because like he said, it's very difficult to get an answer on how prepared we are.
But I'm quite sure that we have solutions to our problems, but we need to come together, different partners to support one piece and another and we realize our goals.
Yeah.
Thank you, Sarah.
Sama, again, bringing back the topic of participation, Sarah is bringing that nothing for us without us.
That also applies when talking about adaptation, about the limits of adaptation, the possibility of relocation, the openness of communities when that is the only inevitable outcome that if so, it needs to meet some principles, cannot be far from our livelihood opportunities.
We need to maintain our social networks and there are principles there.
Tell us about the experience from the work that the Brazilian government has been doing around the role of social participation in dealing with this question.
Thank you, Alex.
In this peripheral program, we have local committee to do a popular plan to discuss the intervention and what we have to do.
In this process, you can discuss if is necessary relocation.
I think this word is important because all the traditional policy against the risk in Brazil, it's to remove the people because of the slogan.
If you discuss a relocation, I think it's a different perspective.
They are not took from there without nothing.
It is important.
But we have to discuss with the people what that means.
If it's necessary for a temporary moment because of the intervention needs to relocate the person from his house, from their house, or it's permanently.
And we try to define areas near to the same community, to the same life space because to keep the connection there.
Sometimes we have some policies to offer.
Yes, a wonderful house in a beautiful building, in a beautiful neighborhood, but far from the origin, the community that the people has have connection, friends, work.
You try to discuss this.
It is important because this program, Piphea Viva for Urbanization for Favela Transforming, it's connected with Mia Academia Vida my house, My Life, another program from the Ministry of City to produce houses.
When you are discussing the project to for the intervention in this area.
We have some information about that from the local government because we send the money, the resource for the local government to organize all these things with the community.
The habitat are together in a technical assistance in this committee because local government have to work with the people and to have this committee with technical assistance for this connection.
And if you need a relocation, the project needs to have resources for building another house or have another building, another house to offer for the people.
But all this is discussed with the people.
So it's not only that achieve a discourse.
So I think we are working on that because one different point, this committee, we have inside the community.
They have a local point with technical assistance to to monitoring the project.
It's not only a moment, a workshop and a meeting, but we have this technical assistance with the people.
I think, of course, it's a conflict, it's not good to keep the people from their house, but we are discussing on a safe perspective.
How can we do this? And we human rights and everything.
We are trying to work on this on it.
Thank you for that, Am.
I like the way that you approach bringing also human rights here in the process that is very critical.
Let's now turn to finance because I think at the end of the day also critical to even the development of the plans, of course, the implementation of those plans, all of these require financing to be able to come all the way down.
Lo going to local governments, going to local communities to be able to make that type of things happen.
I know that BMS is a key driver of international initiatives like the cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance and the GP Fund.
Tell us a little bit about how can these initiatives help to bridge the investment gap for secondary cities and informal settlements in the Global South.
Thank you, Sebastian, for bringing this input.
Yeah.
Thanks.
We are also a co founder of Cities Alliance and a strong supporter of Cities Alliance and you inhabited.
Um I'm working at a desk in Berlin, so I'm far away from the reality that SARA has.
And certainly, I'm saying this because I think what can I bring in here from a perspective, and you said the finance issue, and we have substantial development cooperation that we're doing, our implementing agency like GIS and KFW the Development Bank that, for example, does also slam upgrading programs, for example, in Namibia, but there are quite a lot of examples.
I'm the urban specialists.
This is not what I'm talking about, but I'm more talking about the systemic issues that we're looking at to foster the whole system that I started to talk about.
But before I do so, just one short comment and my Brazilian colleagues started on that as well, talking about Lula, I think, not forgetting the times we're in, I think, there's a lot of, um, um, it's very polarized times.
I think one thing that we are standing for as a German government is certainly for continuity in the values that we ask for, also for development cooperation and also in our governmental collaborations with our partners.
That is human rights, that is gender equality.
All things, SDGs climate related, all things that are contested right now.
I think it's just worth mentioning this that this used to be if we would have met five years ago here, this would be something where you just say, yeah, okay, good.
But now, That's part of the work we're doing just to say, this is really important, and this is not going to be just solved by ignoring it.
Just having said so.
Now coming to our latest strategy, we've got a new minister.
She put up the fight against inequality is one of our core issues.
When it comes to finance, now bridging to the question that you ask, I think What I'd like to share is our support for project preparation facilities, like you mentioned CFF, the city finance facility, but there's also some discussions going around that you've probably heard about the City Climate Finance Gap fund that is implemented by World Bank and European Investment Bank, EIB, that's also partly funded by us, and there's also another one, ComSSI covenant and Maya in Sub Saharan Africa, all of them.
They're supporting cities in project preparation, planning, and the Gap fund is called Gp Fund because often you see the lack of bankable projects starting by the inability of cities to just come up get ideas into a real plan and to form it into a bankable project.
That's where we support these different initiatives.
The challenge we face there, if you talk about now, the secondary cities, knowing that this is the place where the most pressure is on urbanization, where the most need for these plans and for bankable projects in the end is that it's taxpayers money we're using.
What we want to see in the end is implementation.
We want to see that this is picked up and that this is going to become a project and certainly when we foster and when we support all those processes, be it through the World Bank or the EIB or through GIA, the social dimension and the inclusion of informal settlements into the planning is core to us as a ministry.
But just to add a little bit of complexity, and I know this has been mentioned in many dimensions here.
I think the complexity we are facing on political level is really saying, yes, we use money on a risk project facility there, closing the gap.
But nevertheless, the bridge needs to be there, and then it becomes much easier to deal with bigger municipalities than with secondary cities.
So I think, you know, it's not a straightforward answer.
It's a description of the systems we are using and the way we use our kind of convening power with partners to kind of make voices being heard and being integrated and processes.
But then, like additional having said, so also saying there's certain structural limits for what we're doing and one of them I just described.
So just stop here.
I think there's much more to say with all the other speakers here.
Thank you, Sebastian.
Let's get some questions from the floor because I have a list of questions here or comments that I can keep going.
Do we have any comments or interventions or questions? Yes, we have a hand there.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Mine is just a reflection wrapped up in a question maybe on the issue of partnership, which I like very much the way the panel has handled it.
Maybe it's from a naive point of view, but the way I see it, maybe also the environmental arm of the United Nations should be seated here because what I'm seeing is we are transferring risk and vulnerability from the settlement area to the natural environment because all these materials that are going to be used for upgrade and building materials, as I've seen in my research in Kenya, is causing a huge dissemination of natural sacred forests and later in the year, COP is going to sit down to look at how to increase the tree cover.
I think it's important to try and see how we can balance these two needs that are very immediate.
Thank you.
Let's get a few questions going and then we allow the panel to start thinking about also how can they reply to them? Do we have any other hands or questions before we bring back to the panel? Yes, Simon.
Thank you.
I will try to be as relevant as the previous question.
In a member states policy discussion, some countries argue that institute upgrading should be limited to settlements located outside of risk prone areas.
My question would be, what existing evidence, tools, or policy framework can help advocate for the advantage of institute upgrading? Even if the cost of risk mitigation and climate adaptation may initially appears higher and by better capturing long term socio economic advantage.
What resource could we rely on to advocate for this? Thank you.
Thank you.
Two big questions? Should we start chewing them before, should we start addressing those questions and see if there is any further questions we pick up later.
Greg, let me try some of these.
Just a comment that became a question as well.
So There are many, many projects in informal settlements where the environment is integrated into it.
I mean, I'll give you an example like Navas, some of the settlements in Navas, I've never seen recycling so ingrained in the development of those communities.
I mean, to the point where I had a national government Director General saying, I need to fly my entire cabinet here to actually see how how the informal settlements actually understand the concept of recycling and environmental protection.
The second was the project in Uganda was the Kamala Ginger Expressway.
The road, never mind the informal settlements that was going through, but the road was also going right along the Kinatao wetland and that program used the community to turn that wetland into their resource, and they then took responsibility to look after it.
There are examples, and we need to make sure that we do reinforce it.
On the very big question on the institute upgrading and risk mitigation, my first question is, who determines the risk? Because that's the first thing we need to sure because sometimes the risk is determined by people who have a vested interest.
So I've got a medical background, and I can think of one occasion where the community had to move.
It was in Durban South Africa where the community was built on top of what was an old big refuse tip and the methane gas that was building up inside that was posing a danger to life and the potato for explosions or the mesan the community did move once they understood the risk.
But who determines the risk? I think that's the first question you need, but it is complex and it is difficult.
But whatever you do, you don't do it without the community.
The community are part of the decision.
Thank you.
Yes.
Submit, yes.
Thank you for the questions.
In our national Secretariat of peripheries, you have innovative initiative, nature based solutions for climate adaptation for peripheries informal settlements.
I don't know if I can explain a joking.
We don't need Germany solutions for the Germany complex is a name of Avella in Brazil.
We are discussing different solutions for the peripheries, for informal settlements.
How can you use the environmental solutions But in that space with a lot of people with no open space, with different perspectives and bring the people as a partner for capacity building to do this.
It's interesting because in the other example that I said, the community plan for disaster risk reduction in San Paolo Barcea, they identify spring inside of the community because a lot of informal settlements are in environmental protection areas.
This is the big conflict.
And they discussing in this process of the mapping and the planning to be a restoration of this spring.
They do this as Muchiro collective action.
So this is the example that I'm saying.
We discussed the plan, the participation, and we do the intervention.
One point is important because the risk sometimes it is used to take the people from their community.
So this is the slogan.
A lot of um informal settlements, faves, using the environmental issue to keep in there.
We are changing our community for ecological community.
They are deciding to invest and to know how they can transform the area and environmental perspective to keep there because they argue that they are destroying the environment, they are diring the water.
How can you, of course, the government can help them with infrastructure and technologic assistance, but they are changed the perspective using the environmental perspective to change, of course, the urban and environmental quality, but understanding that it is important to the climate adaptation action too.
I don't know if I answer and explain what we're discussing in Brazil.
Thank you.
Any other Any responses, James, do you want to pick up? Super quickly, that second question, I'd love to know the answer to myself, but I second what Greg mentioned.
Just to the first really briefly, at least from the perspective of habitat for humanity we often we build as well as enable the building of it.
I just My answer, but my reflection on that is to be, you know, as we're looking at upgrading informal settlements or any, you know, habitat for that matter, it is being really intentional with what I would say appropriate construction technology, but with a lens of how can we reduce the embedded carbon in the materials that we use and the approaches, whether that's at the house and the construction approaches and the whole construction value chain, whether that relates to houses or community upgrading.
And that is really tricky and it's really context specific.
You know, one very short example we have in a in Nepal is bamboo and bamboo is not a new construction methodology, but a certain way of treating bamboo to so it withstands for a much longer period of time.
And that's obviously helped to reduce the impact and the footprint across that full value chain.
So that would just be the principle that we try to take in the work that we do.
Great.
Thank you, James.
Any other? Yes, we have a question from.
Hi, I'm I'm from Cities Alliance.
First of all, thank you very much for this interesting discussion.
We talked a lot about, of course, it was the title, removing the Risk and not the people.
But I was wondering about the limitations of insitu upgrading, there must be some and if relocation is the only way, how can we do it in a people centered and locally led way? What are ways to do that.
Great.
Let's take this question and do a final round.
A quick from each one of you.
I Thinking about that, but also what are the urgent action that's needed to advance this agenda, to advance this reflection and this constructive engagement.
I think we've been having a great complex conversation, not easy one for us to address.
But what do you think should be next steps ahead of us to really push for transformation of informal setments in a way that we address issues of climate change and we deal with some of those complexities.
Maybe Sebastian, can I start with you here and then we do a quick round.
We have 3 minutes, so Yeah, I stick with the topic of infrastructure because that's basically part of my work and we have a lot of the corridor discussion with the Global Gateway and the EU.
I think what I'm taking away again is the urgency of this matter that we discuss.
We had some informal exchange again, also with EU and EU member states alongside the World Urban Forum on connecting the dots like more how urban issues could be connected to this corridors.
And I'm again convinced that within this urban debate and connecting the dots with the global gateway, the discussion of having an integrated approach means also including informal settlement into this whole corridor development and should be pushed and brought forward.
So that's my takeaway.
Thanks for the discussion.
Thanks so much.
So two very quick points.
One, I just reflect on with such a diverse stakeholder group, if I can use that term, mixed visioning, as we mentioned before, kind of the need for a broker through this process, you know, to bring people around the table, and that is messy.
It involves conflict, and it takes time.
And I just reiterate the reality of that.
Even more so when, as you said, if eviction is necessary or if eviction will occur, The need in that brokering role to ensure that that process is not a unilateral decision, but becomes part of a consultation process, an information process, a suite of options.
Again, that needs to be brokered and stewarded and that's not easy, but it's a reality.
Thanks.
Okay.
As I think have two major challenges, the construction logics, of course, because it's a complicated area in the negotiation.
But if I can share a story from the community, our secretary was visiting a community under intervention and he saw two boys sit on the sidewalk with a bow and upset.
And the boy said, Yeah, were upset because they took our football court because of course, the intervention the space for machines and materials, and We didn't think about it.
We want to give a good intervention for the people, but we have to live in this situation.
How can you adequate social participation with a discussion? What are you going to do there? How can you have another place for put the machines, on the playground, on the football area? You can organize another place for the boys, for the girls to have a free space for the community? How can you do this? Discuss with the people.
It's hard too much, it's not a lot of money to spend, but you have to spend a lot of time to build trust and discussion and consensus.
It's hard about that.
But I think when you do this step, we can have a good intervention and a good result.
For me, for our last message, I think it's important and I feel it's how can I say a conclusion of all this for.
It's not the end.
But I think we are advancing the climate agenda in pushing the urban agenda.
I think this panel and others in the top of this forum is putting us in this discussion.
How can you address the climate change in projects and action in urban agenda and of course, prioritizing the vulnerable people.
For this, I want to have more banks and population for the next forum.
We need more leadership from community here.
D with us from their perspective, what they are doing, what they are thinking, how can help us in this process to be more effective.
I think I have a second idea for the next forum.
I think you have put together can finance it, who can be not the benefit, but the protagonist of the process.
Thank you.
Good, two things.
One is we need to get the finance sorted.
Municipal access, the whole subnational financing needs to be sort out and community access to microcredit.
That's the one thing which we've spoken about.
The second is not just about housing and it's not just about informal settlements.
There's a very, very nice line in the statement of the World Assembly of local and regional governments to Wolf.
I apologize if I'm reading from the earlier version, but that line says, we underline that housing justice is inseparable from the right to the city.
The possibility to remain, to belong, to access land, services, and opportunities on equal terms, and to participate in shaping the future of our communities.
Okay.
She mentioned about if there are any limitations are here, of course, the limitations are there and some of them are actually political limitations.
Many times, even when people could have accepted with information to move, politicians are like, do not disturb my votes.
So this really it complicates the entire process of negotiating and relocating and accepting to move peacefully.
But also, Sometimes we have conflicting policy interventions where the communities accepting that this is a risk area, let's move, but the next day you find the tyconas built has had building and people like now, where there's this, what happens? And so it becomes a challenge to the next settlement to believe you what you're saying.
So it causes limitations in implementing some of the things.
But also issues of land ownership.
I talked I told you about the project we are doing in Sinuta.
And ownership for my country, it's very complex, identifying people to give land to see that it takes up some of the interventions, it's really not easy.
Then unless there are avenues to comfortably make people move.
For example, same project where we have to build a complete settlement, have schools, have hospitals, have roads, then people comfortably say, let me move, but allow me wind up with this, the issue of financing.
In SDI, our core methodology, our core pillar is through mobilizing people to save.
We have community savings that help us undertake a little bit of what we need, especially small housing improvement and providing for your house essentials, and we go ahead and put up what we call urban poor funds, and this is run at country level.
But these resources are not enough.
Of course, you may want to build a house, but in your urban poor fund, you may not be able to get a lot of money, and yet we are complicated with issues of commercial banks.
You are not having land title to security for you.
No one is coming to give you collateral, so no one will offer you a bank loan.
So these small resources help us to do a little that we can do, but where finances can be provided that are community friendly, that are not having these exorbitant interest rates that are affordable, communities are more than ready to use resources and pay back because it's bit by bit, if the negotiations are put in place, they are more than able to pay back and even secure more loans to do other bigger investments.
Thank you.
All right.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of work to do.
And because there's a lot of work to do, there's a lot of opportunity.
This needs to be seen not as a place to spend resources, but to invest.
And I just wish the housing minister of every country had half of the budget that the defense minister has because once we prioritize this as a necessity, as a human right, then it will have the resources it needs.
We have the technical solutions to adapt to climate change.
We have the technical solutions to improve housing.
We can do a lot of upgrading of existing housing that many wish had never appeared in the place it is.
Yes, there will be a need for relocation for sure, but also with the adequate resources and the adequate processes that can be done well.
Yeah.
That's the best I can my takeaway on this one.
Yeah.
Thank you so much, Fc.
That's a wonderful way of ending.
We will continue taking this conversation forward through the meetings of the informality task force.
Please continue engaging in that space.
We are glad to have many of you here involved in that conversations in those meetings and engagements in different forums.
Let's make use of it so that we can generate the type of political will and as well as technical arguments, financial conditions that can put this agenda to a reality.
Thank you so much and let's continue this discussion.
I