Urbanisation to deepen poverty, accelerate environment degradation

The State of World Population report 2007, launched by UNFPA on Wednesday, highlights the unprecedented shift of the world's population towards urban areas that could enhance development and promote sustainability or deepen poverty and accelerate environmental degradation.
The report shows that the world is moving from rural to urban areas in character as more than half of the world population is now living in urban areas and most of this urban growth is the result of natural increase rather than migration.
In 2008, for the first time, more than half of the world's population would live in urban areas and by 2030, towns and cities would be home of almost 5 billion people.
This observation was given by Dr France Donnay, UNFPA representative in Pakistan, at a launching ceremony of 'The State of the World Population Report 2007' here. The urbanisation factor would increase the number and proportion of young people in the urban population and most would be born into poor families, where fertility trends to be higher.
The wave of urban population growth calls for policy makers to consult young people and reflect on their needs, both to realise individual potential and to stimulate urban economies, he said.
The challenges would include increasing number and quality of schools, attracting new investments to create new jobs and economic vitality and provision of health services, including reproductive health so that young people could live fulfilling lives and make their own decisions, he said. Sarod Lashari, Additional Secretary, Population Welfare Ministry, said that Pakistan was no exception to the findings of the report and almost 100 million of its population is below the age of 25 out of which 36 million people are 15-24 years of age.
The level of urbanisation in the country is highest among the South Asian countries and at present Sindh is the most urbanised province while the least urbanised is NWFP. A large share that is 60 percent of urban Sindh population lives in Karachi and Lahore inhibits 22 percent of the urban provincial population and half of the urban provincial population lives in five large cities, she said.
Peshawar has a population of approximately one million without counting Afghan refugees in NWFP, who accounts for 33 percent of urban population of the province and the share of Quetta in urban population of Balochistan is 37 percent, she said. Rural urban migration is no more male selective, a considerable proportion of this stream consists of females and this supplement also features the stories of young women who migrated to cities, she said.
Most of the migrant population in urban areas is poor, illiterate and unemployed or underemployed and Pakistan despite the untiring efforts of government under the leadership of President Musharraf, like many other countries is facing the problems of poverty, illiteracy, ill-health, un-employment, inadequate shelter, fragile echo-system and delicate political, economic and social fabric, she said.
The government recognises that high population growth, high densities of population, a youthful structure and increasing urbanisation have implications for the economy, resource planning and sustainable development, she said.
High population growth undermines the government's efforts in raising standard of living of the people and it impedes the pace of development both at macro and micro level and high reproductive rate bringing in its fold many challenges for the government, Lashari said.
In the process of urbanisation, the government is facing challenge to pace up infrastructure and development, provision of quality education and health to a growing population, generation of new jobs, availability of more housing units and means of transportation and maintenance of food security, she said.
Motherhood for a woman must be an informed choice and this requires public awareness, education and empowerment of the persons directly involved and there is dire need to invent maternal and reproductive health services targeted at the urban poor, she said.
She said the Prime Minister had given the vision of 3E's-Education, Empowerment and Enlightenment to have focused approach on the issue of population growth and to increase literacy rate both for males and females, as the best way of controlling population growth saying that no change was possible without education.