EDITORIAL (July 05 2009): Exciting, indeed, it will be for many an economic planner in the Third World countries, such as Pakistan, to learn that the World Bank has launched a programme, belatedly though, to help cities in developing countries achieve economic growth and high quality living standards without harming the environment.
This bears reference to the launch of a book "Ecological Cities as Economic Cities", last weekend, in Singapore, citing projections that developing countries will treble their entire built-up urban area from 200,000 square kilometres (77,220 square miles) to 600,000 square-km (231,661 square miles), between 2000 and 2030.
Significantly, it has maintained that the rise of urban centres can hardly be avoided, as on average some 75 percent of world-wide economic production is witnessed in cities, pointing out that in many developing countries the share of urban centres in the total economic output comes to more than 60 percent.
Nevertheless, as it has put it, although urbanisation has helped lift millions out of poverty, it has simultaneously caused unprecedented consumption and loss of natural resources. It is, however, another matter that it has lamented that lack of planning and the explosion in population growth has, in turn, also resulted in pollution, urban deformity, poor water and sanitation management, besides the proliferation of slums.
Needless to point out, such grave eventualities will bring in sharp focus the utterly ghastly socio-economic conditions encompassing Pakistan in general, and cities such as Karachi, in particular. It will thus be naïve to conclude, as the book under reference has done, that cities like Singapore, Stockholm, Yokohama and Curitiba have shown that economic growth, high-quality living standards and protection of the environment can go together, vainly averring that many of the solutions adopted by these cities "are affordable, even when budgets are limited, and they generate returns, including direct benefits to the poor."
What else can be said about the hurried conclusions drawn from comparisons drawn between the two mutually contradictory situations? Reference, in this context, may also be made to what Yumiko Noda, the deputy mayor of Yokohama, said at a seminar on "live-able cities" held in Singapore to synchronise with the book's launching, averring that the citizens' involvement was crucial to a city's success.
As she recalled, Yokohama in 2001 planned to cut the city's waste by 30 percent within 10 years, but achieved its goal in just five years. Similarly, Jim Adams, World Bank vice president for East Asia and the Pacific had good reason to observe that the pace of urbanisation has highlighted the urgency for an integrated economic and ecological approach to development.
However, it goes without saying that Singapore, Stockholm, Yokohama, Curitiba or other similar cities, didn't have to cope with the accumulated burdens of the population explosion, along with massive illiteracy and all that goes with them in a massive vacuum of unsustained democracy. Little wonder, what we have witnessed for the large part of our independent nationhood, has remained dotted by ambitious planning, after brief intervals, only to be replaced by the same status quo.
This may be precisely why the new democratic government thrown up by the long evasive general election is finding it difficult to implement its massive vote-catching vows. Of course, its goals are attainable, but only by the elimination of massive poverty, on the one hand, and demonising illiteracy, on the other. Until then, catching up with the pursuit of ecological cities will remain nothing more than an exercise in futility.
