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- Info
Urbanization in developing countries' time for action for national forest programs and international development cooperation for the urban millennium
| Author: |
Kuchelmeister, G. |
| Date: |
1999 |
| Periodical: |
Forestry Policy Research Forum: The Role of National Forest Programs to Ensure Sustainable Forest Management, |
| Abstract: |
Developing countries are undergoing a transformation from rural to urban. Therefore no developing country can afford to ignore the phenomenon of urbanization, which will be one of the strongest social forces in coming years. Within the next 20 years, more poor and undernourished people in developing countries will live in the cities than in rural areas.
The rapid urbanization of poverty and the environmental impacts of urban growth on poor communities have received unparalleled attention in the current international debates on development. In this context urban greening is increasingly discovered as a development tool. While most urban greening activities are initiated by the agricultural community and urban initiatives, foresters working in development cooperation have restricted their mandate to rural area in most cases. For instance, recent global policy processes such as National Forest Programs (NFP) hardly have identified urban forestry as a subject. Most of these programs seem to be developed without involvement of urban stakeholders.
This paper highlights the growing importance of urban trees and related vegetation in and around densely populated areas in developing countries and its implications for development cooperation.
As the pressure continues to further develop open space in developing countries the importance of urban forests as a vital component of the urban landscape and infrastructure will increase. This is expressed in many Local Agenda 21. Where the whole community is considering local quality of life, trees, woods and accessible green space are usually high on the list as measures of environmental quality. To develop and sustain urban forests in low income cities and neighborhoods, the initial focus must be on meeting immediate needs for basic necessities. This can be best achieved by multiple resource management.
Forestry and related professionals can actively support initiatives to mitigate urban problems or risk to become increasingly a marginal professional group in development cooperation in the urban millennium.
The development cooperation community is therefore encouraged to extend its forestry sector attention significantly beyond rural areas towards the growing cities by:
(i) strengthening existing forestry linkages and initiatives (fuelwood, trees in farming, watershed management, drinking water supply);
(ii) supporting and strengthening urban initiatives like Local Agenda 21, especially those focusing on vulnerable groups;
(iii) encouraging the strengthening of mutually beneficial local rural-urban linkages and mitigating their negative impact;
(iv) allocating increasingly resources to research and development of multipurpose urban forestry in developing countries;
(v) updating the forestry research agenda by incorporating urban issues, and developing strategic urban alliances for refining the urban forestry research agenda;
(vi) considering urban issues in national forestry programs (organization of the process, especially stakeholder identification, strategic planning: reviews of forestry and urban sectors, development of specific studies, policy formulation; implementation of actions);
(vii) developing guidelines for urban and forestry projects and NFPs to facilitate appraisal, design and implementation of urban greening related activities;
(viii) adding to the discussion on sustainable forest management under the framework of NFPs and other initiatives, models of urban forest sustainability (criteria and indicators) and applying them in pilot cities in developing countries.
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