In this report, ESCAP explores the future of urbanization in Asia and the Pacific, focusing on the dynamic shifts in the region’s urban landscape. It highlights the region’s demographic transformations, including population ageing, and the persistent challenges of urban poverty and inequality. The analysis covers urban areas of all sizes, …
This book explores the implications of urbanization in South Asia for water (in-) security in the peri-urban spaces of Dhaka and Khulna in Bangladesh, Bengaluru, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune in India, and Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The book looks into specifically peri-urban water security issues in a context of …
In an already urbanized world, an increasing concentration of people, development assets, infrastructure, socio-economic vulnerabilities and convergence of risks of multiple hues in cities and urban agglomerations underscores the need for an integrated approach towards resilience building. This is evidenced by the fact that cities today account for 55% of …
Shimla tops the list of cities scoring highest on urban Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) index. Coimbatore and Chandigarh were at second and third position in the ranking of urban SDG index launched by NITI Aayog, Nov 23, 2021 In its journey towards localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and instituting …
This new report by UNEP and UN-Habitat has identified urbanization as one of five main drivers of environmental change. It has looked at the impact on cities and city residents of related challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. It has also presented the types of solutions that …
Climate action offers massive opportunities to reduce social inequalities, but they remain largely untapped. This is a key finding from the review of the impacts of priority climate measures in six systems—industry, energy, transport, cities, agriculture, and forestry. This paper highlights pitfalls to avoid and building blocks for fairer climate …
This paper estimates an urban carbon dioxide emissions model using satellite-measured carbon dioxide concentrations from 2014 to 2020, for 1,236 cities in 138 countries. The model incorporates the global trend in carbon dioxide concentration, seasonal fluctuations by hemisphere, and a large set of georeferenced variables that incorporate carbon dioxide–intensive industry …
Cities and urban settings are crucial to preventing, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from health emergencies, and therefore enhancing the focus on urban settings is necessary for countries pursuing improved overall health security. WHO has published the Framework for Strengthening Health Emergency Preparedness in Cities and Urban Settings in …
The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts on cities – putting unprecedented pressure on municipal budgets and public services, exacerbating inequalities and revealing their extreme fragility to shocks. At the same time, cities offer among the most promising opportunities to build back better with speed and impact, and the crisis …
The Global Urban Competitiveness Report (GUCR) is a cooperative research conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and UN-Habitat focusing on sustainable urban competitiveness, urban land and urban finance. Led the project is participated by experts from CASS, UN-Habitat and well-known scholars in relevant fields. Through theoretical research …
Niti Aayog has suggested that urban local bodies (ULBs) could provide land to set up material recovery facilities (MRFs) to be used by various industries to set up infrastructure for efficient plastic waste management. In its handbook on sustainable urban plastic waste management, jointly released with UNDP, it also said …
The report highlights the collaborative action already happening between cities, states, regions, business, and national government, using data reported by over 1000 cities, states and regions through the CDP-ICLEI Unified Reporting System. Immediate action is needed to stop global greenhouse gas emissions, avoid new emissions, design resilient infrastructure and switch …
Urbanization is happening differently today than in the past and occurring most rapidly in places with the fewest resources. Traditional approaches are not able to keep up, leaving billions of people with poor access to basic necessities, dragging down economies and damaging the environment. This synthesis report of the Towards …
This new report explores how climate and urban challenges could be addressed in tandem to set African cities on a path of prosperity and sustainable long-term development. It recommends steps that governments at national, local and city level could employ to attract the capital needed to address priorities around development …
Final comprehensive report filed by the Additional Chief Secretary/Commissioner of the Revenue Administration before the National Green Tribunal in Original Application No. 264 of 2020 (SZ) on the action taken by the Tamil Nadu government for the temporary and permanent measures to prevent recurrence of flooding and sewage overflows in …
The NITI Aayog launched a report on measures to ramp up urban planning capacity in India, recommending 'Healthy City for All' by 2030. The report also recommended a Central Sector Scheme '500 Healthy Cities Programme', for a period of 5 years, wherein priority cities and towns would be selected jointly …
All cities around the world face common challenges, related to the provision of housing, water, energy, transport and waste management. Achieving net zero at city scale requires a transformation in how energy is produced, distributed and consumed in support of these services. This briefing paper shows how the built environment …
This socio-economic assessment report informs and supports further planning processes undertaken to analyse refugee hosting settlements within the municipality of Arua (classified as a secondary city in north-western Uganda). Arua is strategically located bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, and therefore hosts a large population of urban …
This report focuses on the role of insurance in addressing climate risks in cities. The objectives of the report are to provide a common understanding of the current role of the insurance sector in the urban space related to climate resilience and to identify barriers and opportunities for closing the …
This paper examines spatial heterogeneity in the impacts of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban household incomes in Ethiopia and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Combining new panel household surveys with spatial data, the fixed-effects regression analysis for Ethiopia finds that households in large and densely populated …
Migration shapes the lives of those who move and transforms the geographies and economies of their points of departure and destinations alike. The water sector, and the availability of water itself, implicitly and explicitly shape migration flows. Ebb and Flow, Volume 1. Water, Migration, and Development presents new global evidence …
