Sawkia Afroz :
The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cover a sprawling agenda with 17 goals and 169 targets. While the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focused on familiar development challenges such as poverty, hunger, infectious diseases and gender equality, the SDG’s take those goals into account as part of a broader sweep that includes building “resilient infrastructure” to promoting peaceful and inclusive societies.
Bangladesh is going to witness a major change over the next decade due to a rapid growth of urbanization, which is quite uneven or messy in nature. With this unplanned urbanization, it will be very tough for Bangladesh to achieve SDGs by 2030. Bangladesh is the world’s most densely populated country though the population growth rate has somewhat decreased to a moderate level in recent times. However, the country, in fact, faced rapid population growth throughout the last century.
In spite of the low level of urbanization (28.4%), a major portion of the population lives in its 570 urban centers. The urban population of Bangladesh for the year 2011 stood at 42.7 million. According to an estimate of the World Bank, by 2020, nearly every other male, female and child will live in urban area. Of this urban population, more than half live in the four largest cities: Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi. With a population of almost 19 million, Dhaka is the capital and largest city in Bangladesh.
Dhaka city comes among the 25 most-polluted cities in the world and it is the byproduct of messy urbanization. Poor city management and low efficiency are intensifying the problems of the dwellers in the city.
Urban traffic has reached nightmare proportions, often causing huge delays in covering small distances with associated productivity losses. Water and air pollution from poor waste disposal system and traffic management poses serious health risks. Besides, the chronic and ever widening disparity in living standards in Dhaka between the slum dwellers on one side and the well-to-do urban elites on the other is leading to increased social and political instability. The main components of rapid urban growth in Bangladesh are: a persistently high natural increase of native urban population, the territorial extension of existing urban areas, rural to urban migration, centralized administrative system. Migration has been the most dominant component of urban population growth in Bangladesh specially in the case of Dhaka (up to 60%).
Urban pull, through massive growth of employment opportunities due to free market economy and globalization, rural push factors like increased population pressure, lack of social and cultural opportunities, adverse man-land ratio, landlessness, deteriorating law and order situation, inadequate education and health facilities, surplus labour force in rural areas, rural poverty and environmental disasters largely due to climate change are the other factors that are inducing rural to urban migration.
Currently sustainability related challenges for Bangladesh are: environmental problems, traffic congestion, lack of access to water and sanitation, poor waste disposal and drainage system, narrow roads, and shortage of forms of infrastructure for a prosperous socio-economic base and lack of access to services essential for health. Unless the current trend and flow of rapid urbanization is effectively contained or managed, the chaotic conditions and accompanying ills like pollution, rapid growth of urban slums and exacerbation of criminal activities are likely to choke the growth.
It is true, there are lots of other constrains like growth rate that the country is currently maintaining (at an average of 6 plus per annum), environmental, economical, social challenges, but it is also undeniable that urbanization has brought remarkable development in Bangladesh. To build a sustainable city, these challenges need to be faced efficiently and successfully. Generally, a sustainable city must be economically tenable, socially peaceful, and environmentally friendly that means a sustainable city is a place where people live in peace with sufficient provision of earning and living a quality of life without social and mental anxiety.
In order to ensure sustainable urbanization, good governance with decentralization of economic activities aiming to spread the benefits among the people and democratic political administrative structure, privatization of the civic services, proper management of garbage and domestic waste, and ensuring proper drainage system with increased monitoring of service quality, particularly in the public sector, promotion of public awareness, taking appropriate policy matrix and framing, adopting and enforcing workable laws, and willingness to sustain successes in these fields so achieved are essential for attaining the desired goals.
Moreover, highlighting the important and essential issues based on priorities of the major portion of the urban people and strengthening of land management policies through coordination between the various related agencies and authorities can equally be important to measure and to ensure the desired urbanization level. Effective and timely execution of this whole range of policy exercise shall, it is presumed, be helpful to meet the sustainable development goals for Bangladesh.
The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cover a sprawling agenda with 17 goals and 169 targets. While the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focused on familiar development challenges such as poverty, hunger, infectious diseases and gender equality, the SDG’s take those goals into account as part of a broader sweep that includes building “resilient infrastructure” to promoting peaceful and inclusive societies.
Bangladesh is going to witness a major change over the next decade due to a rapid growth of urbanization, which is quite uneven or messy in nature. With this unplanned urbanization, it will be very tough for Bangladesh to achieve SDGs by 2030. Bangladesh is the world’s most densely populated country though the population growth rate has somewhat decreased to a moderate level in recent times. However, the country, in fact, faced rapid population growth throughout the last century.
In spite of the low level of urbanization (28.4%), a major portion of the population lives in its 570 urban centers. The urban population of Bangladesh for the year 2011 stood at 42.7 million. According to an estimate of the World Bank, by 2020, nearly every other male, female and child will live in urban area. Of this urban population, more than half live in the four largest cities: Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi. With a population of almost 19 million, Dhaka is the capital and largest city in Bangladesh.
Dhaka city comes among the 25 most-polluted cities in the world and it is the byproduct of messy urbanization. Poor city management and low efficiency are intensifying the problems of the dwellers in the city.
Urban traffic has reached nightmare proportions, often causing huge delays in covering small distances with associated productivity losses. Water and air pollution from poor waste disposal system and traffic management poses serious health risks. Besides, the chronic and ever widening disparity in living standards in Dhaka between the slum dwellers on one side and the well-to-do urban elites on the other is leading to increased social and political instability. The main components of rapid urban growth in Bangladesh are: a persistently high natural increase of native urban population, the territorial extension of existing urban areas, rural to urban migration, centralized administrative system. Migration has been the most dominant component of urban population growth in Bangladesh specially in the case of Dhaka (up to 60%).
Urban pull, through massive growth of employment opportunities due to free market economy and globalization, rural push factors like increased population pressure, lack of social and cultural opportunities, adverse man-land ratio, landlessness, deteriorating law and order situation, inadequate education and health facilities, surplus labour force in rural areas, rural poverty and environmental disasters largely due to climate change are the other factors that are inducing rural to urban migration.
Currently sustainability related challenges for Bangladesh are: environmental problems, traffic congestion, lack of access to water and sanitation, poor waste disposal and drainage system, narrow roads, and shortage of forms of infrastructure for a prosperous socio-economic base and lack of access to services essential for health. Unless the current trend and flow of rapid urbanization is effectively contained or managed, the chaotic conditions and accompanying ills like pollution, rapid growth of urban slums and exacerbation of criminal activities are likely to choke the growth.
It is true, there are lots of other constrains like growth rate that the country is currently maintaining (at an average of 6 plus per annum), environmental, economical, social challenges, but it is also undeniable that urbanization has brought remarkable development in Bangladesh. To build a sustainable city, these challenges need to be faced efficiently and successfully. Generally, a sustainable city must be economically tenable, socially peaceful, and environmentally friendly that means a sustainable city is a place where people live in peace with sufficient provision of earning and living a quality of life without social and mental anxiety.
In order to ensure sustainable urbanization, good governance with decentralization of economic activities aiming to spread the benefits among the people and democratic political administrative structure, privatization of the civic services, proper management of garbage and domestic waste, and ensuring proper drainage system with increased monitoring of service quality, particularly in the public sector, promotion of public awareness, taking appropriate policy matrix and framing, adopting and enforcing workable laws, and willingness to sustain successes in these fields so achieved are essential for attaining the desired goals.
Moreover, highlighting the important and essential issues based on priorities of the major portion of the urban people and strengthening of land management policies through coordination between the various related agencies and authorities can equally be important to measure and to ensure the desired urbanization level. Effective and timely execution of this whole range of policy exercise shall, it is presumed, be helpful to meet the sustainable development goals for Bangladesh.
(Sawkia Afroz studies Population Sciences in University of Dhaka)
