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Title
UN HABITAT - Meeting Development Goals in Small Urban Centres: Water and Sanitation in the World's Cities 2006
Abstract
At their core, the Millennium Development Goals are all about bringing the
vast majority of the world’s population out of a poverty trap that robs
them of their health, dignity and aspirations for fulfilling their human
potential. While poverty is the underlying theme of all Millennium
Development Goals, water and sanitation provide a strategic entry point
for action in battling poverty and achieving these goals.
Human settlements provide a concrete context for this action. The struggle for achieving the
Millennium Development Goal and related targets for water and sanitation are being waged in our
cities, towns and villages, where water is consumed and wastes generated. Here is where the actions
have to be coordinated and managed. It is at this level that policy initiatives become an operational
reality and an eminently political affair: conflicts have to be resolved and consensus found among
competing interests and parties.
As this publication highlights, by the year 2000, around a quarter of the world’s population,
nearly 1.5 billion people, lived in small urban centres, with less than half a million inhabitants.
Characterized by rapid unplanned growth, high concentration of low-income population, run-down and
often non-existent basic infrastructure, most of these small urban areas serve as market centres for
their rural hinterland, strengthening rural–urban linkages and contributing to national economy. Often
located on trading routes, these small urban centres experience huge population influxes during the
day. Local authorities have little capacity to manage these influxes and their effect on urban service
provision.
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