UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 (IPS) - With a billion people living in slums, and thousands more joining them every day, the world faces yet another looming challenge -- the rise of an impoverished urban underclass, says Anna Tibaijuka of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (U.N. Habitat).

Anna Tibaijuka, USG of U.N. Habitat

Tibaijuka emphasises the importance of empowerment of women and investment in infrastructure as effective solutions to an overcrowded planet and increasing urbanisation, in addition to the traditional emphasis on family planning.

IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren spoke with Anna Tibaijuka at U.N. headquarters in New York. Excerpts of the interview follow.

IPS: Since more than half the world's population -- about 3.3 billion people -- is now living in towns and cities, do you expect a major crisis in housing, water, and sanitation and power in the near future? And are these cities and towns geared to meet the rising urban population, which is expected to reach a record five billion by 2030?

AT: The shortage of housing is already a global crisis now, even before the predicted rise of urban population takes place. So really, the prediction in the future if this is a usual scenario is quite scary because people end up in slums, informal settlements, inadequate housing, and this has now been complicated by climate change, because climate change is threatening a number of existing settlements and existing housing infrastructure. So, the housing crisis is actually silent crisis, and it's coming, it's unfolding. It is also an area that requires considerable resources. You don't really find easy, quick wins in housing, but it is a serious problem.

IPS: Why is there an increasing and continuous migratory trend from villages to cities? Is there anything that can be done to prevent this growing migration?

AT: Urbanisation is simply migration from rural areas to urban areas. People also try to move from developing countries to developed countries, so this is actually a continual moving process. It is a migration. Why do people do that? People do that very simply because they want to improve their situation, when they feel that they are not happy, they feel that their welfare is not really being maximised. They are just looking for greener pastures. So the mobility of people's settlements is normally linked with the state of happiness, if I can use that term. The problem of course is when it happens prematurely, when people come to urban areas and they can't find a job. If they don't have the skills, if there's no provision of skills training, they end up in poverty. So to reduce the pace of urbanisation, not to reduce the urbanisation itself per se, but to secure the balance of territorial development, the strategies are very clear: you have to invest in secondary towns so that you can promote rural development.

IPS: To what extent is the surge in urban population due to a breakdown in family planning and an overall increase in global population?

AT: I think that if we cast the urban population as a family planning issue, we're not going to succeed because we're all sure that people, particularly girls and women when they're educated, when they have a chance, when they're happy, they will have less children. So this is already beyond doubt, no argument about that. But if poverty is increasing, there will be a greater population explosion because the fertility rates are much higher in urban slums than they are in improved neighbourhoods. So, I like to say that family planning per se is not going to reduce population, but if we have integrated development, if we improve living conditions of particularly women and children, if we empower women, then you can find that women can do a lot of things, you can see that they can become like you and me, they can become professionals. Distributing drugs and family planning alone without solving their political problems is not going to be very successful.

IPS: What role can the United Nations, and specifically U.N. Habitat, play in preventing an impending urban disaster?

AT: Sometimes is hard to try to raise a flag. There are other issues that people seem to think are more important, but this is a process where we're contributing to sustainable development because there can't be sustainable development without sustainable urbanisation, peace, and stability. For example, right now I'm writing a book to show that housing is an economic sector. It was very clear that this sector was neglected. If you can't secure a safe home, you cannot secure the rest of the Millennium Development Goals: water, sanitation, child safety, women's empowerment. We also have large programmes in terms of post-conflict, post-disaster relief programmes and construction. As we speak now, we have about 1,000 staff members in Afghanistan, we have volunteers 500+ in Pakistan in construction efforts, in tsunami [affected] areas, in Somalia, in Congo, in Darfur, you name it. So, we're campaigning on what we call "local action for global goals".

IPS: Are there any countries -- for example, China, India, Mexico, Bangladesh, or Brazil -- that have been successful in either slowing down migration or are fully prepared to meet the increasing demands of a growing urban population?

AT: Actually, all those countries that are listed are making I must say considerable, visible progress in tackling the problem. If you look at the country like China, of course it is the most populous country in the world, they would not like to have a situation where all Chinese now live in Beijing -- because we have these big cities, cities with 10 million plus in one place. There are two mega-cities in the United States -- New York and Los Angeles -- that are the only ones in North America. And of course we have Tokyo, which has been a mega-city for long time, and these are the cities that are working very well, but we have also cities like the ones in Africa. We have Lagos in Nigeria, we have Cairo in Egypt. If you visit those cities, you can see the challenges. So we would like to see the situation where you would have a European type of development. You know, in Europe, there's no single mega-city. Why is Europe like that? Mainly because of the well-developed infrastructure.

IPS: The theme of the upcoming World Urban Forum 4 in Nanjing, China is "the challenge of balanced territorial development". What do you expect out of this meeting?

AT: I expect at this meeting the governments will be coming, the leaders will be coming, the local authorities, because the Urban Forum is really an open-ended meeting of Habitat's partners: central governments, local authorities, private sector, bankers, professionals, architects, civilians, engineers to be able to exchange the ideas of how to secure the urban development. There must be a political will for it, and there must be a strategy, an effective one to deliver regional development, and balancing territorial development.

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