Global urbanization and urban water: can sustainability be afforded?

1997 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olli Varis ◽  
László Somlyódy

Urbanization is definitely one of the most characteristic global changes of today and of the coming few decades. Whereas the world population grows with almost one billion per decade, around four fifths of this growth is in urban areas. The challenges due to the development of urban centers, especially great urban agglomerations in developing countries in a sustainable way are huge. Water is one of the key figures in this equation. It has many roles; this paper discusses sustainable urban water infrastructure. First, solutions and experiences from the industrialized countries are summarized, and possibilities and difficulties to adapt them to large urban areas of the Third World are discussed. A particular focus in the affordability issue is taken. Various development indicators and their applicability are discussed. A summary and discussion on technical, economical, financial, and institutional alternatives follows.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-224
Author(s):  
B. Setiawan ◽  
Tri Mulyani Sunarharum

Of the many important events that occurred in the two decades of the 21st century, the process of accelerating urbanization—especially in third-world countries—became something quite phenomenal. It's never even happened before. In the early 2000s, only about 45 percent of the population in the third world lived in urban areas, by 2020 the number had reached about 55 percent. Between now and 2035 the percentage of the population living in urban areas will reach about 85 percent in developed countries. Meanwhile, in developing countries will reach about 65 percent. By 2035, it is also projected that about 80 percent of the world's urban population will live in developing countries' cities.


Author(s):  
M. P. K. Nzunga

Fare has been established as a major issue, in primary and secondary schools within the Third World countries. This work sets out to reveal the possible determinants of this phenomenon. A comparison between performance in the rural areas and the urban areas has produced a lot of data on the determinants of school failure and repetition. The researcher seeks to establish the link between failure and the level of intelligence of the learners, the language of instruction, the financial status of the family and the culture of origin. The researcher hopes that by so doing, it would be easier to find a practical and efficient solution, to this problem, which is a great stambling block in the Third World countries.


2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-325
Author(s):  
Guy Laron

In the last decade, influenced by current economic trends, Cold War historians have made an effort to de-center the story of the Cold War. They have shifted their gaze from the center of the conflict—the face-offs in Europe between the Soviet Union and the United States—and cast an observing eye on the Third World. Unlike many Middle East historians who seek to understand the Middle East in terms of its unique cultures, languages, and religions, Cold War historians treat that area as part of a revolutionary arc that stretched from the jungles of Latin America to the jungles of Vietnam. Rather than emphasizing the region's singularity, they focus on the themes that united guerilla fighters in the West Bank and the Makong Delta as well as leaders from Havana to Damascus: anticolonial and anti-imperial struggles, the yearning for self-definition, and the fight against what Third World revolutionaries perceived as economic exploitation. The sudden interest in what was considered, until recently, the periphery of the Cold War has undoubtedly been fueled by the zeitgeist of a new century in which the so-called peripheral regions are set to become more dominant economically. Southeast and Southwest Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East have a surplus of young skilled workers who are increasingly in demand by the global economy as the growth of world population slows and more prosperous countries in West Europe and North America are graying fast. The Third World consists today of the very regions where most of the economic growth in coming decades will take place. Dependency theory has gone topsy-turvy: leading economists now look with hope at countries such as China, India, Turkey, and Egypt and expect them to become the new engines of global growth. It is not surprising, then, that historians are now taking a stronger interest in the tangled history of the Cold War in the Third World and discovering the agency that these countries always had.


1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eeva Ollila ◽  
Elina Hemminki

Norplant® implantable contraceptives were developed mainly for use in Third World countries, but first were approved for marketing in Finland in 1983 and in Sweden in 1985. Since then Norplant has been approved in more than 40 countries, most of them in the Third World. The authors analyzed the clinical documentation submitted to the Finnish and Swedish drug control authorities, and the assessments made of the data. The Finnish review process lasted for three years, and the number of data increased substantially during that time. The authors have not been allowed to publish the clinical data submitted in Finland, but a reconstruction from the Swedish data showed that the clinical data were of poor quality and were mainly focused on assessing efficacy. Side effects, acceptability, and requirements of the health care system for proper use of Norplant were poorly studied. This example of Norplant licensing in Finland shows that licensing of drugs in industrialized countries is insufficient for guaranteeing their safety in Third World countries.


1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (4I) ◽  
pp. 551-578
Author(s):  
William C. Thlesenhusen

In the short term one can be pessimistic about the collective progress of the Third World and its interactions with industrial countries. There is plenty of bad news. With one-quarter of the world's population, industrialized countries consume about 80 percent of the world's goods. With three-quarters of the world's population, developing countries command less than one-quarter of the world's resources. And the imbalance is growing worse.! Of the 2.7 billion people in the tropical and subtropical regions outside of China, 40 percent live in poverty; more than 14 million of their children under 5 years of age starve to death or die of disease each year? Furthermore, at the same time as an increasing proportion of the population of Africa is composed of young people (65 percent of its population is now under age 25), education budgets are being cut - from $ 10.8 billion in 1980 to $ 5.8 billion in 1986.3 In an article assessing the globalization of economies, Richard J. Barnet writes: "Poverty, population pressures, civil war, and repression are turning Sub-Saharan Africa - black Africa minus South Africa and Namibia - into a giant disaster zone, and in countries in South America, such as Colombia and Peru, the civil society is dissolving. In the Philippines more than seventy percent of the population is poor by any human standard. With the end of the Cold War, the increasing marginalization of the Third World appears likely."4 The predictions are ominous. Barnet concludes his article, written before the crisis in Iraq, by speaking to an industrial-country audience: "There is no real north-south dialogue, and politicians in the industrial world feel little pressure to begin one.


1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilfrid Bach

Reduction targets for a desired degree of climate protection are negotiated at the international circuit. Concrete measures for reaching such targets are implemented at the national and city levels. Demonstrated here for electricity use in the commercial sector of the City of Muenster is a “Win-Win Strategy” which, if correctly done will result only in winners. Specifically, it is shown that electricity use between 1990 and 2005 in a Trend Scenario would increase by ca. 25 %, while in the Climate Protection Scenario it could decrease by ca. 23 % due to savings and substitution measures. The benefits, costs, and net gains are computed for different price developments. For a favored variant, the net gain to customers is ca. 66 M DM and that of the city utility – acting as an investor/contractor – is ca. 44 M DM over the period 1996–2021. The monetary savings are calculated by individual uses and user categories. The calculated benefit-loss developments show favorable payback times ranging from 11 to 14 years for the total commercial sector or 2 to 5 years for individual objects. Rough estimates show that over the next 10 years the “Win Win Strategy” could provide 256 additional jobs in the commercial electricity sector of Muenster, and about 700 000 new jobs when projected for Germany as a whole. Additionally, studies show that implementing the electricity efficiency potential in five Western European countries by 2020 could save between 20 and 50 Bil.(billion) ECU, whilst the need for some 90 additional 1000 MW power plants could be avoided. If current commercially available efficiency technologies were used to reach a standard of living equal to that in W. Europe in the late 1970s, the Third World final energy demand would be ca. 1 kW/cap, and in the First World perhaps a little greater. The energetic limit of the ecosphere is estimated to be ca. 1.5 kW/cap at the current world population. Finally, the policy options discussed here can help tap this huge available energy efficiency gold mine by the North and the South alike. The function of the “Win Win Strategy” is to help supply the funds for paving the way toward a sustainable future.


1970 ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Lebanese American University

A seminar on "Another Development in Health," organized in June 1977 at the Dag Hammarskjold Center at Uppsala, Sweden, declared that the crisis in health care "is not limited to the Third World but is becoming increasingly evident in the industrialized countries as well." It was made clear that development based on economic growth is not a guarantee of general health and welfare unless it is man-centered and works to improve the quality of life that man is leading.


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