Daily Times

The United Nations (UN) has designated first Monday of October every year to be marked as World Habitat Day. The purpose of this day is to create awareness around the world, on the issues like shelter for all, improved urban planning and slum up-gradation, inclusive housing and social services. The theme of this year’s world Habitat Day is ‘Housing policies — affordable houses’. Increasing urbanisation is giving rise to issues like safe transportation, environmental degradation, non-affordable houses, and health problems.

The agenda 2030 also focuses on making human habitat safe and sound. The sustainable goal 11 talks ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. On February 19 2016, the National Assembly of Pakistan unanimously passed a resolution adopting the 2030 Agenda as the National Development Agenda. This is why the Sustainable Development Goals are now regarded as Pakistan Development Goals (PDGs). This shows the commitment and seriousness of government about implementation of sustainable goals. The UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLASS 2017 Report) appreciates in following words ‘in early 2016, the Parliament of Pakistan adopted a resolution declaring the SDGs to be national development goals, which created momentum at both the national and provincial levels to assess the current situation and develop a baseline’.

But besides all these efforts, population explosion and climate change are two factors affecting the fulfillment of Pakistan’s international commitments to creating safe, sound and sustainable habitats for its people.

According to the results of the 6th Population and Housing Census conducted in Pakistan in 2017, Pakistan’s populations stands at 207.774 million. According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, as many as 32 million households were included in the census throughout the country. Out of the total lot, 20 million households were included from the rural areas of the country, while 12 million were from the urban areas. The increasing urbanisation is building pressure on the government to provide shelters to its people.

Moreover, climate change disasters are causes of destruction of human settlements in Pakistan. The 2010-14 floods in the country caused monetary losses of over 18 millions dollars, affected 38.12 million people, damaged 3.45 million houses and destroyed 10.63 millions acre of crops. Similarly, Pakistan is an agriculture countries and 60 per cent of the population is associated directly or indirectly to agriculture sectors. But change in weather patterns, unpredictable rains and droughts are causing immigration at mass level and creating shelter problems.

The Housing Policy formulated in 2001 requires to be updated according to the new data available through Census 2017 and Agenda 2030. There should be some legislation on housing societies as well and they must be made to allocate five percent of their total area to Green area

Moreover, unplanned housing societies are only providing shelter, but are neither safe nor sustainable.

There are few recommendations to create better shelters for the people of Pakistan. Every policy and framework needs to be updated according to emerging needs. The Housing Policy formulated in 2001 requires to be updated according to the new data available through Census 2017 and Agenda 2030. There should be some legislation on housing societies as well and they must be made to allocate 5 per cent of their total area to Green area.

There should be monitoring team to check the sanitation structure and resilience of houses against any natural disasters during construction. The construction of housing societies on green area should be banned. There should be proper system of waste management in every housing societies. The Environmental Protection Agencies in every province should monitor the waste management system and heavy should fine be imposed in case of non-compliance. There should be fixation of ceiling of 10 per cent on profit in every housing society.

The writer is based in Islamabad and works on environmental issues. She can be reached at zilehuma_1@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, October3^rd 2017.