Group4_B | SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities: Towards Sustainable Development

Introduction

If we go by numbers, more than half of the world population is now living in the cities and with the rapid technological advancements and urbanization, it is expected that by 2050, two-thirds of all humanity will be living in an urban eco-system. The urban spaces in cities occupy just 3% of the total land area on Earth but account for a staggering 60-80% of energy footprints and at least 70% of the total carbon emissions (www.undp.org). With GDP being the metric for determining the criteria for development, the economic role of the cities, which contributes 80% of the global GDP (www.undp.org) becomes more vital. In this regard, developing sustainable cities and building a culture of sustainability on a community level is one of the sustainable development goals defined by the United Nations. The components of reaching the goal of sustainable cities and communities include the following:

• Creating Career Opportunities- By 2030, the world is projected to have 43 megacities (www.undp.org) with a population of more than 10 million and this growth would primarily be driven by the developing nations. It is estimated that 95% (in.one.un.org) of urban expansion will take place in the developing world. Most people migrate to these big, sprawling cities in search of a better life, but because of high poverty rates, unemployment, and high costs of living, they are forced to settle for substandard quality of life. These issues could be addressed by long-term policy measures to increase job opportunities and reduce the inequitable distribution of wealth.

• Building Resilient Economies and Societies- As of 2018, the percentage of urban people living in slums stood at 24%(in.one.un.org). As the pandemic has shown, a globalized world economy is quite fragile and prone to disruptions. It is very important to build resilience into the economic units on a local city-wide scale. Tackling issues like clean air, access to water and health care, a robust public transport system thus becomes essential.

• Urban Planning and Management- Concerns over sustainability, climate change continues to draw attention to sustainable urban planning and management. Sustainable solutions for efficient urban planning include non-conventionally powered homes, green open spaces, green housing, and office complexes, and sustainable land use planning. With rapid urbanization, strategies to deal with the pressures created due to depleting freshwater supplies, sewage management, public health infrastructure, etc have to be figured out.

• Social Inclusion and diversity- We are living in a very small and increasingly connected world. The lines between geographic and linguistic barriers are getting blurred, with people migrating towards mega-cities in large numbers. In order to create an ecosystem that promotes sustainable practices in urban spaces, it is essential that social issues are handled effectively, with proper representation from all spheres in the decision-making process.

Relevance to India

India is leading its way to be one of the most rapidly urbanizing developing nations as the growth of urban population is estimated to be 40% by 2030, far from the 28% in 2001 and the number of over million population cities are going to reach 68% by 2030 (wri-india.org). The urban population rose by 91 million just in the 2001-2011 period and the same is going to increase by 416 million between 2018 and 2050 (in.one.un.org). As we see all these statistics, it is clear to understand the special significance of sustainable cities and communities in the Indian context.

The consequences of poor and short-sighted urban and regional planning can be highlighted by alarming air quality degradation in Delhi, Dharavi, one of the largest urban slums in the world and home to more than a million people, and Chennai with unseasonal flooding in the recent past.

The economic growth opportunities for the rural population behind this urbanization are likely to increase the pressure on cities' resources significantly causing the issue of unsustainable cities and lifestyles for a large mass of the population. Thus, India must adopt measures to manage this stress sustainably otherwise the consequence will be paid by the economically and resource-challenged section of society increasing inequality resulting in poverty, hunger, violence against women and children, and political instability. Sustainable Cities stimulate solutions to these problems by working in four strategic areas – Integrated Urban Transport, Urban Development & Accessibility, Transport and Climate, and Health and Road Safety (wri-india.org).

The Smart Cities Mission, the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), the prime minister’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, and Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission are some of the initiatives undertaken by the Indian government to address the challenge of improving urban spaces. (in.one.un.org)

INDICATORS SELECTED FOR SDG INDIA INDEX & THE 2030 TARGET:

Houses completed under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) as a percentage of net demand assessment for houses-100%
Percentage of urban households living in slums- 0%
Percentage of wards with 100% door to door waste collection-100%
Percentage of waste processed-100% (sdg-11-in-the-indian-context)

Business Implications:

The components of sustainable cities and communities have significant business implications and businesses can play a vital role in their transformation. The primary approach for the businesses would be to make their operations sustainable and contribute to the creation of sustainable communities. In this regard, as the businesses look to invest in renewable sources of energy and sustainable practices, it generates more employment in the communities that they operate in. This in turn promotes the upliftment of such communities which is further accelerated by the social initiatives that these companies undertake. Businesses also play a major role in the introduction of sustainable methods that bring about a positive impact on the environmental conditions and provide the impetus for a large-scale transformation. Lastly, companies promote social inclusion and diversity through their employee hiring programs and ensure adequate representation while also combating socially created differences in pay.

Business Responses:

Amazon1:

Renewable energy: Amazon is on the path to using 100% renewable energy by 2025. It has set up 4 new renewable energy projects in Australia, Sweden, Spain, and the US in 2020 thereby creating employment and promoting sustainability. Amazon already procures 42% of its total energy via sustainable means and distributes excess energy to US households.
Sustainable transportation: Amazon works towards sustainable transportation by electrifying its fleet, maximizing its efficiency on current vehicles, optimizing the delivery logistics, and using alternative measures to deliver products by foot or on bicycles under its Shipment Zero initiative to move toward zero-emission delivery.
Green buildings: Amazon has committed to sustainable workplaces by holding their buildings to the green standards of LEED and BREEAM. Their corporate offices integrate seamlessly with the local communities and energy-efficient lighting, recycling, and renewable energy generation make them sustainable.

Citibank2:

Green Bonds: Citibank has been one of the largest underwriters of green, social, and sustainable bonds in 2019. It has helped its clients raise $7.8 billion to meet their environmental and sustainable needs.
2025 Sustainable Progress Strategy: Citibank is committed to the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy. In accordance with the Paris accords and the SDGs of the UN, it has formulated a three-pronged approach: Sustainable Operations, Climate Change, and Low Carbon transition.
Sustainable Operations: Citibank employs around 200,000 employees in 97 countries with a diverse workforce impacting the local communities. Its efforts reduce the direct impact on the environment, cuts costs, and enhance productivity. The 2025 goals are as follows:

40% reduction in energy consumption and maintain 100% renewable energy sourcing.

30% reduction in total water consumption with 25% sourced from reused water.
50% reduction in total waste and 50% diverted away from landfills

Colgate Palmolive3:

Colgate Palmolive has a sustainability and social impact mission that operates under the triple goals of driving social impact, impacting millions of homes, and preserving the environment.
Helping millions of homes: Colgate designs products that are sustainable and helps to improve the ecological footprint of all the products via innovation. It helps inculcate sustainable practices and information choices via programs like Colgate Bright Smiles and Bright Future programs.

Preservation of environment: Colgate promotes sustainable usage of resources via various goals like zero net water in manufacturing sites in water-stressed areas by 2025 and overall, by 2030, sustainable sourcing of ingredients with zero net deforestation, 100% zero waste operations, 100% renewable energy by 2030 and net-zero carbon by 2040. It is also designing zero plastic waste solutions for all its products.

RPG Group4:

RPG foundation has supported the community during the COVID-19 pandemic by distributing protective gear and ventilators to help frontline workers and police officials. More than 27,000 masks and hot meals have been distributed to the police force via the CEAT Bhandup plant. The foundation has opened its plants as centers for the distribution of hot meals to migrant laborers and daily wage earners. Partnered with Godrej and BMC to launch the Milkar program to feed communities having limited access to food. More than 5.40 lakh hot meals served, 1.13 lakh masks produced, 9043 trucks sanitized and more than 7 crore funds raised under the Milkar program as a fight against COVID-19.

Analysis of the situation

In understanding and analyzing the future of Sustainable Cities and Communities, that is SDG 11, we need to understand sustainable urban development.

Hiremath et al. (2013) define sustainable urban development as an activity of achieving a balance between urban area development and protection to the environment at the same time. Marshal-Llacuna et al. (2015) state that cities should be evaluated based on their past experiences of how environmentally friendly the cities were in addition to the existence of technological factors. A paper by Dhingra and Chattopadhyay (2016) states four attributes of sustainable cities: a) Quality of life; b) Sustainability; c) Urban Aspects; and d) Intelligence. 5

Here, it is pertinent to talk about Dubai as a sustainable and smart city.6 On its journey to becoming a sustainable and smart city, Dubai developed and launched two major initiatives, namely, Smart Dubai Platform (SDP) and Dubai Data. The SDP helping in unifying the common data needs by identifying the synergies. The SDP entailed numerous capital and operational challenges and expenditure associated with its implementation. The initial SDP platform services included, i) open and shared city-data catalog, ii) Geo-location data support, iii) Digital Id services, to name a few. This is an innovative way of building sustainable smart cities. These initiatives have had a positive impact on the triple bottom line, namely economic, social, and environmental areas in Dubai.

From the Dubai model, we can identify the key pillars that are very basic to the development and growth of sustainable, smart cities and communities anywhere around the world. They are:

Unified platform: Such a platform which is a storehouse of data, and can facilitate easy problem-solving solutions to its citizens forms a very integral part of sustainable cities. The SDP as discussed in brief above is an example of such a unified platform.

Standards: Specific standards need to be defined in order to give an appropriate structure and measure the functioning of various initiatives involved in the development and governance of sustainable cities.
Policies & Law: Policies would be a major driving or inhibiting force for any initiative and its functioning for sustainable cities. Policies that mandate the action of numerous stakeholders have the power to make a greater change. The introduction of law would give the complete structure a shape and boundaries beyond which actions and operations cannot be performed.

Covid-19 and it's meaning for the development of SDG-11 in India7

90% of total Covid cases in India were detected in the Urban areas, making such areas the epicenter of the virus. The reason can be traced back to urban planning and the deficiencies in the same.

Following are the deficiencies in the Urban planning of India:

Sub-optimal Housing and overcrowding: The above data shows that a huge majority of the people in urban places do not have access to affordable housing facilities.
Access to water and Sanitation: Again, the graph shows, how about 19.4% of total inhabitants do not have access to soap, clean water, and toilets which form the base for sustainable development.
Access to green spaces: Access to such spaces is not equal, as areas housing affluent people have better access to green spaces when compared to the lower-income category people.

Finally, on assessing the above parameters, we realize that the pandemic has exposed our skewed sustainable development efforts and results. This is an eye-opener and we should learn from this to put our money where our mouth is and actually make a difference in the development of sustainable cities and communities.

Suggested Path Ahead

Learning from other cities:

While the seriousness of these common challenges varies from place to place, all cities face similar sustainability challenges. In the road to sustainability, cities would undoubtedly contain elements that are like other metropolitan environments and have components that are shared and components that are specific to that city.

Data-Driven Metrics underpinned by Scientific Research to set Benchmark:

Sustainable Cities still face a number of challenges when it comes to management, planning, design, development, and governance. This involves having efficient methods to monitor, analyze, and manage in order to maintain sustainable cities. In order to create sustainability benchmarks and measures with benchmark goals and trends, reliable data is important. Most of the current metrics do not have strong scientific underpinning. So, policymakers must realize the importance of harboring this data in future to build Data-driven smart sustainable cities and making metrics connected to implementation, impact, and cost analyses to ensure efficiency, impact, and stakeholder engagement.

Attaining Carbon Neutrality: Create a plan by focussing on Mobility, Energy, and Biodiversity:

By 2050, about 68% of the World’s population would be living in cities. In order to make sure the future cities do not turn out looking like today’s, there’s a pressing need to focus on green cities.

Mobility: Transport contributes more to carbon emission than any other sector. Develop a culture of increasing Public Transport and using bicycles and walking for smaller distances. This initially requires the development of infrastructure to support only bikes route throughout the city. This helps cut down a lot of carbon emissions. For e.g. In Denmark, 62% of the population uses the bike network, and only 9% drive daily.

Energy: Using more renewable energy and smart solutions. The cities of the future should go a step further, though, considering energy conservation in building design itself. For example, Copenhagen uses one of the most successful district heating systems. It works by using a network of pipes to capture leftover heat from electricity production, then delivers that heat to homes across the city.

Biodiversity: As cities grow, the natural habitat gets destroyed. Sustainable cities will have to look at maintaining wildlife within city limits. For example, Munich, Germany, has taken the approach of letting sheep graze in public parks, making them more natural environments.

Waste Management:

While recycling is already going through, sustainable cities of tomorrow would have to investigate not just reducing but removing waste sustainably. For example, The San Bernardino Waste to Energy Project converts organic food waste to renewable energy and thus helping divert 93850 tons annually from landfills.

To implement the above-mentioned points a few steps need to be taken first:

Partnership and collaborations: These actions cannot be taken by only a single entity or government. It requires the engagement of communities, businesses, and a diverse group of citizens. Long term public-private partnerships with citizen support and engagement. Universities, national laboratories, foundations, and other independent third-party institutions should also be roped in.

While sustainability has been more about the environment, it is now about people. Sustainability must focus on Education, human health, and reducing wealth inequality, along with nature to ensure a better quality of life.

References

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Group4_B | SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities: Towards Sustainable Development

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