Most of the expected increase in the world’s population over the next forty years, 1.5-3 billion people, is expected to be located in the cities of the developing world. Previously we written about rapid urbanization in developing world in - Planet of Slums, World Urban Forum, urban innovation, and visualizing global urbanization. The UN expects that sometime in 2008 most people will live in cities. The Christian Science Monitor writes:
This demographic shift is mostly taking place in Africa and Asia, largely in low-income settlements in developing countries - much of it in the 22 “megacities” whose populations will exceed 10 million and in some cases grow to more than 20 million by 2015.
“Unplanned and chaotic urbanization is taking a huge toll on human health and the quality of the environment, contributing to social, ecological, and economic instability in many countries,” warns the report, which is written by demographers, international program officials, and other experts from the United States and other countries. …
But the news is not all bad. Researchers find examples of cities from Karachi, Pakistan to Freetown, Sierra Leone to Bogotá, Colombia with projects aimed at improving the lives of urban dwellers while reducing the environmental impact of concentrated populations. These include urban farming plots, solar water heaters, economic cooperatives, improved sewer facilities, and upgraded transportation systems.
Of the 3 billion people who live in cities today, about 1 billion are in slums without clean water, adequate toilet facilities, or durable housing. Some 1.6 million urban dwellers - many if not most of them children - die each year due to causes associated with the lack of clean water and sanitation.
“For a child living in a slum, disease and violence are daily threats, while education and healthcare are often a distant hope,” says Molly O’Meara Sheehan, project director of Worldwatch’s 2007 report, a collection of articles and graphics produced annually since 1984.
This argues for a reassessment of global development priorities, advocates say, particularly the allocation of national and international aid. According to the Commission for Africa, launched by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004, problems associated with urbanization are second only to HIV/AIDS on the world’s most rapidly urbanizing continent.
Yet from 1970 to 2000, aid designated for cities in developing areas was just 4 percent of total development assistance worldwide. …
By 2015, there are likely to be 59 African cities with populations between 1 million and 5 million, 65 such cities in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 253 in Asia.
“Urban centers are hubs simultaneously of breathtaking artistic innovation and some of the world’s most abject and disgraceful poverty,” writes Mr. Flavin. “They are the dynamos of the world economy but also the breeding grounds for alienation, religious extremism, and other sources of local and global insecurity.”
Cities also exemplify the challenges and promises of sustainability. China, for example, has 16 of the world’s most polluted cities. But on an island in the Yangtze River near Shanghai, China this year plans to break ground on the Dongtan ecocity project designed to be nearly self-sufficient in food, water, energy, and waste disposal for its projected 500,000 residents.
POLLUTION TO THE OROYA CITY
The years 2006 and 2007 the Blacksmith Institute have accomplished a research about the cities more contaminated to the world and arrived to the conclusion that the Oroya City was between the 10 cities more polluted of the world: Blacksmith Institute have be benevolent; according to my researchs to many years that I am publishing, the Oroya is the more polluted to Peru, Latin America and of the world and every day is being more polluted: lead in blood in children in the Ancient Oroya in average 53.7 ug/dl ( DIGESA 1999); pregnancies women 39.49 ig/dl ( UNES 2000), new borns children 19.06 ug/dl, puerperal 319 ug/100 grams/placenta ( Castro 2003) and workers 50 ig/dl ( Doe Run 2003). Top lead in blood accepted 10 ug/dl; present day is 0 ug/dl ( Pediatric of Academy to USA)
When the Oroya city was in hands to the CentroMin eliminated only by the upper chimney to 167.500 meters, in average by day in tons: sulfur dioxide 1000, lead 2500, arsenic 2500, cadmium, particulate matter 50 and so on, more 24,000 to toxis gas product to the incomplete combustion of the coal, without count it is eliminated by industrial incinerator y by the 97 smalls chimneys, it is estimated 15,000 (PAMA . El Complejo Metalúrgico de la Oroya, 1996); they add 45,000 tons by day,
Doe Run envoy every three months the concentrations of the heavy metals to the Ministry to the Energy and Mines and with the sames datums Ceverstav have demostrated the pollution was increased; for example the sulfur dioxide it have increased in near to 300 %, by increment to the production (Cederstav. La Oroya no Espera 2002
The American Assotiation to the Environment say that the environmental quality to the Oroya it is serius deteriorated since that Doe Run was owner and the same enterprise declared that the concentrations of the heavy metals gas it is ncreased in the air: lead 1160 %, cadmium 1990 % and arsenic 6006 % (Portugal, et al. Los Humos de Doe Run 2003)