By 2015, there will be 58 cities on the planet with a population of five million or more and by 2025, according to National Intelligence Council, 27 cities with a population exceeding ten million. The United Nations Population Division classifies populations in excess of 10 million as megacities and many of these urban behemoths will be located in the so-called 10/40 window—the area in Africa and Asia between north latitude 10 and 40 degrees. This emerging growth will have serious, if as yet largely underappreciated, consequences for international stability, human security and environmental degradation.
The “10/40 window” demarks regions of the world where socioeconomic challenges are the most daunting; where two-thirds of the world’s population and four-fifths of the world’s poor live. This “window” is a veritable stew of competing religious identities and ethnic groups. This part of the world has been resistant to western political and social culture in general—yet mass media make the people there keenly aware of the advantages of the materialism associated with western modernity.
Are their governments on track to eliminate corruption? Give folks opportunities?
A handful of megacities should be of particular concern because of their very size, strategic locations, role in the global economy, or environmental vulnerability. Lagos, Cairo, Kinshasa, Dhaka, Karachi, Lahore, Mumbai, and Jakarta (all located in or near the “10/40” window) are overflowing and ungovernable, yet continue to grow rapidly. Each of these “mega-eights” will have populations in excess of ten million in 2025. Each has already reached, or may well soon exceed, its carrying capacity for effective governance and control.
Obama wants bigger government? Seems like big government in the US has passed it's capacity for effective government - look at the fraud, waste, overpayments, and abuse?
How will Obama ever contol anything? Seems like a good time to push these responsibilities back onto the states.
Many businesses go through this cycle. When central control stifles innovation and profit, control and decision making are pushed to the smaller business units.
In Lagos, police rarely enter slums, life expectancy is less than 40 years, and fishing is one of the main occupations even though raw sewage is routinely dumped directly into the water. Thirty-eight percent of children under five are stunted by malnutrition; 50 percent have never received an inoculation; only 60 percent attend school; and residents must provide transportation for investigators to a crime scene. As conditions in Lagos deteriorate, large numbers of city residents may ultimately vote with their feet and stampede into nearby Benin which is only a half-day walk from the city.
The poor in Michelle's food deserts must seem like paradise.
Hope?
What we offer here are not panaceas for seemingly insurmountable problems; equally, these actions cannot be taken in isolation from each other. As practical means to achievable ends, they should be tailored to deal with specific environments, as well as common symptoms within the “mega-eights.” One of the most deep-rooted problems is an element common to many states and urban leviathans: corruption. Practical steps for effective action include:
1. Take on the Politics of Plunder. Governments and mega-city leaders themselves—not foreign donors—should design projects and set agendas that focus on both physical and social infrastructure improvement, urban design and planning, as well as health and education improvement. Political leaders must be held accountable.
2. Heavy Investment in Regional Organizations. Within the 10/40 window there are regional organizations that have begun to play an important role in peacekeeping; for example, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States. These regional organizations offer better prospects for more effective action than global organizations, like the United Nations.
4. A Grand Bargain between Governments and Non-governmental Organizations. As a recent World Bank study noted, aid works best when donors work together for common long-term goals, instead of as competitors for political advantage or, in the case of private organizations, for fundraising publicity.
5. Mobilize and Coordinate the Targeting of Private Donations. A considerable amount of aid—and of course, investment—comes from the private sector. For the United States alone, the dollar value of American “foreign aid” provided by citizens, corporations and foundations through private sector channels was almost $16 billion in 2000. There is no question, but that this aid could be more effectively spent. One important area where more funds should be spent is municipal governance in the emerging megacities.
The concerns here are not over the lack of governance. Who, after all, ever thought that Karachi or Cairo or Lagos had effective governance? Rather, our focus is on the conditions that arise in the security vacuum in the critical megacities of the planet, which allow for criminality, terrorism, and parallel power structures to follow in the wake of collapsing urban environments. Indeed, in this space—and if conditions are ignored or overlooked—we may well see an age of continuous conflict breaking out across the 10/40 window. Urban warfare may be the new operating environment that international security forces could be drawn into. Successful alliances, such as NATO, may adapt or permanently fracture in rising to the challenge.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/2010/02/31694-mega-eights-urban-leviathans-and.htmlInteresting article. Eye opener for me.
