7 hours Ago By Guardian Nigeria
Stakeholders have called for cities where housing is accessible to youths, infrastructure is efficient, and communities work towards mitigating the climate change crisis. They also said that youths must be involved in tackling the multifaceted challenges of urbanisation, to raise awareness of these issues and promote collaborative action across all levels. Speaking at 2024 World Habitat Day in Abuja, the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres, said youth should be climate change makers that catalyse local action for urban sustainability, “we recognise their role in driving and shaping urban future.
” Guterres argued, “With more than half of the world’s population and 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, cities are at the forefront of the climate crisis. And they need the energy and vision of youth leading the charge for change.” He explained that by empowering young people, we can accelerate climate action and drive global progress for the Sustainable Development Goals, saying, “As we mark World Cities Day, let us celebrate the power of youth to build green, resilient and inclusive cities.
” Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa expressed delight that they have a shared ambition to build cities that work for everyone, the ideas and insights that will be shared to identify the steps to make cities more livable for all. Dangiwa also observed that the commemoration is an opportunity for everyone to work for sustainable development and play roles in shaping the future of urban areas, whether they are policymakers, community leaders, urban planners, or citizens. Speaking on ‘Youth Leading Climate and Local Action for Cities’ Prof Timothy Gyuse, stated that there are huge and abnormal increases in urban temperatures, which have affected access to affordable housing at the grassroots level.
“While there is still debate in some quarters about the reality of climate change, there is no doubt that climate change has caused devastation in recent times and nowhere has this been more felt than in cities. In Nigeria, we have always had floods in cities like Lagos at the peak of the rainy season,” Gyuse added. He said: “What we see today far exceeds normal climatic variation.
When cities like Katsina, Lafia, Abuja, and Maiduguri begin to experience devastating floods, we all need to sit up and pay attention. Floods are only the more visible and dramatic effects, which result in infrastructural and property damage amounting to trillions of naira. Sam Odia of the Millard Fuller Foundation believes that a ‘One Man, One House’ policy is possible where state governments are encouraged to create extensive semi-formal layouts and townships and allocate/sell titled land to citizens as a way of catalysing construction activities.
He said: “Most of Africa’s cities are essentially informal. City officials and housing ministers are also stuck: no matter what they do, housing deficits continue to grow. In Kenya, the informal sector is supplying houses at a scale four times that which is delivered in the formal market.
” Explaining further, Odia stressed that the Housing Finance in Africa Yearbook is arguably the most exhaustive compendium of data on affordable housing on the continent with in-depth studies of the housing market in almost every African country. “The challenge to policymakers, regulators and the private sector is not to constrain these efforts with a false trust in the formal, but to rather leverage them by better understanding what leads to, emboldens and necessitates the informal settlements.”.
