Fifth Pacific Community Conference: Urbanization an emerging challenge for the Pacific

Pacific island country and territories members of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) have been urged to consider urbanization as an emerging issue with challenging social and economic impacts on their populations.

The Fifth Pacific Community Conference, on the last day of its meeting, heard that increasing urbanization was becoming a major development challenge for the region and that unmanaged urbanization could have disastrous consequences.

A Conference paper on the subject, by Gerald Haberkorn and Padamp Lal, stated that issues relating to increasing urbanization included poor access to land, insecure land tenure, poor housing with inadequate amenities, poor environmental conditions, inadequate infrastructure to meet basic needs of water and sanitation, and lack of access to education and health services.

According to the paper, vulnerable groups such as youth and female-headed households will face increasing hardships in the face of urbanization, while poverty remains a growing concern in proliferating informal urban settlements and raises the potential for violence, substance abuse and other crime-related activities.

The Prime Minister of Niue, Young Vivian, challenged his colleagues to help preserve culture and traditions and influence people to move back to villages. Following a decentralization approach, Premier Vivian stressed that all the amenities and infrastructure that attract people to urban centres should be made accessible in villages.

Mr. Haberkorn and Ms. Lal, presenting their paper, emphasized the need to understand the issues (demographic, social, economic, cultural, institutional) and their root causes, sources and symptoms, and the importance of changing people’s mindsets to help tackle urbanization problems.
Closing the meeting, the Director-General of the SPC, Mr. Jimmie Rodgers, made a pledge to the Conference to continue SPC’s efficient delivery of services to its 22 Pacific island member countries and territories.

The Conference noted the challenges facing the region and its member states and directed SPC to pursue appropriate and sustainable solutions to meet these challenges.
(Sources: SPC Press releases, 13 and 14 November 2007)