World Disasters Report 2010 - International Federation of Red Cross ...

The UNDP Country Office intervention provided technical disaster risk reduction
and recovery assistance to municipal governments. Although the project is a UNDP
initiative, it relied on the unique position of local governments to identify local priorities
to reduce disaster risk. The municipal governments prioritized four areas, to which
UNDP provided close and permanent guidance: local governance; housing and territorial
management; economic reactivation; and information management.
Results include the initiation of a process for updating and redesigning the municipalities’
development plans (ten years) and annual plans for promoting sustained recovery
and risk reduction as well as the inclusion of development and capacity-building
issues into the reconstruction, such as livelihoods, gender, information management
and institutional strengthening. Furthermore, the municipal governments’ regular
tools and methods, such as their public investments system and information systems
for monitoring and disseminating information, were improved. Land-use plans were
revised and made risk-sensitive. The comprehensive range of results has been an indication
of what can be achieved by local governments with the right support.
Essential 2
Changing standards for land-for-housing in Namibia
Windhoek, Namibia
(From International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Urban
Development and Intensive and Extensive Risk, Contribution to the Global Assessment
Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, 2009.)
The city authorities in Windhoek recognized that to reach low-income households,
they had to cut unit costs in their government-funded serviced-site programme. This
programme had to recover the costs of developing land (both for housing and with
infrastructure to official standards), but this made it too expensive for low-income
groups. This example from Namibia is interesting in that it shows how a change in
approach by the city government greatly increased the possibilities for low-income
households to be able to get their own housing.
A new government policy, developed with the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia
(a federation of savings groups formed mostly by low-income women), showed a
willingness to overturn conventional approaches to standards and regulations, for
instance in plot sizes and in infrastructure standards, to make their serviced sites more
affordable to low-income households. Plots can be rented, group purchased or leased.
Significantly, families are allowed to upgrade services as they can afford to make the
investments, extending sewerage and water lines from mains provision into their
homes. Groups that belong to the Shack Dwellers Federation have access to their own
loan fund from which they can borrow for such service improvements, and around
1,000 groups have taken such loans at an average household cost of US$ 150. However,
this underestimates the number of improvements, because once households have
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