Accumulation of risk.
Unsustainable development practices make people more vulnerable to disasters. This is particularly true for urban settings faced with poorly planned, badly built or informal housing and infrastructure. Currently, there are about 1 billion people living in mega slums without access to basic services and often on high-risk areas, as illustrated in Kallayanpur slum, one of the urban slums in Dhaka. One of the definitions established by United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat) for a slum household is that it lacks permanent and adequate housing in a non-hazardous location, protection inhabitants from the extremes of climatic conditions such as rain, heat, cold or humidity. If informal settlements continues to be the main mechanism for absorbing urban growth around the world, there will be a commensurate increase in disaster risk.
Photo by Kibae Park / UN Photo
Accumulation of risk.
Unsustainable development practices make people more vulnerable to disasters. This is particularly true for urban settings faced with poorly planned, badly built or informal housing and infrastructure. Currently, there are about 1 billion people living in mega slums without access to basic services and often on high-risk areas, as illustrated in Kallayanpur slum, one of the urban slums in Dhaka. One of the definitions established by United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat) for a slum household is that it lacks permanent and adequate housing in a non-hazardous location, protection inhabitants from the extremes of climatic conditions such as rain, heat, cold or humidity. If informal settlements continues to be the main mechanism for absorbing urban growth around the world, there will be a commensurate increase in disaster risk.
Photo by Kibae Park / UN Photo