David Satterthwaite
Biographic Data
| ID | 990309 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Satterthwaite |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Satterthwaite |
| SIGNATURE | SATTERTHWAITE D |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Institute for Environment and Development |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0077-1353 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 620 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 68 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Building Resilience to Climate Change in Informal Settlements
Local response in health emergencies
This paper highlights the major challenges and considerations for addressing COVID-19 in informal settlements. It discusses what is known about vulnerabilities and how to support local protective action. There is heightened concern about informal urban settlements because of the combination of population density and inadequate access to water and sanitation, which makes standard advice about social distancing and washing hands implausible. There …
A spectrum of methods for a spectrum of risk
Many African towns and cities face a range of hazards, which can best be described as representing a “spectrum of risk” of events that can cause death, illness or injury, and impoverishment. Yet despite the growing numbers of people living in African urban centres, the extent and relative severity of these different risks is poorly understood. This paper provides a rationale for using a spectrum of methods to address this spectrum of risk, and de…
Revealing and Responding to Multiple Health Risks in Informal Settlements in Sub-Saharan African Cities
Improving the health and welfare of people who live in slums
The history, geography, and sociology of slums and the health problems of people who live in slums
Climate change, equity and the Sustainable Development Goals
Climate change is acknowledged as the largest threat to our societies in the coming decades, potentially affecting large and diverse groups of urban residents in this century of urbanization. As urban areas house highly diverse people with differing vulnerabilities, intensifying climate change is likely to shift the focus of discussions from a general urban perspective to who in cities will be affected by climate change, and how. This brings the …
Will Africa have most of the world’s largest cities in 2100
This paper responds to the article by Daniel Hoornweg and Kevin Pope, on predictions for the world’s largest cities in the 21st century, in this issue of Environment and Urbanization. It recognizes the value and importance of this article in highlighting the very large likely scale of urban population growth up to 2100 and in initiating a discussion on what this might imply for the scale and distribution of the world’s largest cities. But it rais…
Cities for Children
Urban authorities and organizations are responsible for providing the basic services that affect the lives of urban children. Cities for Children is intended to help them understand and respond to the rights and requirements of children and adolescents. It looks at the responsibilities that authorities face, and discusses practical measures for meeting their obligations in the context of limited resources and multiple demands. While the book emph…
Missing the Millennium Development Goal targets for water and sanitation in urban areas
This paper reviews progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water and sanitation in urban areas. Drawing on UN data, it shows the disastrous performance of many low- and middle-income nations in relation to the goal of halving the proportion without drinking water sources piped on premises and improved sanitation between 1990 and 2015. It also describes how even such a poor performance is actually understating the problem beca…
A new urban agenda
The text for what is termed “The New Urban Agenda” is being prepared for agreement by national government representatives at Habitat III, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in Quito in October 2016. The most pressing issue for this Agenda is not so much in what it says. We can predict with some certainty that there will be ringing endorsements for urban centres to be resilient, sustainable, safe and inclusi…
Disaster risk and its reduction
Populations and assets, in African cities, small and large, are among the most vulnerable to disaster risk globally. Climate change and demographic shifts add urgency and uncertainty. This paper outlines priorities for research responding to this challenge. We argue for integrative approaches that can capture multi-hazard risk and include hazards from across the spectrum of everyday to catastrophic, and their interactions. For such approaches to …
Is it possible to reach low-income urban dwellers with good-quality sanitation
Towards transformative adaptation in cities
This paper considers the very large differences in adaptive capacity among the world’s urban centres. It then discusses how risk levels may change for a range of climatic drivers of impacts in the near term (2030–2040) and the long term (2080–2100) with a 2°C and a 4°C warming for Dar es Salaam, Durban, London and New York City. The paper is drawn directly from Chapter 8 of Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, the IPCC Work…
Getting local governments, residents and enterprises to respond to the new IPCC assessment
Reducing Poverty and Sustaining the Environment
Reducing Poverty and Sustaining the Environment
The political underpinnings of cities’ accumulated resilience to climate change
The impacts of climate change in any city are obviously influenced by the quality of its housing and other buildings, its infrastructure and services. These were not built with climate change risks in mind, although they were influenced by environmental health risks that were present when they were constructed (including those from extreme weather) and often by responses to past disasters. Well-governed cities that have greatly reduced these risk…
Towards resilience and transformation for cities within a finite planet
Gender and urban change
Promoting Health and Advancing Development through Improved Housing in Low-Income Settings
How can urban centers adapt to climate change with ineffective or unrepresentative local governments
This article considers the prospects for urban areas in the Global South to adapt to climate change. It describes how most of the needed adaptations in the next few decades can be integrated into existing government functions, investments, regulations, and agencies. It also considers why most such measures are unlikely to be implemented—because of either the lack of capacity within urban governments or their unwillingness to address the infrastru…
Roundtable on Urban Living Environment Research (Ruler)
Urbanization and its implications for food and farming
This paper discusses the influences on food and farming of an increasingly urbanized world and a declining ratio of food producers to food consumers. Urbanization has been underpinned by the rapid growth in the world economy and in the proportion of gross world product and of workers in industrial and service enterprises. Globally, agriculture has met the demands from this rapidly growing urban population, including food that is more energy-, lan…
The Contribution of Cities to Global Warming and their Potential Contributions to Solutions
Cities are often considered to be major causes of climate change (through being centres of carbon intensive production and consumption). But as this article explains, the proportion of greenhouse gas emissions that are generated in cities is usually over-stated. In addition, blaming cities misses the point that they can be potential solutions as places where high living standards are achieved with much lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions per…
Cities' contribution to global warming
This paper suggests that the contribution of cities to global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is often overstated. Many sources suggest that cities are responsible for 75—80 per cent of all such emissions. But as statistics drawn from the IPCC's Fourth Assessment show, this considerably understates the contributions from agriculture and deforestation and from heavy industries, fossil-fuelled power stations and high-consumption households t…
The implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change
This paper considers the implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change. It emphasizes that it is not the growth in (urban or rural) populations that drives the growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but rather, the growth in consumers and in their levels of consumption. A significant proportion of the world’s urban (and rural) populations have consumption levels that are so low that they contribute little or nothing to s…
Local response in health emergencies
This paper highlights the major challenges and considerations for addressing COVID-19 in informal settlements. It discusses what is known about vulnerabilities and how to support local protective action. There is heightened concern about informal urban settlements because of the combination of population density and inadequate access to water and sanitation, which makes standard advice about social distancing and washing hands implausible. There …
Climate change, equity and the Sustainable Development Goals
Climate change is acknowledged as the largest threat to our societies in the coming decades, potentially affecting large and diverse groups of urban residents in this century of urbanization. As urban areas house highly diverse people with differing vulnerabilities, intensifying climate change is likely to shift the focus of discussions from a general urban perspective to who in cities will be affected by climate change, and how. This brings the …
Towards transformative adaptation in cities
This paper considers the very large differences in adaptive capacity among the world’s urban centres. It then discusses how risk levels may change for a range of climatic drivers of impacts in the near term (2030–2040) and the long term (2080–2100) with a 2°C and a 4°C warming for Dar es Salaam, Durban, London and New York City. The paper is drawn directly from Chapter 8 of Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, the IPCC Work…
The Millennium Development Goals and urban poverty reduction
This paper outlines the importance of the Millennium Development Goals for urban populations, and some reasons for concern regarding their implementation. It argues that the institutional structures and processes of international donors and national governments can be incompatible with the effective achievement of poverty reduction. It also explains that the relevance of the Millennium Development Goals for urban populations has been neglected by…
From everyday hazards to disasters
Many disasters take place in urban areas, affecting millions of people each year through loss of life, serious injury and loss of assets and livelihoods. Poorer groups are generally most affected. The impact of these disasters and their contribution to poverty are underestimated, as is the extent to which rapidly growing and poorly managed urban development increases the risks. But urban specialists do not see disasters and disaster prevention as…
Sustainable Cities or Cities that Contribute to Sustainable Development
This paper outlines a framework for assessing the environmental performance of cities in regard to the meeting of sustainable development goals. It also considers how the environmental goals fit with the social, economic and political goals of sustainable development and the kinds of national framework and international context needed to encourage city-based consumers, enterprises and governments to progress towards their achievement. In a final …
The Poor Die Young
The urban context community action to address housing and health problems - the case of San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina housing and health in Olaleye-Iponri, a low income settlement in Lagos, Nigeria housing and health in three squatter settlements in Allahabad, India water supply and the urban poor low cost sanitation surface water drainage in urban areas the collection and management of household garbage the role of house design in limiti…
Missing the Millennium Development Goal targets for water and sanitation in urban areas
This paper reviews progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water and sanitation in urban areas. Drawing on UN data, it shows the disastrous performance of many low- and middle-income nations in relation to the goal of halving the proportion without drinking water sources piped on premises and improved sanitation between 1990 and 2015. It also describes how even such a poor performance is actually understating the problem beca…
The Links between Poverty and the Environment in Urban Areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America
This article suggests that there is little evidence of urban poverty being a significant contributor to environmental degradation but strong evidence that urban environmental hazards are major contributors to urban poverty. The article considers the link between poverty and different categories of environmental hazards (biological pathogens, chemical pollutants, and physical hazards). It then considers the links between poverty and high use of no…
Institutional Capacity, Climate Change Adaptation and the Urban Poor
A new urban agenda
The text for what is termed “The New Urban Agenda” is being prepared for agreement by national government representatives at Habitat III, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in Quito in October 2016. The most pressing issue for this Agenda is not so much in what it says. We can predict with some certainty that there will be ringing endorsements for urban centres to be resilient, sustainable, safe and inclusi…
The political underpinnings of cities’ accumulated resilience to climate change
The impacts of climate change in any city are obviously influenced by the quality of its housing and other buildings, its infrastructure and services. These were not built with climate change risks in mind, although they were influenced by environmental health risks that were present when they were constructed (including those from extreme weather) and often by responses to past disasters. Well-governed cities that have greatly reduced these risk…
Reducing urban poverty
This paper discusses the institutional constraints that aid agencies and development banks face in being able to address urban poverty. These include their limited capacity to support local institutions that respond to the needs and priorities of low-income groups and that are accountable to them. It describes the distance between the decision-making processes of most international agencies and the “urban poor” and the very limited possibilities …
Is it possible to reach low-income urban dwellers with good-quality sanitation
Gender and urban change
The Millennium Development Goals and urban poverty reduction
The impact on health urban environments
The impact on healt of urban environments reviews the range and variety of environmental hazards present in urban areas including biological pathogens, chemical pollutants, physical hazards and psychosocial stressors and their impact on human health. It also discusses how and why it is low-income groups (and within such groups women and children) who generally bear most of the health burden
Revealing and Responding to Multiple Health Risks in Informal Settlements in Sub-Saharan African Cities
Towards resilience and transformation for cities within a finite planet
Environmental Transformations in Cities as They Get Larger, Wealthier and Better Managed
This paper considers the environmental transformations that occur within cities as they get larger, wealthier and better managed - and the environmental implications these bring both for the city inhabitants and for people and ecosystems outside these cities. One reason why the environmental quality of wealthy cities can improve is the capacity of the consumers and producers they concentrate to transfer some of their environmental costs to other …
Disaster risk and its reduction
Populations and assets, in African cities, small and large, are among the most vulnerable to disaster risk globally. Climate change and demographic shifts add urgency and uncertainty. This paper outlines priorities for research responding to this challenge. We argue for integrative approaches that can capture multi-hazard risk and include hazards from across the spectrum of everyday to catastrophic, and their interactions. For such approaches to …
Shelter, infrastructure and services in third world cities
Reducing urban poverty; some lessons from experience
Many donor agencies are recognizing the need to address the growing levels of urban poverty in Africa, Latin America and much of Asia. Many also acknowledge that they had under-estimated the scale of urban poverty. As they develop or expand programmes on poverty reduction in urban areas, there are many remarkable initiatives on whose experience they can draw. This paper reflects on the lessons from seven of these: three from Asia, three from Lati…
Progress for a small planet
ISoCaRP
Organizations
The sectoral and spatial distribution of multilateral aid for human settlements
Seminar on European nations' bilateral aid and human settlements, Chamarande, France, October 1983
Third world cities and the environment of poverty
Urbanization and planning in the Third World; spatial perceptions and public participation
Shelter, infrastructure and services in third world cities
Urban change in the third world
Housing and health
El cambio urbano en el Tercer Mundo. ¿Son las últimas tendencias un indicador útil del futuro urbano
Ante las proyecciones de la población urbana para el año 2000 elaboradas por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), así como su pronóstico acerca del crecimiento de las ciudades del Tercer Mundo, este artículo cuestiona la validez de los datos utilizados para pronosticar el cambio urbano en el Tercer Mundo. Posteriormente se analiza la posibilidad de hacer generalizaciones válidas sobre el cambio urbano en el Tercer Mundo, en vista de la d…
The Poor Die Young
The urban context community action to address housing and health problems - the case of San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina housing and health in Olaleye-Iponri, a low income settlement in Lagos, Nigeria housing and health in three squatter settlements in Allahabad, India water supply and the urban poor low cost sanitation surface water drainage in urban areas the collection and management of household garbage the role of house design in limiti…
The impact on health urban environments
The impact on healt of urban environments reviews the range and variety of environmental hazards present in urban areas including biological pathogens, chemical pollutants, physical hazards and psychosocial stressors and their impact on human health. It also discusses how and why it is low-income groups (and within such groups women and children) who generally bear most of the health burden
Towards a sustainable urban environment
Environmental Problems in Third World Cities
City inequality
Urban Poverty
Summaries The article describes how and why the scale of urban poverty in much of Africa, Asia and Latin America seems to have been underestimated, its nature misunderstood (or for political reasons, misrepresented) and the best means for reducing it rarely acted upon. It suggests that the income level needed to avoid poverty in most urban areas has been underestimated, largely because too little consideration is given to the cost of essential no…
Sustainable Cities or Cities that Contribute to Sustainable Development
This paper outlines a framework for assessing the environmental performance of cities in regard to the meeting of sustainable development goals. It also considers how the environmental goals fit with the social, economic and political goals of sustainable development and the kinds of national framework and international context needed to encourage city-based consumers, enterprises and governments to progress towards their achievement. In a final …
Environmental Transformations in Cities as They Get Larger, Wealthier and Better Managed
This paper considers the environmental transformations that occur within cities as they get larger, wealthier and better managed - and the environmental implications these bring both for the city inhabitants and for people and ecosystems outside these cities. One reason why the environmental quality of wealthy cities can improve is the capacity of the consumers and producers they concentrate to transfer some of their environmental costs to other …
The Environment for Children
Reducing urban poverty; some lessons from experience
Many donor agencies are recognizing the need to address the growing levels of urban poverty in Africa, Latin America and much of Asia. Many also acknowledge that they had under-estimated the scale of urban poverty. As they develop or expand programmes on poverty reduction in urban areas, there are many remarkable initiatives on whose experience they can draw. This paper reflects on the lessons from seven of these: three from Asia, three from Lati…
Ciudades sustentables o ciudades que contribuyen al desarrollo sustentable
Este artículo esboza un marco para evaluar el desempeño ambiental de las ciudades en relación con el cumplimiento de las metas del desarrollo sustentable. También considera la manera como éstas se ajustan a las metas sociales, económicas y políticas del desarrollo sustentable y menciona las estructuras nacionales y contextos internacionales necesarios para estimular a los consumidores, empresas y gobiernos urbanos a progresar hacia su cumplimient…
Reducing urban poverty
This paper discusses the institutional constraints that aid agencies and development banks face in being able to address urban poverty. These include their limited capacity to support local institutions that respond to the needs and priorities of low-income groups and that are accountable to them. It describes the distance between the decision-making processes of most international agencies and the “urban poor” and the very limited possibilities …
From professionally driven to people-driven poverty reduction
Reducing urban poverty
This paper discusses the institutional constraints that aid agencies and development banks face in being able to address urban poverty. These include their limited capacity to support local institutions that respond to the needs and priorities of low-income groups and that are accountable to them. It describes the distance between the decision-making processes of most international agencies and the “urban poor” and the very limited possibilities …
Geography (54 works) · Economics (45 works) · Political science (41 works) · Economic growth (38 works) · Environmental planning (33 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (32 works) · Business (29 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Poverty (17 works) · Development economics (13 works)