Asia Pacific Ministerial meet on urban housing from Dec 13

New Delhi, Nov 15 (UNI) The UN Habitat estimates that 43.2 per cent of urban population of the Asia-Pacific countries was living in slums.

If no action is taken, global slums population may reach 1.4 billion by 2020. Then, one out of every two persons residing in urban areaa would be from slums.

The issue will be addressed by the coming first Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Housing and Human Settlements, aimed at devising a vision and a strategic framework for the implementation of sustainable housing and urban development for the region by 2020.

The four-day conference will be inaugurated at Vigyan Bhawan here by President APJ Abdul Kalam on December 13.

Minister of State for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Ms Selja told a news conference here today that about 500 delegates from 70 countries of the Asia-Pacific region would partcipate in the four-day meet.

She said the theme of the conference- 'A Vision for Sustainable Urbanisation in Asia Pacific' was aimed at galvanising government action and political commitment to improve the lives of slum dwellers.

''The conference is expected to produce a new vision for housing and human settlements capaitalising on the repid eceonomic growth,'' she said.

The focus of the conference is to identify strategies for turning urbanisation challenge into an opportunity for development, Ms Selja added.

The Conference would establish a high-level forum to serve as a consultative mechanism on promotion of sustainable development of human settlements in the region.

The discussions in the conference will be held on the themes of pro-poor urban Governance and Planning, slum upgradation, delivery of Millennium Development Goals for Water and Sanitation and Financing Sustainable Urbanisation.

The conference will have two segments of two days each. The first segment will be the Expert Group meetings and the second high-level segment will be the ministerial meetings to adopt the draft framework and Delhi Declaration.

Besides President Kalam, the Conference will also be attended by UN Under Secretray General and Executive Director of UN Habitata Anna Tibaijuka, housing ministers of Asiua-Pacific countries, mayors and representatives of local authoritiues, central and state ministers of India, officials and NGOs, Ms Selja said.

She also released the Logo of the Conference on the occasion.

As part of the conference, an exhibition is also being orgainsed to display and disseminate information on various initiatives, innovations, products, models and designs relating to promotion of sustainable habitat.

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