The request by the State Government is for fostering
technical cooperation with the Agency and towards achieving the Habitat Agenda. This is part of UN-HABITAT's advocacy and capacity building role towards
promoting sustainable urban planning project as enunciated in the UN-HABITAT
Global Report of 2009. The UN-HABITAT uses this as an entry point to continue
building on this relationship to leverage areas and mobilize resources for the
investment phase of this project. With the involvement of UN-HABITAT, we expect
to showcase Best Practices in its implementation.
UN-Habitat is the UN agency mandated to work with
ministries of housing and construction, as well as local authorities. Having
developed an effective capacity to operate across global, regional, national
and local levels, through different interventions, the agency is able to exert
impact in normative policy, as well as operational
spheres. Thus, UN-Habitat's
role focuses on instilling systemic change in the delivery of land and housing,
as
well as the planning and
management of human settlements. Fostering participatory processes and bringing
together actors from the public, private and civil society sectors has
generated a powerful synergy in UNHabitat's field interventions. Furthermore,
through the enhanced normative and operational framework, UNHabitat builds on
the advantage of bringing together this framework at country level thus
ensuring effectiveness and impact, As the "city agency" of the United
Nations, UN-Habitat is also intensifying its efforts to strengthen both the
status and capacities of local authorities and their associations to harness
their potential in attaining the Habitat Agenda and the Millennium Development
Goals.
The project is hinged on capacity building for the
staff of national, State and Local Governments, national consultants as well as
Community Based organizations to undertake an innovative participatory urban
planning for the chosen cities. The project is also complimentary to WAC Il
project in Jos, which is focused on providing access to safe water and
sanitation tor the people living in slums in inner and peri-urban areas of Jos.
The project is complementary to Anambra State Project
in which three cities namely Awka, Onitsha and Nnewi were targeted for the
preparation Of Structure plans, and Nasarawa State Project in which four cities
namely
Lafia, Doma, Karu and Keffi, were targeted for the same task. These projects were initiated by the State
Governments requesting for technical assistance from the UN-HABITAT. The
proposed project will benefit from the management strategies adopted for
manning the two state level structure plan projects.
The proposed project is also aligned with and will significantly contribute to the attainment of several of the Millennium
Development Goals which provides for poverty reduction, access to education,
reduction of HIV/AIDS infection, access to water and sanitation and improvement
in the lives of people living in slums. By implication, the project is able to
contribute to the twin goals and campaigns of the Habitat Agenda on
promoting sustainable human
settlements development (City development strategies) and adequate shelter for
all (promoting cities without
slums).
The proposed project is
completing several past and ongoing efforts including (i) past and current
efforts to adopt poverty reduction strategies by both the State and Local
Governments partly supported by the LJNDP and National Planning Commission;
(ii) UN-HABITAT sponsored photographing of Onitsha to showcase the problems and
dynamism facing medium African cities, which was presented at Shanghai Expo in
2010; (iii) The Good Urban Governance (GUG) assessment of Nigeria funded by
Oslo Governance Centre, LINDP Country Office and the UN-HABITAT as a way of
understanding the governance challenges facing local governments.
The project is very significant and is one of the
priority projects ofthe State of C)sun. It will enable the state and local
governments to fulfil their statutory obligations of adopting CDS to enable the
cities contribute to national
economic growth. It will
generate several expected outputs of the UN-HABITAT MTSIP 2008-2013 Work
Programme, including improved capacity for participatory, accountable,
pro-poor, gender and age-sensitive urban governance and planning, improved
access to housing, property and land for vulnerable groups, particularly the
poor, to achieve Millennium Declaration Target I I on slums, improved
partnerships and
collaboration with local
authorities and their association in the implementation of agreed programmes
and activities as well as improved capacity at the national and local levels to
address sustainable urban development, so that cities are safer, less
vulnerable to disaster, better able to adapt to and mitigate the effects of
climate change and manage post-disaster and post conflict situations and to
promote a positive approach of foreseeable
natural risk prevention. It is also key 10 the
attainment of the State of Osun's Economic Empowerment and Development
Strategies (SEEDS) and the Local Economic Empowerment and Development
Strategies (LEEDS) for participating Local Governments. Potential for
leveraging more funds?
