ABSTRACT

These changes impact on the environment in a number of ways, at both the local and global scales. Again, according to the United Nations, about 1.2 billion people still have no access to safe drinking water, and 2.4 billion do not have adequate sanitation services. Some 2 million children die every year from water-related diseases. Local authorities often lack the infrastructure, training or funding to collect all urban and industrial waste created under rapid urbanization, leading to inadequate and dangerous dumping. Indeed, the World Bank has estimated that some 30-60 per cent of urban solid waste in developing countries is uncollected, and less than 50 per cent of the population has regular waste collection services. As a result, solid waste is simply taken to unsanitary waste dumps around settlements, or pumped untreated into lakes, rivers and coastal areas. Increasingly, the environmental impacts of urbanization and industrialization are now considered part of global concerns about anthropogenic climate change – although the brown environmental agenda is usually considered in terms of how it affects poor people locally, rather than the impact of pollution on the global environment.