Land provides food, shelter, fodder and fiber to people. It can also contribute to cultural identity and the spiritual needs of urban and rural inhabitants. As a result, it is a critical requirement for human well-being. However, it is still highly scarce and unequally distributed in urban areas, causing access and environmental justice problems. Contested property rights, land grabs and gender gaps in ownership are some of the dynamics that affect marginalized populations, particularly people with low incomes (UNEP 2016b; UNEP 2019; see also sections 4.2 and 2.2).


Governance of common land is highly contested and various actors take advantage of this to pursue construction activities that result in undesired environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, loss of access to certain resources by many city dwellers and increased surface run-off (Vencatesan et al. 2014; Jain et al. 2017; Steel, van Noorloos and Klaufus 2017). Evidence shows that clear recognition of traditional, indigenous and de facto land rights, ownership or tenure incentivizes self-investment, significantly reducing urban land degradation, improving waste management and contributing to the overall health and well-being of people and places (Ding et al. 2016; d’Amour et al. 2017; UNCCD 2017) by drawing on people’s knowledge of resource management and building climate resilience.


Urban consumption patterns remain unsustainable, which means solid waste management remains an integral challenge when it comes to the environment and public health (UNEP 2018b; see also chapter 4). Developing cities in particular are currently struggling with solid waste management crises that disproportionately affect people with low incomes, especially informal recyclers who are exposed to these hazards and residents of informal settlements near waste dumps (Tvedten and Candiracci 2018; Doherty and Brown 2019). Increasing populations, unsustainable consumption patterns and increased demand for natural resources like steel and concrete are also resulting in unsustainable production practices, such as excessive resource extraction through mining (chapters


4 and 5). This may hinder progress towards SDG 12 on sustainable consumption and production.


Since urban growth is expected to vary across regions, it is likely to be a severe issue for sustainability. This is especially true in Africa and Asia, where it has the potential to reduce agricultural and forest lands, further affecting the food systems and livelihoods (d’Amour et al. 2017). Much of this growth is likely to be unplanned due to the poor governance systems in these regions, distributing the impacts disproportionately among their populations. Overall, how land is governed will have long-term effects on social and environmental equity outcomes for future generations.


3.6 Interacting impacts and the urgency of action


This chapter has shown the intricate links between cities and their wider environments and how human life and the environment in cities is affected by changes in the environment both beyond their boundaries and within them. These environmental pressures on air, biodiversity, freshwater, land and oceans are also linked in ways that can exacerbate environmental degradation and the deterioration of human well-being. Adapting to environmental change and mitigating these impacts is essential for achieving the SDGs, not only in urban environments.


However, cities do present an opportunity to act and mitigate these impacts on a large scale, by addressing environmental, sustainability (economic and social), physical and community resilience, together with inclusive multi-level governance. These factors need to be addressed together at different administrative, spatial and temporal scales to address the environmental challenges facing and caused by cities. A sectoral approach is not enough: we urgently need planning, actions and integrated approaches that consider the interlinkages between cities and equity and the environment, incorporating nature-based solutions, that explicitly consider people and planetary health in pursuit of a better future for all.


The State of the Environment in Cities 59


© Shutterstock/Andrey Armyagov


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