European Union - UN Habitat hosts consultation National Settlements

Port Moresby, 27 February 2015: The Office of Urbanization today, concluded its first stakeholder

consultation on a National Settlements Upgrading Strategy at the Holiday Inn on 26 -27 February 2015 as part of the global initiative 'Participatory Settlements Upgrading Programme' (PSUP). PSUP is an initiative of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Secretariat, funded by the European Union and

implemented by UN-Habitat.

Launched in 2008, the overall objective of the PSUP is to contribute to the improvement of the living

conditions of the urban poor and to contribute to Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7, including:

target C, "to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water

and basic sanitation"; and, target D, "to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100

million slum dwellers by 2020". The programme is currently being implemented in 35 countries.

This workshop comes at an opportune time when the challenge of affordable housing is widely

discussed in Papua New Guinea and an increasing number of Papua New Guineans live in informal

settlements. Based on current trends, almost 50 percent of the urban population may live in informal

settlements by 2030.

In this context, EU Ambassador to Papua New Guinea, Martin Dihm, stated that "today, more than half

of the world’s population live in urban areas and by 2050, all regions are expected to be predominantly

urban. Appropriate policies and careful planning in participation with communities is needed to manage

urbanisation responsibly. Papua New Guinea is also experiencing rapid growth of urban centres.

Consequently, this workshop comes in the right moment for Papua New Guinea given that it recently

introduced the National Population Policy.

At the workshop, findings from the National Capital District (an overall assessment and specific findings

from selected settlements) as well as settlements around the country will be presented. Given the

interdependence of a broad range of development challenges in the settlements a comprehensive

settlements upgrading strategy is being proposed, including the following broad areas for intervention: (1) Social development, (2) land, (3) infrastructure and urban basic services, (4) housing, (5) settlement sensitive

urban planning, (6) financing for settlements upgrading, (7) stakeholder/community

participation and, (8) coordination between communities, local authorities and national government.