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Urbanization, Security and Resiliency
Note: This post
originally appeared on the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends
2030 blog on July 19, 2012.
In
2008, for the first time, the world’s urban population exceeded its rural
population. According to theUnited
Nations estimates, urbanization will grow from about 50 percent of the
world’s population today to about 60 percent by 2030. More importantly,
urbanization – and its accompanying pressures – will not be evenly distributed.
As illustrated in Figure 1, the urban population as the percentage of the total
population has grown around the world over the last three decades; however, the
urban population as a percentage of total population has risen more quickly in
Latin America & the Caribbean the Middle East & North Africa, and East
Asia and the Pacific.
NIC
Blog – Urbanization, Security and Resiliency – Figure 1
More than 90 percent of projected urban growth will continue
to occur in developing nations, fueled by increasing population and rural to
urban migration.
Researchers note that, traditionally, the largest drivers of
urbanization are primarily natural disasters (and increasingly ecological
degradation). War and conflict have also caused populations to flee into
urban areas. Climate change and the increasing desertification of once-arable
lands have also fueled rural to urban movements in recent years, particularly
in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Certainly, urbanization may be the result of conflict. But
it is also the case that urbanization may be associated with poor security
conditions in countries. The (rapid) movement of people from rural areas to
more urban (or even peri-urban) cities may exacerbate underlying ethnic and
religious tensions, place pressures on weak infrastructure that is already
being pushed beyond capacity, increase distributional pressures, and demand
governance and better planning from governments too weak to sustain themselves.
Continue reading at GT2030.com.
www.cnas.org
Source:
