Urban Poverty Alliviation

1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to generate discussion and debate on urban poverty and approaches to its alleviation. Consequently this paper makes strong statements and tries to argue its case from the perspectives of the urban poor. The positions taken and arguments made are not new and may be found in the current development literature. They are also not comprehensive and may be just one side of the coin. Other positions and arguments may be just as valid. Participants at the High-level Regional Meeting are encouraged to voice their views on the issues raised and approaches suggested in this paper during the various symposia.

While the issue of poverty has been the direct or indirect focus of development initiatives in Asia and the Pacific since the end of the colonial era (1940s to 1950s), the issue of urban poverty has gained prominence only in the last two to three decades. Two basic “levels” or “types" of poverty are identified in the development literature: absolute poverty and relative poverty. Simply put, absolute poverty is defined as the cost of the minimum necessities needed to sustain human life. The World Bank currently regards people earning less than US$ 1 a day (in 1993 purchasing power parity) to be absolutely poor. Relative poverty is defined as the minimum economic, social, political and cultural goods needed to maintain an acceptable way of life in a particular society. The European Union defines the relatively poor as “... persons, families and groups of persons whose resources (material, cultural, social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the member state in which they live.”

Terms such as poverty eradication and poverty alleviation are often used interchangeably in the development literature. Before discussing causes, aspects, policies and approaches to either eradicating or alleviating poverty, it is important to distinguish what these terms imply. While absolute poverty can be eradicated, relative poverty can only be alleviated, because what is minimally accepted today may vary over time, from villages to urban areas and from country to country. Relative poverty also varies with levels of economic development, and the perceptions and expectations of the majority on what is minimally acceptable. For example, while clean piped water may be a minimum acceptable standard of living in a city, it may not be a minimum requirement in a village. Similarly, while possessing a telephone may be a minimum necessity in a country like the United States, it may not be a minimum requirement in a country like India. Likewise while Internet connections may not be a minimum necessity in India today, they may become a minimum necessity ten years from now. This paper, while addressing both absolute and relative poverty, focuses more on relative poverty because it is more prevalent in cities of Asia and the Pacific.

2. The Three Aspects of Poverty

Poverty essentially has three closely interrelated aspects: “poverty of money”, “poverty of access” and “poverty of power.” These make the working, living and social environments of the poor extremely insecure and severely limit the options available to them to improve their lives. Without choices and security, breaking the cycle of poverty becomes virtually impossible and leads to the marginalization and alienation of the poor from society.

2.1 Poverty of Money

The most prevalent means of measuring poverty have been and continue to be those related to money. Measures such as poverty lines and Gini-coefficients are used to measure absolute and relative poverty in terms of incomes and affordability. They are prevalent because such measurements are relatively easy to make and quantify.

However, the lack of money is more a symptom of poverty rather than its cause. In most cases, the poor are not without an income; what they lack is the ability to accumulate assets, which is a key ingredient to the creation of wealth and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Besides their low earnings, the prime reason for their inability to accumulate assets and thus increase their security of income is that their profits or potential savings are often appropriated by moneylenders who charge usurious interest rates, by formal and informal regulatory and enforcement agents or organizations who demand bribes or extort protection money, and by middlemen or other stronger business partners who exploit the poor because they lack market information or the ability to use that market information to increase their own incomes.

Another key reason that prevents the poor from accumulating capital is that they are often forced to purchase public goods and services that are readily available to other groups in society at market or below market prices, at much higher costs.

2.2 Poverty of Access

Most of Asia’s urban poor live in overcrowded and unsanitary slums and squatter settlements and often do not have access to basic infrastructure and services. They are forced to live in illegal and informal settlements because they cannot enter formal land and housing markets. The reasons for the formation of slums and squatter settlements are numerous and have been discussed extensively in the development literature. It suffices to say here that, because of the way formal markets are regulated and structured, the poor are unable to afford the choices offered to them in these markets. In contrast, the informal and illegal housing markets of slums and squatter settlements are specifically geared to meet their shelter needs.

However, like other informal markets, the informal land and housing market is exploitative and has several negative impacts. First and foremost, informal settlements are often located on marginal land (along river-banks, railway lines, steep slopes and on or near garbage dumps) and are prone to natural and man-made disasters. They are also often illegal and those living there do not have security of tenure. Because of their illegal status, they are often not provided with formal basic infrastructure and services such as piped water, electricity, wastewater disposal and solid waste collection by government agencies and organizations. They have to purchase these in informal markets, often paying much more than higher-income groups. Studies in several cities of Asia and the Pacific have shown that the poor end up paying two to five times as much for informal access to public goods and services than higher-income groups.

Because there is often no security of tenure in illegal settlements and the fear of imminent eviction exists, the poor do not invest in improving either their housing or their settlements. The lack of basic environmental infrastructure and locations on marginal land often translate into higher rates of disease and lower life spans. The consequent higher medical bills, lost working days and early demise of income earners further expropriate their marginal income and cements the cycle of poverty.

Similarly, children of the poor are unable to access good education. Often the standards and facilities of the educational institutes they can afford are lower than those available to children of higher-income groups. Moreover, poor children often drop out of school earlier to support their families. Poor education also contributes to entrenchment of the cycle of poverty.

2.3 Poverty of Power

The poor suffer from both traditional and modern environmental health risks in urban areas. They suffer from diseases associated with poor sanitation, lack of clean water, overcrowded and poorly ventilated living and working environments, as well as from modern risks caused by air and industrial pollution. While the poor suffer the most from dysfunctions in cities, they are the least able, as individuals, to influence how cities are governed.

In many Asian cities, both the formal structures of government and the culture of governance tend to exclude the poor from decision-making and tend to concentrate decision-making among a small number of formal and informal elite. The poor have a greater possibility to influence decision-making under conditions of good governance, i.e., a system of government and a culture of governance that is participatory, inclusive, consensus-oriented, based on the rule of law, responsive to the needs of the population, efficient, transparent and accountable.

Another important aspect of power is information. The poor often lack access to information that they can use to advance their case when dealing with other actors in the city. Even when information is available, it is often in media and forms that are either not accessible to nor understandable by the poor.

3. Measuring Poverty

The extent and nature of poverty, as defined by its three aspects and its impact on marginalizing and alienating segments of the urban society, are difficult to measure. UNDP’s Human Development Index is an attempt to compile and compare all the above aspects of poverty. As the Human Development Report of 1999 shows, the extent and nature of poverty vary considerably in countries of Asia and the Pacific, and that of urban poverty varies considerably between countries, between rural and urban areas, among urban areas within a particular country, among neighbourhoods of a given urban area and even within neighbourhoods.

Poverty also has a gender dimension. In most countries, the poorest of the poor tend to be households headed by women. Even within the family unit, the poverties of money, access and power vary based on gender, with women and female children suffering more than their male counterparts. Thus to meaningfully measure poverty, disaggregated data and information are often needed, which in many countries do not exist.

4. Urban Poverty and the Habitat Agenda

The Habitat Agenda, adopted by the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in 1996, addresses eradication of poverty as one of the ten overarching goals and principles to guide actions, policies and programmes on human settlements. Chapter II (Goals and Principles) paragraph 28 states:

“The eradication of poverty is essential for sustainable human settlements. The principle of poverty eradication is based on the framework adopted by the World Summit for Social Development and on the relevant outcomes of other major United Nations conferences, including the objective of meeting the basic needs of all people, especially those living in poverty and disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, particularly in the developing countries where poverty is acute, as well as the objective of enabling all women and men to attain secure and sustainable livelihoods through freely chosen and productive employment and work.”

Commitments to poverty alleviation are dispersed throughout the Habitat Agenda in Chapter III entitled Commitments (sections on Adequate Shelter for All, Sustainable Human Settlements, Enablement and Participation, and Financing Shelter and Human Settlements). In its commitments, the Habitat Agenda also addresses the above three aspects of poverty.

5. Globalization and its Impacts on the Urban Poor

While developing countries have been struggling to alleviate poverty for some time now, they are also facing new challenges posed by globalization. There are two fundamental and interrelated globalization trends sweeping the region at present: globalization of economies and globalization of information. Both these trends are fundamentally changing not only the economies of the countries of Asia and the Pacific, but also their environments, cultures and societies. These trends are likely to affect the urban poor adversely as they threaten to widen the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in society. Those with capital and access to information and the ability to translate that information into economic, political and social gain, will benefit from globalization. Since the poor do not have capital and are often unable to access information, they are likely to be further impoverished and marginalized.

Globalization of economies is forcing developing countries to restructure their economies to make them more competitive in the global market by “right-sizing government”, and reducing or eliminating subsidies, and by privatizing government-owned firms and enterprises. Government budget cuts, particularly in areas such as education and health, have reduced the level of services available to some of the poor. The removal of most subsidies will probably not adversely affect a majority of the poor since they do not have access to them in the first place. What will perhaps indirectly and adversely affect the poor are the massive lay-offs that accompany “right-sizing governments” and privatizing government-owned firms and enterprises. While this would most likely benefit the overall economy in the medium and long term by creating new and higher paying jobs, experience has shown that, in the short term, low skilled and hence low-paid laid-off staff are pushed into poverty and use their severance allowances, if they receive any, to either seek employment in the informal sector or start micro-enterprises, increasing competition in the informal sector, which is already highly competitive.

Moreover, integration in the global economy also means increased vulnerability of economies to downturns in global markets. Decades of achievements in social development and poverty alleviation can be wiped out in months and can lead to social and ethnic unrest as was amply demonstrated in the case of Indonesia.

Globalization of economies is also reducing the power of national governments to manage their own economies, particularly by forcing countries to remove both open and hidden trade barriers and open their markets to competition from other countries, particularly from trans-national corporations (TNCs). In a more free trade environment, TNCs are likely to dominate local markets. TNC-induced job creation (jobs created by TNCs or in response to competition with TNCs) is likely to become more technology- and capital-intensive. In other words, TNCs and local firms competing with them would most likely create fewer jobs, at greater costs, for the more highly educated and skilled among the labour force. A labour force that is illiterate or just literate would probably not be a sufficient criterion to either attract foreign direct investment or compete in the global market.

Concurrent with the trend towards globalization of economies is the trend towards globalization of information, which affects the economies, societies and cultures of the region more fundamentally. E-commerce and related telecommunications sectors are the fastest growing segments of the world economy. Large companies are increasingly positioning themselves to compete in the new knowledge-based global economy which requires a highly educated and skilled workforce.

On the positive side, globalization of information is also enabling communities and civil society organizations to access information, exchange experiences and advocate their cases more freely. They can build partnerships, not only within their own countries, but also internationally, to become part of or initiate “social movements” that advocate change. However, while civil society organizations, including those working with the poor, have been greatly empowered by the globalization of information, the same cannot be said for most of the organizations of the poor.

Globalization of information also means greater exposure to consumerism and higher expectations among urban populations, which, given the above trends, are unlikely to be met for a majority of the urban poor. Higher expectations that remain unachievable can become causes for social, ethnic and religious violence.

If present trends continue in developing countries of the Asia-Pacific region, those who have access to capital and information, and can translate that information into economic and social gain, will benefit. This means that a highly educated and information savvy minority of the labour force would benefit the most, while a majority of the labour force, particularly in countries of South Asia, that are not even literate, let alone e-literate, would be marginalized. Thus the gap or “digital divide” between the rich and the poor would widen considerably.

6. Towards Alleviating Urban Poverty

Policies or strategies aimed at alleviating urban poverty have to address its three components: poverty of money, poverty of access and poverty of power. The following sections discuss some strategies to achieve this.

6.1 Alleviating the Poverty of Money

Globalization of economies and information cannot be reversed. While minor adjustments to the global financial system, such as curbing the flow of “hot money”, may perhaps be made, no country can completely remove itself from the global economy and expect to sustain economic growth and development. Globalization threatens to increase the gap between the rich and poor unless specific interventions are undertaken by governmental and civil society organizations.

These interventions include supporting and integrating the economies of the poor into the formal economy at city, country and global levels; providing the necessary infrastructure and increasing both literacy and e-literacy as widely as possible to create the basis for a knowledge-based economy; and promoting community and trade-based safety-nets to assist the poor in weathering cyclical economic downturns, which are likely to increase in frequency as countries restructure their economies and become more integrated in the global market.

6.1.1 Integrating the Economies of the Poor

Microenterprises of the poor provide valuable services to other poor and higher-income groups. Regulatory frameworks and market structures often restrict and hamper providers of such micro-services. For example, in the prepared food industry, instead of recognizing that the market comprises a wide spectrum stretching from high-end restaurants and precooked-packaged food to street-side food vendors, regulations in many cities exclude and discriminate against the lowest and most vulnerable end of the market. However, this situation is changing in some countries, most notably in Thailand and Malaysia. Cities in these countries have not only facilitated street-side food vending by allocating space beside the street and in open-air food courts, but also regulated it by requiring minimum standards of hygiene and waste disposal.

Solid waste management is a key issue not only for the city as a whole but also for the poor, because many of them are involved in the collection and recycling of waste. The traditional approach to solid waste management seeks to dispose of waste. Several pilot projects have been initiated by governmental and non-governmental organizations that seek to extract “cash from trash”, by decentralizing waste disposal, recycling inorganic wastes and composting organic wastes through partnerships among communities, waste-pickers and government. Ways and means of incorporating informal sector waste collection and recycling into the formal waste collection system, and the feasibility of such decentralized community-based waste collection-and-disposal mechanisms, need to be studied further.

Local governments and non-governmental organizations in Indonesia have made a major effort to integrate the informal waste-pickers in the formal solid waste management systems of cities like Surabaya and Bandung. Alternatives to picking waste at dumpsites were provided by organizing and regulating waste-pickers into “yellow brigades” which received official recognition for their valuable service role in the city. Vending spaces on designated streets were also provided to encourage the sale of used and recycled items. Partnerships with various neighborhood associations and waste-pickers were also organized to facilitate decentralized and community-based recycling and composting.

Evidence, particularly from the garment industry in South and Southeast Asian countries, shows that economies of the poor are already linked to the global market. Garment manufacturers often subcontract the manufacture of specific parts to either individuals or small workshops based in slums and squatter settlements, residents of which in Karachi, Dhaka and Jakarta make various parts of skirts, pants, sweaters and shirts, bought by consumers in New York, London and Paris. While this process provides income to the urban poor, it is also exploitative, with the majority of the value-added reaped by retailers and middlemen rather than the urban poor. Similar linkages between the economies of the poor and the global economy exist in other industries where subcontracting is practiced.

Where such linkages exist or can potentially exist, they should be strengthened and promoted. However, care should be taken to remove the exploitative aspects of these relationships, by promoting collective mechanisms that would strengthen the power of the poor to negotiate increased returns for their labour and enterprises vis-à-vis other actors.

Moreover, e-commerce provides enormous opportunities for directly linking the micro-manufacturing of the poor to businesses and consumers in developed economies. While the individual micro-entrepreneur may find it beyond his or her capacity to establish such links, groups of micro-entrepreneurs, perhaps as cooperatives, could enter such relationships. Examples of such arrangements could be, for example, cooperatives of small-scale manufacturers from labour-intensive sectors, such as garments, sports goods, handicrafts and carpets, entering into direct relationships with large-scale retailers or manufacturers in developed countries. This is an unexplored area and considerable action research through pilot projects may be needed to develop its potential.

6.1.2 Providing Access to Credit

A major constraint that micro-enterprises of the poor often face is access to credit at market rates. While formal sector credit institutions have found the poor unbankable, several community- and trade-based savings and credit groups have proven that not only are they bankable, but that they are much more likely to repay their loans than upper-income groups. Experiences of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, SEWA and Mahila Melan in India, SUPF in Cambodia, ENDA in Viet Nam and SIPSACRES in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, show that many micro-entrepreneurs joining these schemes not only break the cycle of poverty for their own families but also create employment in their communities.

6.1.3 Investing in the Knowledge-based Economy

However, while alleviating absolute poverty, all these efforts may fail to alleviate relative poverty if the infrastructural and human resources base for the sustainable and rapid growth of the knowledge economy is not created. Massive investments in information and communication infrastructure and power generation and distribution networks need to be made, particularly in wireless communication and micro-power generation. Liberalizing and promoting a competitive environment in the telecommunication and power generation and distribution markets can most effectively achieve this.

Another key component to advancing the knowledge-based economy is promoting e-literacy. A concerted drive is needed to increase the levels of conventional literacy, particularly in South Asia and some countries of Southeast Asia, as well as increase the levels of e-literacy. This could be done by providing financial incentives and support to private sector institutions that promote e-literacy, introducing e-education in a majority of public schools, as is being done in Malaysia and Thailand, and providing Internet access at post offices and public call offices as is being done in certain parts of Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

6.1.4 Promoting Community-based Safety-nets

For reasons cited earlier, government subsidy programmes established to protect the poor often do not reach them. Community-based safety-net systems, such as community-based health, life and unemployment insurance and scholarship funds, may be more effective in protecting the poor from economic downturns, illnesses or death in the family. However, while some pilot projects are being undertaken in Thailand, this area needs to be studied and explored more extensively.

6.2 Alleviating the Poverty of Access

Experience in the region has shown that the poor invest considerable amounts of capital in the housing and infrastructure of their settlements if they have security of tenure. However, often such housing and infrastructure could be greatly improved by providing the poor with access to improved technical skills and know-how. Some governments have enacted laws and initiated programmes that recognize and build upon the investments that the poor make in their own housing and settlements. Recognition of the existing investments of the poor in their settlements has resulted in squatter settlement regularization and land sharing schemes in many countries of the region.

An interesting example is that of the Province of Sindh in Pakistan, which has enacted the Katchi Abadi (informal settlements) Regularization Act and established the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority (SKAA). Simply put, the law states that an informal settlement on land owned by the government, that is not marginal and that has not been earmarked for essential infrastructure development or public use, would be regularized. Residents living in the settlement before a particular cut-off date would be provided security of tenure provided they pay for the cost of unserviced land, provide internal infrastructure on a self-help basis and pay the partial cost of external or bulk infrastructure. The SKAA, learning from the experience of the Orangi Pilot Project, organizes residents into community-based organizations and provides technical assistance for provision and improvement of internal infrastructure by the people themselves. One of the key principles in this approach is the minimizing of subsidies to the poor.

In addition to regularization of existing settlements, it is important to plan for low-income housing for the rural poor migrating to urban areas, natural population increase in existing slums and squatter settlements and relocation of informal settlements from marginal, private land or from land needed for key infrastructure development. Experience has shown that such schemes are successful if communities are involved in their planning, design and implementation, and if these schemes seek to preserve and improve the economic, social and cultural mechanisms and community support structures of the poor.

6.3 Alleviating the Poverty of Power

6.3.1 Supporting Collective Mechanisms

Experience from the region has shown that whenever the poor have been organized, united and in possession of technical and managerial skills, they have improved their own conditions and broken the cycle of poverty. They have resisted stronger groups, been able to influence decision-making and build equitable partnerships with governments and other actors in society. Several non-governmental organizations have made valuable attempts to catalyze coalitions of the poor in the form of slum and squatter dwellers’ federations, rickshaw pullers’ associations and hawkers’ welfare cooperatives. These coalitions have strengthened the bargaining positions of the poor and have assisted them in building beneficial partnerships.

Experience has also shown that many of the collective mechanisms of the poor have been short-lived, particularly those that developed in response to external threats such as evictions, or around a particular issue such as provision of water or housing. Often once the external threat was resolved, these community-based organizations disintegrated. While making important contributions, such organizations are often transitory in the struggle to break the cycle of poverty. On the other hand, community-based organizations and collective mechanisms that are developed around issues of long-term concern, and that are able to engage the poor continuously and sustainably, such as community or trade-based savings and credit schemes, have a greater potential for empowering the poor and breaking the cycle of poverty. This is because they create a core, organized group within communities around which other issues of common concern can be discussed and addressed by activating other community members.

Another reason for the failure of organizations of the poor is a lack of skills in the operational and financial management of organizations, in group interaction and in negotiation and consensus-building. Governmental and non-governmental organizations that assist the urban poor in acquiring such skills help to empower them. In contrast, those who speak on behalf of the poor or provide them with services, while doing valuable short-term work, often tend to make the poor dependent on them.

6.3.2 Increasing Access to Information

One of the key components of power and wealth creation is access to information and knowledge and the ability to use that information or knowledge for economic or social gain. Programmes and initiatives that seek to provide information to the poor in easily understood media and forms greatly contribute to their empowerment.

A free flow of information also contributes to transparency in decision-making. Some governments in the region, for example, now require public hearings before large infrastructure projects are initiated. Even where such public hearings are impartial, the poor are often unable to participate or influence decision-making because they do not have the financial or human resources to interpret the information provided. Some non-governmental organizations and academic institutions are working to fill this gap. Most notable among these initiatives are urban resource centers (URCs). The URC approach links non-governmental organizations and academic institutions to analyze and evaluate trends and the feasibility and impacts of programmes and projects in the city, and where needed, to work out alternative solutions to governmental proposals. This information is then provided in an understandable form to the groups and communities that would most likely be affected. Equipped with such information, several poor communities have been successfully able to resist projects that were either unnecessary or whose negative impacts would have been far greater than their potential benefits.

7. Capacity-Building

While considerable progress has been made in alleviating urban poverty in most countries of the region, most efforts have been ad hoc and fragmented. Sustaining and intensifying efforts to alleviate urban poverty require substantial capacity-building, particularly in the public or governmental sector, among the organizations of the poor themselves and among the civil society organizations that work towards empowering the poor. Capacity-building, as defined here, has essentially two aspects: institutional change and human resources development.

7.1 Institutional Change

Institutional change, encompassing regulatory, fiscal and organizational frameworks, needs to focus on creating an environment that empowers the poor to address their problems and become an integral rather than a marginal part of the city. This includes removing barriers that restrict their access to finance, housing, infrastructure, education and other urban services. It also includes encouraging them to organize themselves and to acquire skills and information to enable them to enter into equitable partnerships with other actors in society.

The role of government needs to change from that of provider of goods and services to that of enabler, facilitator and regulator of markets. The role of the government should be to ensure a more equal playing field for the urban poor. This requires much more precise targeting of subsidies through mechanisms that are in harmony with the culture and economies of the poor, such as community-based savings and credit groups.

Developing such innovative mechanisms requires research and experimentation. Therefore, government institutions need to create an environment that encourages officials to learn from the poor and experiment with approaches and techniques of addressing specific issues. Good examples of such innovative mechanisms are the Urban Community Development Office of the Government of Thailand, popularly known as the Urban Poor Bank, the Incremental Development Scheme of the Hyderabad Development Authority of Pakistan and the Integrated Action Planning approach of the Department of Housing and Urban Development of Nepal.

Moreover, governmental institutions can only become “pro-poor” if the poor are able to influence decision-making. Experience from the region has shown that the poor are more able to influence decision-making and enter into equitable partnerships more effectively at the local rather than national level. Thus one of the key requisites for sustained poverty alleviation is decentralization and devolution of fiscal, regulatory and executive powers to the local level.

7.2 Human Resources Development in the Government or Public Sector

Poverty alleviation requires both attitudinal change and skills development among government officials. Government officials need to regard the poor as clients and partners, rather than the “governed” and ignorant who need to be taken care of. They need to realize that often the poor know how best to solve their own problems and succeed if a supportive institutional environment exists. The job of government officials is to facilitate the creation of such supportive institutional environments.

Government officials also need to learn from the situation on the ground rather than develop policies that are based on imported models, theories and standards from developed countries. One of the key lessons from successful poverty alleviation programmes has been that the initiators of the programmes studied the existing situation and identified ways and means of improving upon existing market delivery mechanisms in partnership with the poor.

In addition to attitudinal change, government officials also need assistance in developing their skills, not only to interact with organizations of the poor but also to provide the technical assistance required to address the problems faced by them and to improve their working and living environments. In other words, their skills to provide technical research and extension services to the poor need to be developed and strengthened.

Most countries of the region have public service and local government training and research institutions that are entrusted with developing the human resources of governmental organizations. However, in many cases these institutions are unable to build the needed capacities because they themselves lack capacity. Capacities of these and other technical institutions need to be enhanced to tackle the demand for human resources development in the public sector.

7.3 Human Resources Development among the Poor and their Partners

Human resources development in the organizations of the poor and among civil society organizations working with the poor is also required. While in most countries of the region the poor and their partners in civil society are better organized today then they were a decade ago, they still need capacity-building in strengthening and expanding collective mechanisms and improving the articulation of their needs and demands.

7.3.1 Strengthening and Expanding Collective Mechanisms

To acquire power vis-à-vis other actors in the city, the poor have to organize themselves into collective mechanisms such as community- or trade-based organizations. Several organizations have undertaken this task effectively. However, given the number of the poor in the region, these efforts need to be increased considerably. This would require concerted effort in training new community organizers and further developing the skills of existing community organizers.

Moreover, the poor and their partners also need assistance in transparent management of community- and trade-based organizations including such skills as financial and operations management, working in group environments and consensus-building. They also need skills such as negotiation, coalition-building and networking to build partnerships with other actors in urban areas.

7.3.2 Improved Articulation of Needs and Demands

The poor and their partners need assistance in improving their skills at advocacy and in accessing, analyzing and disseminating information, including skills related to improved technologies and markets. They also need assistance in social marketing techniques to effect social and political change, including more effective use of information technologies to link with international and regional civil society movements and campaigns, and the local and international media.

8. Actions at the Regional Level

Most efforts to alleviate poverty must be taken at the national, sub-national and local levels. Regional efforts should concentrate on supporting efforts at the country level. Moreover, these efforts should concentrate on actions that either cannot be done at the national level, such as exchange of experience and information, or on actions that, because of economies of scale can be done more effectively at the regional level, such as comparative research or norm setting. Given these two criteria, these regional actions are suggested:

1. Further refining disaggregated indicators on urban poverty that would enable policy-makers to measure and understand both the extent and nature of urban poverty;
2. Documenting and disseminating innovations, networking and promoting exchange of experience and information among governmental, non-governmental and community-based organizations as well as research and training institutions on various aspects of urban poverty, to encourage learning from each other;
3. Undertaking comparative action research on cutting-edge issues and alternative development approaches such as integrating the economies of the poor into the formal global economy, decentralized community-based waste management systems, and community-based safety-nets, using information technologies in capacity-building of local governments, among others;
4. Promoting debate and discussion among national and local policy-makers on cutting-edge issues, approaches, policies and strategies to alleviate poverty; and
5. Advocating such issues as decentralization and devolution, partnerships among organizations of the poor and other urban actors, security of tenure and good governance.