Anacláudia Rossbach takes over as CEO of UN-Habitatbased in Nairobi, Kenya, on August 12. She is an economist with over two decades of experience working on housing, informal settlements, land, and urban policy issues.
Building cities and human settlements that are inclusive, safe and resilient is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (Sustainable Development Goals), paving the way towards a more just and equal future by 2030.
Sustainable Development Goal 11 calls for ensuring that everyone has access to adequate, safe and affordable housing, upgrading slums and increasing the number of cities implementing climate change adaptation policies, among other goals.
The big housing challenge
“The scale of the housing challenge we face is enormous,” said Ms Rossbach. United Nations News during a recent visit to New York. “We said we need to build 96,000 homes a day to meet the 2030 target.”
Additionally, one billion people live in temporary settlements, posing another challenge for the international community, while efforts to create more affordable housing globally must also consider the impact on the natural environment.
“We also face the challenge of strengthening the capacity of local governments – reshaping national policies, reshaping the legal framework, so that they operate in a way that allows local actors to access financial resources, access policies and technical resources, and help them implement policies locally and design their own policies,” she added.
We can’t do it alone
Ms Rossbach was adamant about “localising” the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which she said had helped strengthen the efforts of local governments and cities to achieve the Goals. She also stressed the importance of building alliances and networks.
“I see UN-Habitat as the hub, the convenor of other UN agencies and stakeholders. The scale of the problem and the challenges are so vast that no agency or programme can tackle them alone,” she said.
She explained that the agency must work with academia, researchers and organizations that provide technical assistance to cities and local, regional and national governments, as well as with multilateral development banks, international financial institutions and similar organizations.
Towards a global consensus
UN-Habitat will also have to “collect solutions and identify trends so we can collect and improve the data that we have,” she added, and work closely with governments “to move forward and move towards consensus.”
Ms Rossbach recalled that UN-Habitat member states had adopted a number of “very interesting resolutions”, including a new call to prioritise affordable housing for all and another to accelerate the transformation of informal settlements and slums.
“This shows consensus,” she said. “This shows that countries are very aware of the needs and priorities that we need to address.”
Game changer
The new UN official also stressed the need for long-term planning to put in place appropriate policies to provide shelter to those in need – and address the threat of climate change.
“We need to fix the structural problems, the structural inequalities, the structural spatial divisions and fundamentally change the way we have been doing policy to date,” she added.
“So we have to strengthen policies, but also change the perspective a little bit and really be human-centric, realizing that people have to be at the center.”
