Climate change, urban management and livelihood challenges in low-income neighbourhoods of developing countries

Abstract

Increasing rate of urbanization in developing countries has long attracted the attention of urban managers and environmentalists across the globe. Shortages arising from limited finance for urban facilities have necessitated in the need to complement public effort by resident groups like Community Based Organizations (CBOs). Although, high demographic change and the accompanying negative consequences have mainly characterized ill-served enclaves of burgeoning cities, emphases of intervening organizations have largely de-emphasized peculiar self-help efforts in the increasingly diverse segments of low-income cities. This article explores the extent to which urban facility provision and management by ill-served urban residents has been able to tackle lingering challenges of life and livelihood in cities of global south. This study used physical, demographic and social data acquired mainly through the use of social survey methods like Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) and GIS-Based FGDs known for innovative assessment of social groups, intervention strategies and activities of self-help organizations, to explore emerging trends in infrastructure finance and urban management in the era of climate change particularly witnessed in human environments that are already battling fiscal constraints. Results show that while authorities recognize collective effort in addressing urban challenges, there is a serious negation of indigenous coping mechanisms and socio-economic peculiarities of target populations during interventions; and CBOs constantly operate under serious constraints, but, insufficient finance is only one and not the main hindrance to their success. In spite of the administrative, communal and in-appropriate intervention procedures, often overlooked by many assessors, CBOs and the beneficiaries of self-help efforts in ill-served urban residential enclaves of Minna – central Nigeria, has evolved unique membership procedures, organizational structure, decision making mechanisms, fund raising and accounting procedures, whose negation were found to have severely limited the successes of past endeavours by both local and international assistance.