Urban Programme Climate Justice and a Fair City - 2016 bridge project (MDF)

General

This one-year bridge project seeks to extend the current phase of programme work on decent housing and climate change with CAFOD partners MDF and APOIO, continuing work on programmatic priority areas, incorporating a renewed focus on land tenure and use advocacy and dissemination of the pilot project on sustainable housing and urbanisation developed in 2015. This project will also incorporate lessons and recommendations from the 2013-2015 EU project external evaluation and findings, consolidating existing results in the current political and economic context and developing new areas of work to guide the next urban programme priorities from 2017 onwards. Using their past experience, participatory approaches and successful methodology of popular education, community organisation, women's participation and advocacy work, local partners APOIO and MDF will seek to influence the implementation and coordination of housing, climate change other and pro-poor urban policies. In spite of being one of the most affluent regions in Brazil, São Paulo has seen an increase in pockets of poverty and extreme poverty in the last decade, with many of the region's poorest citizens, around 30% of the population, living in favelas, informal occupations and precarious housing. The dynamic of land valorisation in the region is forcing the poorest population to live in degraded areas far away from jobs, basic services or in watershed areas and areas of environmental risk, vulnerable to flashfloods, landslides and climate impacts, aggravating existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities. The recent water supply crisis faced by São Paulo has impacted disproportionately on the poorest population, who are suffering ongoing water rationing, and higher costs of water and energy bills. Since 2011, São Paulo has seen a growth of 264% in urban occupations as a result of a housing deficit of 230,000 homes and the hike in land and rent prices which make housing unaffordable to the poor. 56% of the population living in these informal settlements lack access to water and sanitation services, which are restricted in areas that have no formal land titles. This project will tackle three inter-related problems to guarantee more effective social inclusion and urbanization: a) the lack of implementation of legal frameworks for land tenure regularization in the cities informal settlements and favelas, to reduce violent evictions, and improve land security and access to public services, such as water, sanitation and housing; b) The need for housing and social inclusion urban policies to take into account environmental factors and climate change adaptation and vice versa; c) building the awareness and capacity of women and men in the favelas, informal settlements and occupations and the housing movement leaders to know their rights and influence the above policies.