The Azerbaijan capital Baku is the largest and fastest growing city with a population of over 2 million. The population has doubled in the last decade and may reach approximately 3.3 million by the year 2030 (UNPD 2005).

The urbanisation of the population has been happening since the first city, and is rapidly increasing in rate - especially since the dawn of industrialization. The Andean community consists out of five countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia - that are in the middle income class. The fast growing cities create new problems, like slums, sewage and the supply of resources.

Emissions of carbon dioxide due to changes in land use mainly come from the cutting down of forests and instead using the land for agriculture or built-up areas, urbanisation, roads etc. When large areas of rain forests are cut down, the land often turns into less productive grasslands with considerably less capacity of storing CO2.

2 thematical maps: (1) CO2 emissions from industrial processes (http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/09.htm): This map depicts the unequal distribution of industry in the world. The significant part of carbon dioxide emissions comes from energy production, industrial processes and transport. The industrialised countries consequently must bear the main responsibility of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. (2): CO2 emissions from land use change.(...

L’urbanisation dans les pays en développement de 1960 à 2030

One of the major challenges of urbanisation in Africa is the rapid expansion of areas of informal settlements. These slum areas tend to lack infrastructure such as pipe-borne water and sewerage, and services such as garbage collection and waste management are often non-existent.

The number of people in Africa with access to improved sanitation, defined as “one that hygienically separates human excreta from human contact” (WHO/UNICEF 2010), has increased over the last two decades. Still, because of the rapid urbanisation, the proportion of the urban population with access to improved sanitation is on the decrease.