A feature of the People-Centered Development Forum,
Release Date April 13, 1995
The Kuantan Conference — A Citizens’ Agenda
Meeting for the Asia Pacific Regional NGO Consultation on "Our Cities, Our
Homes" held in Kuantan, Malaysia from April 9-13, 1995 as members of
citizen organizations and networks representing a diverse range of
interests–including the environment, health, media and communications, youth,
children, women’s development, housing, consumers, human rights, and
development–we find that we share a common vision of a world of socially just,
ecologically sustainable, politically participatory, economically productive,
and culturally vibrant communities in which all people–women and men, people
with disabilities, children, youth, adults, and the elderly live productive
lives and prosper in peace and harmony. During this consultation we have
affirmed our shared commitment, forged new friendships and alliances, and built
an agenda towards the realization of our vision.
The world’s cities have historically been centers of great human enterprise,
culture, learning, and innovation. For many, they have offered places of
opportunity and refuge. They have also had their dark and painful sides, sides
that have become increasingly visible, even dominant in these closing years of
the twentieth century. An explosion of unconscionable poverty is juxtaposed with
a dehumanizing implosion of deepening alienation, anger, and social breakdown
that manifests itself in urban violence, a loss of compassion for the weak, and
a disregard of the environmental and human consequences of economic activity.
For the marginalized and excluded the law has lost its legitimacy, because in
their experience it serves only to protect the privileged. We see more of our
cities becoming the battlefields of the 21st century on which class is pitted
against class, race against race, religion against religion, and individual
against individual in a competitive battle that depletes our resources and
diminishes our sense of humanity. Those with wealth detach themselves from
responsibility for the vulnerable human victims of these battles, withdrawing
behind the physical walls of affluent suburban enclaves protected by private
security guards and behind the legal walls of corporate charters protected by
legions of corporate lawyers.
This disturbing reality is in large part a legacy of the ideologies and
institutions of the twentieth century, and in particular of the dominant
neoliberal economic development model of unfettered economic growth, unregulated
markets, privatization of public assets and functions, and global economic
integration that has become the guiding philosophy of our most powerful
institutions. This model spawns projects that displace the poor to benefit those
already better off, diverts resources to export production that might otherwise
be used by the less advantaged to produce for their own needs, destroys
livelihoods in the name of creating jobs, and legitimates policies that deprive
persons in need of essential public services. The model advances institutional
changes that shift the power to govern from people and governments to
unaccountable global corporations and financial institutions devoted to a single
goal–maximizing their own short-term financial gains. Its values honor a
compassionless Darwinian struggle in which the strong consume the weak to
capture wealth beyond reasonable need. It creates a system in which a few make
decisions on behalf of the whole that return to themselves great rewards while
passing the costs to others. For them the system works and they see no need for
change. The many who bear the burden have no meaningful voice.
The decline and decay of our cities has become a highly visible consequence of
these destructive forces–a metaphor for a global system that has set human
societies on a path toward self-destruction. We take the plight of our cities to
be a wake-up call for people everywhere, calling us to forge local, national,
regional, and global alliances through which we will reclaim our power from the
institutions that have abandoned us. We will use this power to rebuild our
cities, towns, and villages–socially, ecologically, politically, economically,
culturally, and physically–in line with our vision and with the needs of people
living in a twenty-first century world. We look to the Habitat II conference to
be held in Istanbul in June 1996 as a focusing event at which the world’s people
will share their visions of the future they want for themselves and their
children and join in common cause to create their desired future through
creative local, national, and global action. We approach it not as the last
global conference of the twentieth-century, but rather as the first global
conference of an emergent twenty-first century–a global conference at which the
world’s people will come forward to give new meaning to the opening words of the
UN Charter, "We the people…."
Human habitats join together built spaces, movement spaces, social spaces, and
ecological spaces into living spaces for people. The balance and synergy
achieved among these four uses of space substantially determines the quality of
our lives. In traditional communities these functions came together naturally
and holistically. In modern cities they have become fragmented and disconnected.
We must restore the sense of wholeness and balance–while simultaneously
recognizing the essential interdependence of our cities, towns, villages, and
rural spaces.
Two great issues inform our efforts to rebuild our habitats, our living spaces:
1) the need to transform our ways of living to bring them into balance with the
natural ecosystems of our planet while assuring the right of all people to a
good and decent means of livelihood as productive contributors to secure and
vibrant communities; and
2) the need to transform our institutions to restore to people the power to
govern their own lives. We recognize that meeting these needs will require that
we transform the values and institutions of the existing global system to one
that places life ahead of money, the basic needs of the many ahead of the
extravagant consumption of the few, and the rights of people ahead of the rights
of corporations. This transformation must be people driven, growing out of the
aspirations, needs, and life experiences of people everywhere. We recognize that
the issues are political and that change will require effective political
action.
To this end we will work to:
- Build public awareness of the links between the dominant development model
and the social, environmental, and economic crisis of our cities, towns, and
villages.
- Encourage and support the efforts of people to articulate their own visions
of the future and build their own agendas for achieving those visions.
- Facilitate the linkage of these efforts into local, national, regional, and
global alliances.
- Transform existing systems of governance to assure that the decisions
regarding the structures and functions of our habitats center on improving
living for people rather than on increasing profits for corporations.
- Assure adequate access to the built environment for all people, including
children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
- End the dominance of our living spaces by automobiles in order to increase
both the livability and sustainability of our cities and towns.
- Achieve local food security based on sustainable methods of agriculture and
the recycling of food and agricultural wastes.
- Make the transition to meeting energy requirements from renewable,
ecologically sound, and socially just sources.
- Establish a harmonious relationship among people, animals, and plants
within human settlement areas through the use of adequate green spaces.
- Seek humanistic, nonmilitaristic approaches to dealing with social problems
such as drug abuse.
- Reduce the extractive burden that our cities impose on the world’s rural
areas.
- Recognize and support the initiatives of women’s groups in communities.
We commit ourselves, through the Plan of Action adopted at this meeting, to
promote this agenda among our networks and through the processes of Habitat II
and beyond.
For further information contact: The Asian Coalition on Housing Rights (ACHR),
73 Soi Sonthiwattana 4, Ladprao 110, Ladprao Road, Bangkok 10310, Thailand, fax
(66-2) 539-9950; or Asia Pacific 2000, c/o United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), Wisma UN, Block C, Kompleks Pejabat Kerajaan, Jalan Dungun, Damansara
Heights, 50490 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, fax (60-3) 253-2361.