Planning and Housing Issues in the Pacific

Tanoa Hotel, Nadi, June 25-27, 2018

Dr. Abdul Hassan

University of the South Pacific

The views expressed in this presentation are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or
policies of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), its Board of
Directors, or the governments they represent. ADBI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this
paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequences.
South Pacific Island Countries

Population Approx. 2.54

Million

Land Area (Square Km) 89.670

Population Density (Land) 28

https://www.hawaii.edu/cpis/psi/anthro/pac_dev/Pac_Dev6.htm

Source: www.paclii.org/maps/

Planning and Housing Issues in Pacific 2

 In many Pacific Island Countries (PICs) people live in inadequate housing
 Over 40 million people, 570,00 households (40%) live in poverty, located in
urban areas, squatter settlements and villages (Habitat, 2009)
 PICs are largely diverse in terms of geography, resources, population, culture,
language, and economic status
 All have common problem- small domestic markets and limited economic
growth
 High poverty and decline in living standard
 High population growth and accelerated rate of rural to urban drift
 Large squatter settlements in urban and peri-urban areas
 Poor facilities and lacking housing development mechanisms
 Land disputes and ethnic tensions prevalent in the ingenious communities
 Most PICs have limited land and poor resource management
 Receive substantial development assistance from external sources but poorly
managed
 • PICs have limited economic growth with rapidly increasing population
thus declining living standard
• High rates of urban drift from rural areas and remote islands
• High rate of squatter settlements in urban and peri-urban areas
• Lack of subdivided and serviced lots for housing development
• Lacking good governance and resource management
• Lacking basic skills in building sector and low levels of education
• Many PICs lacking political stability
• Communal land holding system provides no security and creates fear to invest
 Access to land primarily comes from birth into a kinship group
 Groups based on kinship or other forms of relationship are the custodian of land
 Land using units are individuals or small household units
 Male, particularly chiefs, elders or senior men within the customary group make
decisions over the group's land matters.
 Being a source of power, land is a focus for many social, cultural and spiritual activities
 Outsiders such as refugees from tribal fights are accepted by certain group and gain the
privileges of group membership
 Land can be transferred only within existing social and political groups
 Rights to access to land are constantly adjusted to take account of changes in group
membership, with some groups increasing and some dying out, and the need to
redistribute land
 Many PICs take piecemeal approach to improve living
standard of the people
 Currently housing development assistance is focused on urban
areas
 Key players have to acknowledge that squatter settlements are
permanent and have to resolve their housing needs
 Squatters have no title to land that denied access to housing
finance
 Stakeholders failed to allocate suitable land for housing poor
and low-income groups
 Inappropriate Housing Policy
 Action is taken to remove the fear that if nothing is done, very soon the informal
settlements will dominate the development in the urban areas
 The effect of the implementation of housing codes is that either it ignored by squatters
or force households to move in new settlements outside the reach of the codes
 While formalising the leases State seeks to discourage the creation of new settlements by
giving low priority to assistance, issuing eviction notices to new settlers, demolishing
buildings and withdrawing rights to essential services
 Conflicting government agendas can be a problem as some PICs accept the permanency
of squatter settlements and recognises the need to improve living conditions
 Formalise official leases upgrade settlements, relax building standards and provide more
land
 Stringent housing codes forces an increase in housing standards and cost in low cost
areas and informal settlements

Planning and Housing Issues in Pacific 7

 Low levels of economic growth and as a result many PICs feel the
impact of the decline in world economic activity in future
 Absent or inappropriate housing policies
 Imbalances in assistance, actual or perceived imbalances in assistance add
to incentives for people to move from rural areas.
 Insecure land title or occupancy rights
 Lack of access to housing finance due to the absence of secure land title
 High building costs and shortages of materials
 Frequent natural disasters and lack of planning to reduce impacts and
speed recovery
 Across the small isolated PICs, building costs, particularly in urban areas
are high
 Most building materials are imported and in scarce supply and in some
countries wage rates are high
 Although building codes are in place in some PICs, these are either not
enforced or not legally binding
 Result is difficult in construction works that add to construction costs
 In some PICs leases for housing cannot be issued until plots have been
adequately serviced, requiring compliance with a variety of statutes
 The resultant costs of registering land and of building have removed any
incentive for private sector involvement in the provision of low cost
housing
 Rising expectations about acceptable housing standards and
understandably strong desire to build cyclone-resistant houses to modern
western designs, using modern materials are also adding to building costs
 Several programs in PICs on housing can be introduced such as repair and
renovation and building new houses
 Improving living conditions by providing people with the skills to repair or
renovate their houses with materials available
 More knowledge about appropriate and sustainable technologies to be
introduced to keep infrastructure projects affordable
 Such knowledge could also help PICs deal with many of the immediate
consequences of climate change
 The current focus on coastal areas by rising sea levels is a concern and other
issue is the freshwater quality and availability
 The source of freshwater can contaminate as unplanned urban settlements
increases
 Set appropriate policies and incentives that encourage households in
lower income groups to save
 Support NGOs in establishing community based savings groups for
specific purposes such as housing and livelihood improvement
 Encourage the private sector to establish and strengthen institutions to
facilitate savings
 Governments, in consultation with the private sector, to develop
mechanisms that facilitate access by low-income groups to formal
financial institutions for saving and borrowing for housing
 National planners meet with housing finance institutions to improve co-
ordination between the housing finance and development sectors
 Establish national social security funds (or similar institutions) that
mobilize funds for financing housing, in particular for vulnerable families
 Review application procedures and eligibility criteria to ensure optimal
access by low- and middle-income groups for housing loans
 Growing squatter settlements in urban and per-urban areas
 People living for years in squatter settlements after natural
disasters and civil conflict
 Most people in rural areas are old and very young, without
resources to maintain adequate shelter
 Lack of security for land tenure and occupancy rights in both
urban and rural areas
 Difficult for poor and low-income earners to gain access to
finance and improve their living conditions.
 Effective housing policy requires both well-defined property rights and a well-
functioning legal framework for housing finance
 To effectively implement these policies, PICs need well planned investment in
infrastructure such as water, sewerage, electricity, roads and solid waste disposal
 These can be secured through cooperation between national and local governments
 Effective implementation also requires that housing policies be integrated with other
development and social programs
 Integrated building blocks are not present across the PICs and the gap between policy
and practice is wide
 None of the developing countries of the PICs has adequate policies or strategies in
place to address the needs of the increasing numbers of families living in poverty
housing
 Reportedly, there is little capacity for the task in either the public or private sector
 Weak land administration has been identified as probably the main
constraint on land tenure reform
 Involvement of government to record interests and deal with customary
land requires confidence in both the mechanics and efficiency in the land
administration services
 Effective approach is to record the rights of land developers, including
who granted the rights, how benefits will be shared and what measures
will apply to the development
 Must establish an effective legal framework when dealing with land
matters
 State could set up a framework for land dealings that allows customary
landowners and developers to deal directly with one another
 State can play a regulatory role rather than a direct, intermediary one
 State can establish a dispute settlement machinery by forming special land
courts and procedures and appoint mediators and arbitrators
 Lack of legal authority, financial capacity and staff in local authorities to
undertake the role of planner and coordinator of local and central
government initiatives
 In some of the smaller nations, local governments have lack of legal
authority stems from concern over duplication
 In others, it reflects the relative newness of democratic processes and the
continuing evolution of local governments
 Overall, political support for local governments is reported to be limited,
with preference for traditional local leadership structures
 Local governments lack of financial capacity reflects the limited financial
support received from central governments and their inability to tap the
land tax base. In addition, donors seldom direct aid towards local
governments.
 An imbalance in assistance between urban and rural areas perceived by
rural dwellers is repeated across the PICs
 Smaller island countries the imbalance occurs between inner and outer
islands.
 In rural sectors the consequences of inadequate living conditions are
generally less obvious and in terms of policy or program responses is
very weak
 Imbalance is adding population pressures in urban areas (or inner
islands) thus increasing population drift from rural areas (or outer islands)
 Urban drift creates problems associated with basic services and living
standards
 The loss of skills and paid workers has reduce outer island economies,
 In urban centres the high inflow of people needs more resources to
improve living conditions
 Addressing the problems of inadequate housing include recognizing that squatter settlements
are permanent and require basic infrastructure and social services for decent living
 Identify safe and suitable land for housing for poor and low-income households
 Coordinate urban planning and embark on land reform to establish a system of secure land
title
 Integrate housing with improvements in basic infrastructure, including access to safe drinking
water, improved sanitation, solid waste management, affordable and reliable electricity and all-
weather roads
 Finding ways to give low-income people access to housing finance

 Balancing assistance between rural and urban areas to help stop the flow of people to urban
centres and slow depopulation of rural communities
 Regional collaboration on urban planning and housing policies can increase awareness of the
problems of urban drift and the opportunities for economic and social development
 Several issues on which regional collaboration could produce better results including urban
planning and development