SEAP - Human Settlements, Urbanisation and Environmental Health Working Group

CONTENTS | INTRODUCTION | GOALS | ISSUES | SUGGESTED POLICIES | STRATEGIES | MONITORING | INSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK | CONCLUSION | REFERENCES | ANNEXURES

8.0 CONCLUSION

Kindly note that land delivery / urbanisation / peri-urban land issues have been addressed by the Land Resource Management / Desertification Committee.

It is clear that enormous challenges lie ahead for Swaziland in the Human Settlements, Urbanisation and Environmental Health sector. One of the highest population growth rates in the world in one of the smallest countries in the world, a change from the current urban population level of around thirty percent to over sixty percent projected within the horizon of the National Development Strategy and this Environmental Action Plan - the host of current problems pale into insignificance alongside the challenges yet to come.

There is no question that radical changes are required to management responses within this sector if these challenges are to be met. If current practices alone are maintained, the hope for the future is slight. We submit this report as being one small step along a long and difficult road ahead, no more. However, we further submit that, in the emphasis herein upon a more integrated and coordinated government response to these challenges, in the stressing of bestowing clearly defined, enforceable and transferable property rights to individuals to clean natural resources, in education of the public in the issues, and in the many and varied other recommendations born of the combined experiences of the members of the working group - therein lies hope for the future.