NEW DELHI: India recorded “virtually no” improvement on indices aimed at measuring implementation of the agendas of a 1996 UN conference on urban development, whereas Nepal and Pakistan have made progress, a report has found.
In the run-up to Habitat III, the third UN conference on urban development and settlements, in October, a report called ‘Habitat Commitment Index (HCI)’ was released recently gauging the progress made towards implementing the agendas of Habitat- II conference in Istanbul, in 1996.
Habitat III will be held in Quito in October this year where UN member states will agree on the New Urban Agenda.
In the run-up to the event, the New York-based Global Urban Futures Project released the review report on the progress on the previous urban agenda.
The HCI analyses the progress made in six categories of the Habitat II agenda – Infrastructure, Poverty, Employment, Sustainability, Institutional Capacity, and Gender.
In the last two decades, “the best performers were Pakistan (+2 points) and Nepal (+2 points), while the worst performers were Bangladesh (-2 points) and Sri Lanka (-3.8 points)” among the South Asian countries, says the report.
India, however, slipped marginally by 0.41 points on the HCI scale, lower than the South Asian average of 1.26. (AGENCIES)
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