Housing and Sustainable Environment Network

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BACKGROUND

During its first stage, this network focused on the integration of issues concerning habitat and environment, and lobbying activities at the international level starting at the UN Earth Summit in 1992 and at the UN City Summit in 1996. It also had a lead role within civil society regarding questions relating to water and human right at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. The network has implemented a global research action project on pro-poor governance in water, sanitation and waste management. The main objectives of the Habitat and Sustainable Environment Network (2) (formerly called the Habitat and Environment Committee) are:

To establish linkage between issues of habitat and environmentally sustainable development in order to improve the quality of peoples’ living conditions in communities; and to create a meeting place for supporting action – particularly that aimed at poor residents of marginalized human settlements – by acquiring experiences, resources, technologies and skills that enable all active and organized promoters of human settlements development to fight poverty.
To help gather information in order to draw up detailed guidelines of how people and organizations can be better empowered and integrated into the decision-making apparatus.
To devise tools for facilitating interaction between the network members so that they can better serve communities, by assisting them in technical matters and helping them get access to knowledge and communication skills, in order to promote new modalities of participation in projects for developing human settlements.

Networking is rooted in regional reference centres: CINARA for Latin America, Barefoot College for Asia, the Mazingira Institute for Anglophone Africa, and the European Social Forum/Global Water Contract for high-income nations. After the Johannesburg Summit, its work has focused on such themes as: human rights implementation and globalization, including water campaigns and the impact of water privatization (e.g. in Cochabamba, Bolivia), and people under occupation; social habitat watch activities to monitor implementation at regional, national and local levels, including the roles of civil society and private enterprises. It also includes monitoring the Cities Feeding People initiatives and urban agriculture, which includes new global trends of inclusiveness of urban development; and sustainable development and people under occupation.

In order to deepen findings regarding pro-poor governance for water delivery and waste management, as well as bringing specific inputs to the global agenda, the network will focus more on water, sanitation, waste management and consumption issues in urban development.

HOW DID THE NETWORK COME TO BE ?

In 1991, HIC set up a working group with several of its members to study and improve the correlation between the issues of habitat and the environment. Thus the Habitat and Environment Committee (HEC) emerged. The work program of this Committee was to emphasize the involvement of HIC globally for sustainable development in poor urban communities.
Between 1996 and 1998, the program placed particular emphasis on the integration of environment and habitat in the activities of advocacy at the global level, the United Nations and during cycle peaks.
Since then establishment of HEC, several meetings were held to discuss these crucial issues. In 2004, during the global HIC Annual meeting held in Barcelona, and under the request of the coordination of HSEN office, this committee has become the network Habitat Network and Sustainable Development (HSEN).