despite. all over the world urban migration is speeding up and as people seek jobs and opportunities in our ever growing cities this brings with it huge challenges like how do our open centers not only more livable but once for sustainable how can we be sure that cities continue to be habitable for generations to come we've got about all that and more to be alone welcome to eco india summit that i've. let's

start in india as i t. how big for the last 2 decades new economic prospects have of course meant more and more migrants making their way to the city but it's also next to a shop degrees and access to the most basic of facilities like water electricity and cooking gas to name just a few and organization in the city is helping hard to reach families by empowering their women to create this access themselves but see how. lucky she is familiar with housework she doesn't just care for her family she also works as a domestic helper and bangalore. but it's her 2nd job that changed her life after some training luxury become a clean energy entrepreneur. i'm ok. for the past 3 years she has been selling

products like solar lights and cooking appliances in a community an informal settlement in eastern bangalore. outing. the people who have been living in the community for 18 years have always known me but a lot of the new people don't know me and that is when the neighbors started telling them about mean that i sell clean energy appliances like the sec dropped the all have my 4 number now so the new will fall also calling me saying that they have just moved and they also need appliances for their home to get it at them or that i am about the man areal it. luxury mainly sells solar lambs it means families are no longer dependent on kerosene they need light in the evening for cooking and for their children to do homework but the lambs are healthier and more environmentally friendly than kerosene lambs and cheaper in the long run. one lamp

costs between $11.33 euros depending on whether it is a simple light or if it also has a radio a lot of money for the inhabitants of the slums but achievable with a $5.00 beak interest free payment plan. the idea low income migrants came from colonnade group a social enterprise working to address gender equality climate change and poverty alleviation. clean energy is one aspect of an improving situation in the slum the population here is constantly increasing for over 20 years no one has seen a steady rise of interstate migrants arriving and looking for jobs. like shot a number and a family they moved here from the state good bugger district. whatever else i worked there is farming work but it's difficult to live on so people would sit at home with a lot of loans to pay we don't have much land as well and had difficulties that's

why we came here but living in tents it's difficult to access bathrooms and toilets or getting water for domestic use and sleeping in such a small space is a challenge when children grow up. most of the migrants here live in harsh conditions and small checks often but the water and electricity the multiethnic city of bangalore also known as a bungalow is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. market is thought dynamic there are. these. low income households people. from the only option that they find are. these informal settlements and most of these. mines often these are squatter settlements are found close to construction sites or industrial areas open definition is a common practice in the problem in. pollution is rampant natural lighting and

cross ventilation inside homes on and on affordable luxury the hygiene situation in these communities is bad and women bear the brunt of it. the men confined to these communities and they do not have the ability to move beyond their communities the fundamental problem starts from the fact that they have no access to it and even these they desire basic wages and the men typically don't want to be anything in the family so the women pick up small jobs around the place for the family now the moment the access to the source of so know that access to any product that can help improve their living conditions as. with their approach the. women. so that they can act independently with their job complements the monthly income by 25 to 50 percent depending on how much. it has enabled her to take the 1st step out of poverty moving out of.

and into a book a home next to her community. my children have suffered a lot i have and i had to ask them to wake up. before sunrise but now we have our own toilet in but it's up to us now they can do their daily activities according to the. 900. communities they have improved not only their own living conditions but have also made a significant change for many people living in the slums like. a migrant from district sense she has had a solar lamp her health and that of her children has improved they're no longer you . know back to back to the one some days we were. ran out of corrosion and had to be without life till we were able to

get it again back then we didn't have mobile phones to use as torches we would cook and eat unleavened darkness areality solar lights have not only lit up my home but lost my life in a very. it is unlikely the people here will receive support from a total days in the near future to improve living conditions in the magazine these informal settlements but solar appliances do give them the chance to live a better life without kerosene they're healthier and there's less damage to the environment a step in the right direction at least. we all want those that pretty top and that stunning jacket fast fashion this addiction nobody every estimated $56000000.00 tons of clothing much of freight consumed in the developed world but it has

a devastating impact on the cities of developing countries. like the south indian city is a hub for the clothing industry and industry which is now destroying the region's once. the u.s. become a dumping ground for all of this for. as long as. humans are interested in reading plots this mess alexis. i'm not. the only place for textiles in india is too poor no where else do you if your wedding shopping come to to europe or how did our desire to be fashionable this once sleepy town and its. into

a toxic environment be nice. if you have no one. with a maid in india this is probably where it came from. duple would under the banks of that ivanov is a city in southern india up to 90 percent of the country's cotton text are exports and more than half its knitwear exports originate here. the global retailers that's lost clothes i usually large western corporations. as all the major. medical and you know. but there is now also famous for the state of its river this is not a river it's green the view of a bang on this one sacred river smelled so bad and is so often of chemicals but it's. so how did things turn out like this.

just a few decades ago the duple was almost entirely farmland growing primarily gotten so when small textile factories began to set up here in the late 1970 s. farmers gave up their livelihood and joined the trend and. like kumar did i saw me good runs a garment factory insulted a pool and has seen the city transform. the small lives now worth $260.00. district of corpus and we are employing about more than 1300000 people about a plea any better do you need completely. been spotless and really need to invest because. the textile industry here is what is called the

cluster around of housing small to mid-size independent garment factories like that as armies exist alongside dying bleaching and embroidery units together they bring in a revenue of 250000000000 the piece almost 3000000000 euros a year. industrial scale have also been set up but it's the small to mid-size facilities that make up the majority. of modern myself. more that. that would be so much of an impact as far as the pollution this country are one step. more that we are really spoiling the and when my proxy chemicals. were being blamed into the it were nearly 180 kilometers in length and has long been considered sacred as a non-issue as the region and sustains at least 2000000 people with more draining

into the famously. as the oil flows through the growing cities though it gets short with household and plastic waste. but the most harmful pollutants enter the liver in the industrial cluster. at 2020 study found high levels of copper zinc lead and other carcinogenic metals in the water. that could leave long term effects on the land local people and life stuff. this is the water that goes to people's fields. people use it when playing pink a big thing. affecting. in 2011 the state high court stepped in managing all manufacturers to set up wastewater treatment plants most have complied but activists say many manufacturers who can't afford to clean

up their chemical waste continue to dispose of it illegally sometimes under the cover of darkness or in areas that are 2 or more took constant monitoring. between notes in a timely was one of the activists. to convince the court to take action but he says the burden of cleaning up this we can't only fall on the little guys. this dying and bleaching doesn't exist in developing countries because they don't want to follow the water if somebody raises the issues of pollution in the europa not the american people suddenly there will be a knee jerk reaction from the cooperation then they'll say no no no no we're not so thing from your we'll source from by the levees as if everything is fine there are there are several sources from we have my own resources from sorry now that i do this. is not ethical. he says that developed countries are outsourcing that

pollution and the social consequences of this extend well beyond this city. the brunt of the impact of the moment of pollution has been fierce debate the farmers and i would have some communities basically they lost the fertility of their soil they lost they have kept their loss they have grown bored of the sources and the income has ground 0. and. b. then a few years they lost the ability. down driven neil one of the do dams in the new year is that the impact of this is most severe. i did a visit to order to buy liam dam which has been polluted for decades. he says in a porch of over 800000 fish dying in just a single. that was over 15 years ago when the flood gates were open but even today

the water is polluted the does of what is blanketed in water hyacinth plants indicators of heavy metal pollution they also chalk the entire river system below. 3 farmers who are on their morning walk on the dam approached me and began describing what had happened to the river they grown up beside. the net when i was 15 or so we used to drink this water but it's been dirty for 30 to 35 years now but they say many people have jobs on the other side but what good is that if the water is contaminated there's a saying in time you know it's like selling your eyes and buying a movie. one of the family david invited us back to his home he used to live here as a subsistence farmer but over the past 20 years things have changed dramatically here but back then there was cotton rice sugar cane corn lots of crops.

and. now the ground is so contaminated by the water that we don't have any of those crops anymore now we don't grow anything just coconuts. he says though the yield of his coconut trees has dropped by at least 30 percent because of the water so now he imports coconuts from other indian states and hires laborers to break and dry them before he sells the parts mainly to the coconut oil industry you know in the market. it started when coconut oil became fashionable in markets around the world. but no matter how much business we do we need water that's the main thing. i have money for everything i need now but it's not enough. and what will it be like in the future for our children. it's only getting worse in the present. since the court order more than 100 treatment

plans have been established some are in individual factories others are common treatment plants which treat wastewater from several small scale facilities more than 1000000000 liters of water every day the government subsidizes a large part of the operating costs i visited a common treatment plant where $18.00 small dying units send their waste water for treatment. my family this year so i was saving the favor of some point. this small dying operations do have to be a part of the treatment and they still need to stay competitive many have seen a steep drop in their profit margins sometimes down by 15 percent. so many of the facilities have moved out of to either to other states or even just beyond the district border where the court doesn't apply. the number. dying units and has

declined from over 700 at its peak do around 400 at the moment the district has taken a financial hit even as the neuer has become somewhat cleaner. i'm going up to the source a bit of which is inside the predicted thought is to see what this looks like in its origin. just a 15 minute drive from the easternmost city on the the landscape is completely different. i mean it's the same give up it's oh yeah i think it. does but. i wondered about the future of this river and the many stakeholders involved shouldn't corporations that's sole step products from the area better group to share of the financial burden with the state to be more vigilant and why do the

good requirements apply across the entire country. there's a lot of downstream could one day become some version of this but with a modern falling on the small number of people in a long queue and if this is going to become a case where history repeats itself on another hit and in and on the plate. and this is already happening industrial jobs are being set up across so inviting more small businesses to develop small towns so do i want new clothes yes but also seeing what my claws are doing to business and all the systems of support i want to have us not mine and i'll go back to this one from what it is to make sure that this doesn't result in the destruction of all of this. if you like that story. more about sustainability i knew you had to challenge new plan and it's just the right make sure to check it out. now. growing cities need to make an important

choice will they work with nature and be sustainable or will they walk against it and extract it only for example to tokyo as the was biggest city by 20 with the population steadily growing towards $40000000.00 people the city is like a. concept. sustainability and. there are already some you know way to ideas for what the cities of the future could look like let's take a look. mushrooming megacities are a global phenomenon there are now 3 times as many urban areas with $10000000.00 plus residents as just a few decades ago. but as cities grow so to their problems. cities are microcosms of society you know observe all the opportunities and

challenges in a very small space like under a looking glass and. the biggest conurbation on the planet is greater tokyo population 38000000 followed by jakarta with around 34000000. delhi mumbai manila and shanghai each home to more than $20000000.00 people as are the biggest metropolis is in latin america sao paolo and mexico city. traffic is a major problem in megacities but there are new ideas out there on how to tackle it . we're also used to cars that we can't imagine cities without them anymore but if we were to experience that we wouldn't want to go back to cars. this is how cities might look in future if different kinds of road users were separated one road is for fast moving electric vehicles another for pedestrians cyclists and

scooters. with the 3rd a prominent reserved for pedestrians only. welcome to the woven city a project under development by japanese carmaker toyota a prototype city and living laboratory for cutting edge technologies. here all vehicles will be self driving and run on electric power or hydrogen the many city itself will be powered by solar and geothermal energy with everything coordinated centrally by ai technology. it's being designed for a population of 2000. people off a clue go look we need it smarter ideas about how people can move around. in a city with 5000000 residents and 3000000 cars that are idle 90 percent of the time you just need to do the math. so that you could probably reduce the number of cars by 80 percent. always going to the smart sharing system people could still enjoy

the same level of mobility you answered in mention. meanwhile at the other end of asia in saudi arabia there are plans for a new megalopolis knee arm a linear city comprising for. the pet project of the saudi crown prince is said to cost an estimated 500000000000 euros road and high speed rail transportation are all electric and underground. nicknamed the lie because it's meant to be 170 kilometers in length is designed to be carbon neutral with a 5 g. network driving all manner of applications. right now it's a thinly populated and undeveloped area. we want to create sustainable infrastructures and stimulate economic activity. which will in turn create new kinds of jobs and economic development in saudi arabia. the

country is seeking. turn it is to its oil based economy neon should also boost tourism and attract startups and media production companies the entire city's energy requirements are to be supplied from renewable sources. huge amount of sunlight and ideal wind conditions so our energy system will run exclusively on primary energy. and this energy will then also be used for desalination. because water is a big problem here. is an acronym for a new future the plan is to create a city for 1000000 people in just 10 years but is that really feasible. let's combine them if the 2 projects have something in common it's that they're not what was originally hoped for blueprints and reality are miles apart the projects assume a managerial perspective which ignores the fact that cities are more than just

infrastructure what draws people to living there is not something you can plan just like that. no one city and me arm 2 visions of eco friendly high tech cities where people can actually enjoy life but will they actually get off the ground. cities like the land they have built on our finite. like we just saw new innovations which make sure our cities try sustainably a big need of the hour what i hope to be is short give you some perspective on the burden on our cities and what we can do to reduce it that's all we have to be i'll see you again next week with a brand new episode of equal india for what entire team in india and germany good buy.

i'm good.

thanks to by law enforcement and forgotten by society. discarded children on the streets of the philippines searching for homes but what they find is persecution and prison and violence. a film about minnows homeless children who are fighting for survival every single day. 15 minutes deep. w.

it's an ongoing quest for a bit of. the arab spring began in 2011. people stood up against corrupt rulers and dictatorship. all these moments. have left deep banks and my memory. they had hoped for more security more freedom more dignity. have their hopes been fulfilled. in years after the arab spring now a 1000000000 starts june 7th on d w. how does a virus spread. why do we panic and when will all this time for just 3 of the topics covered and the weekly radio. if you like and the

information on the crown of virus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast if you get it wherever you get your podcasts you can also find us and dot com slash science. w's crime fighters are back africa's most successful radio drama series continues this season the stories focus on hate speech cholera prevention and sustainable charcoal production. all of a sow's are available online and of course you can share and discuss on africa's facebook page and other social media platforms. crime fighters to name now.

this is due to all the news live from berlin india's agony intensifies as corona virus cases this sole past 20000000 the national vaccination drive is faltering even as the sheer number of infections overwhelms the health care system. also coming up hopes that europe full soon be able to welcome to the wrists again thanks to excel or writing national vaccination plans could bring open in time for the summer holiday. and they poured billions into the fire.