The Port of Beirut explosions (4 August 2020) resulted in extensive damage on multiple levels – the loss of life, injury and the destruction of vast tracts of urban fabric within the municipal boundaries of Beirut. Led by the Municipality and Governor of Beirut, UN-Habitat supported a rapid damage assessment at the building level (exterior visual survey).

Local authorities have played a major role to curtail COVID-19, particularly in vulnerable urban settings, while maintaining critical services.
To identify problems and suggest solutions, UN-Habitat assessed 34 Unions of Municipalities and 5 individual municipalities, covering 52 per cent of Lebanese municipalities. The report highlights key urban challenges and proposes several mitigating measures.

COVID-19, a global pandemic declared by the World Health Organization (WHO), is crippling the global economy and upending people’s lives thereby threatening sustainable development across all its dimensions. Africa is also facing the dire consequences of the crisis, necessitating timely response, recovery and rebuilding policies and strategies. Globally, urban areas are the epicenters of the epidemic accounting for most of the confirmed COVID-19 cases.

This advocacy toolkit has been developed to guide city authorities in sensitizing their communities to waste management issues and in promoting sustainable day-to-day practices that can support the authority in improving waste management in the long term. This advocacy toolkit and guide aims at fostering behavioural change at the community level to achieve sustainable resource and municipal solid waste management in cities.

This publication, a joint effort of UN-Habitat and Tongji University, shares the rich experiences of China and other countries in addressing the enormous challenges faced during rapid population growth, urbanization and industrialization, and demonstrates technical, managerial and financial solutions developed to improve water quality and the general environment of urban rivers through well-developed wastewater management systems. These solutions will be a catalyst for better practices globally.

This report provides a baseline inventory of the standard of living, housing and infrastructure services as well as access to urban basic services in Mwanza, Tanzania, focusing on informal settlements. It provides evidence-based guidance on how to improve access to urban basic services in informal settlements as an essential element to achieve healthy, livable and sustainable cities.

The collection of municipal solid waste is a public service that has important impacts on public health and the appearance of towns and cities.