The Netherlands Embassy to the Philippines recently signed a memorandum of agreement with the Malabon City Government to improve the lives of Filipinos living in informal settlements.
Under the MoA signed this week, the Dutch embassy and the local government will work together to identify and develop innovative urbanization programs, including access to electricity; land and housing tenure; access to clean drinking water; and adequate drainage.
The program is through Dutch-private-public partner, Human Cities Coalition, which aimed to contribute to truly inclusive urban development that protects and serves the socio-economic interests of the urban poor living in informal settlements across the wider Manila Bay area.
“Together with HCC, Malabon City signals its readiness to work towards addressing issues identified by the community,” the HCC stated, which was released by the Netherland embassy.
Malabon City is one of the cities that comprises greater Metro Manila. It has a total land area of 1,571.4 hectares, about 2.5 percent of the total land area of Metro Manila.
Malabon City has a generally flat topography and is a city rich with rivers and waterways. Three of these major rivers, the Malabon, Tinajeros and Tullahan Rivers, are reported by the DENR-EMB to be among the most polluted river systems in the country.
These winding rivers are at the downstream portion and the quality of water naturally decreases as it traverses to other Metro Manila cities such as Valenzuela, Caloocan and Quezon City before it finally drains to Manila Bay.
The Dutch embassy noted that Malabon City is currently in the middle of implementing a city development plan that aimed to sustain community development by focusing on: poverty reduction; social, economic and environmental development; infrastructure development; and disaster risk reduction and management.
“This overall ambition, along with this MoA, are also supported by the Netherlands Embassy in the Philippines,” HCC said.
With the signing of this MoA, HCC continues to strengthen its coalition and grow in a unique way by aligning community needs, private sector interests, and government engagement.
This way of working leads to tangible improvements for urban poor communities while building upon governmental policy frameworks and private sector agendas.
HCC recently completed a needs assessment to better gauge community needs and wishes in Malabon City.
Conducted by coalition partners Slum Dwellers International and the Shared Value Foundation, this bottom-up, participatory assessment was undertaken in the informal settlements of Barangays Catmon and Tonsuya.
The same week the MoA is signed, a two-day HCC innovation workshop was conducted to build upon the findings of this needs assessment with assistance from Amsterdam Institute of Advanced Metropolitan Solutions.
Local companies, Small and Medium Enterprises, financial experts, community members, and government representatives was able to tackle two issues,1) electricity; and 2) land tenure in the context of affordable housing.
Human Cities Coalition (HCC) is a Dutch public-private partnership dedicated to making cities more sustainable, inclusive and resilient.
With AkzoNobel as its founding partner, the HCC have more than 150 stakeholders and 20 contributing partners dedicated to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11) and the New Urban Agenda.
“We do so by building sustainable business cases for challenges in the slums of Jakarta and Manila,” the group said.
HCC takes a human-centred approach and combines the power of local communities with the interests of the private, public and financial sector to build viable solutions for flooding, pollution, sanitation, drinking water, waste and more.