Dear Participants,

I whish you all welcome to the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development. A special welcome to our distinguished guest speakers who will, I am sure, give us valuable inputs and make our celebration of World Habitat Day 2004 meaningful and forward-looking.

This is the forth year we in Norway celebrate the World Habitat Day in a more official manner. Every year Habitat Norway has been the organizer of the event in close cooperation with the Housing and Building Department in the Ministry - a modest, but still a significant example of a fruitful public/private partnership. I hope that we by now can say that we have established a tradition on how to celebrate the day, and that we can look forward to future arrangements in the same partnership spirit. I would anyhow take this opportunity to extend my thanks to Habitat Norway for your efforts and congratulate you with a rich and interesting programme for this year’s celebration.

As you know, the World Habitat Day is celebrated worldwide every year on the first Monday in October – focusing on a specific human settlement theme. This year the focus is on the relationship between cities and rural development, and the slogan is Cities – Engines of Rural Development.

The urban-rural dimension has been a key issue, and also in many ways a controversial issue, at the international human settlements arena for the last decade or so. At the Habitat II conference in 1996, many delegations opposed the idea to call the conference “The City Summit”. Most developing countries, especially African countries, did not favour this expression. Their main challenges were not felt as being urban, but rather rural, simply because of the fact that the vast majority of the population in these countries, and the severe problems connected to extreme poverty, were rural.

To day, looking at the Habitat II conference in retrospective, we have all reasons to say that Habitat II became a city summit. This conference was in many ways the point of departure for a new trend, a shift of focus, from rural to urban development as a priority matter. In the last years it has been evidently clear that the future fight against poverty globally, has to be fought in cities. Recent trends suggest that the number of slum dwellers worldwide is projected to rise from 900 million to day to about 2 billion over the next 30 years. Virtually all the growth in number of people living in poverty world wide, will be city-dwellers in the developing world. The Commission of Sustainable Development at its meeting in April this year – CSD 12 – recognized that urban poverty to day is the most serious threat to sustainable human settlement development.

Just two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to participate at the second World Urban Forum in Barcelona. Here, we focused on some of the more specific issues that clearly illustrate that urban poverty is a severe threat to sustainability - for instance the fact that the vast majority of children and youth in most of the big cities in developing countries are growing up with no hope for the future. They are marginalized, have no influence, struggling with life-threatening living conditions. Many of them live already as children outside the society, and have no prospects of being included as adults. Their future will most likely bring unemployment, at least no legal work, they will not be able to buy or rent a house except for may be a shack in the growing slums, they will get no formal address and therefore loose civil rights such as the right to vote. At the same time, every day, they meet their fellow citizens, often neighbours, the small minority of rich people living behind guarded walls – enjoying whatever the “good city life” may offer. A situation like this is definitely not sustainable.

But also in our part of the world we have challenges connected to exclusion and social segregation. Especially in the big cities, groups of immigrants coming from non-european countries, are de facto excluded from the society. Many of them lack the relevant social capital and seem not able to integrate into their new homelands. Many face ethnic discrimination. Racism is a growing problem.

Compared to the situation in the developing world, even if we look at current trends in many western countries, we can say that the challenges we face in Norway are minor. Still we can observe the same general trends – although weaker and in a much more manageable scale. We have a policy to fight poverty and homelessness, in fact this Government has issued concrete, national action plans both to fight poverty in general and to combat homelessness.

We are also concerned with ethnic integration and the possibility for immigrants to participate on equal terms in the society. Last Friday my minister presented a white paper with a focus on these questions. Integration and participation is not just a question of what the government can do, but also on creating some common values that we all have to respect – and the acceptance of people’s different cultural background in a multicultural society.

Traditionally the urban-rural dimension in Norwegian politics has been very important, and still is. In the light of this importance, we have not been in the forefront internationally to focus solely on urban challenges. In fact, at the Habitat II conference, we supported the African countries in their ply for not forgetting the rural problems. But also in our country we are now more engaged in and aware of the specific challenges our bigger cities face. This is reflected in the first ever white paper on general urban policies presented to the Parliament in 2003. We are also preparing a white paper on the development of the metropolitan area of Oslo, probably finished by 2006.

The future of rural policies is presently being discussed by a Governmental Commission expected to deliver their report in just a few days. I expect within their wide mandate, that they will discuss relationships between urban and rural regions. Furthermore, we are preparing a white paper to the Parliament on regional policies to be presented during the spring. Both of this will have to discuss the role of cities as engines of growth in general, but I expect also the relations between urban and rural regions.

Therefore, the theme of this year’s World Habitat Day is of relevance also to Norwegian politics. We are looking forward to hear about experiences from China as well as Kenya. --I think it is necessary to work hard for a better understanding of the global urban challenges in the international community. Otherwise, we will not be able to reach the Millennium Development Goals on poverty and on bettering the living conditions for at least 100 million slum dwellers. Sustainable cities have the potential to be engines of growth for national and local development. Obviously, there are links between urban and rural development. I hope that we during this day can examine these links a little bit closer.

I whish you the best of luck and a pleasant World Habitat Day celebration, and I thank you for your attention.