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Resilient Cities
Deforestation in Azerbaijan is a serious threat and one that must be addressed. According to Sachs, the loss of forests brings about a loss of a “tremendous amount of biodiversity.” Azerbaijan’s forests are 62% temperate and 38% tropical, according to mongabay.com. 42.78% of their wooded areas are primary forests, which, according to greenfacts.org, are forests that show little to no sign of human activity, and have an ecosystem that is generally undisturbed. Fortunately, the threat of deforestation is one that Azerbaijan has recognized and is actively working against. In fact, in the past few years the forest area has actually been growing. Below is a graph of forest area as percent of total land, from the World Bank. As one can see, it’s been going up steadily. According to Firdovsi Aliyev, the Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, over five million trees were planted in eight years. Efforts like these helped rank Azerbaijan 31st out of 180 countries in 2016’s Environmental Performance Index. Despite all their progress, though, some think that still more must be done to prevent deforestation. Aydin Huseynov, an Azerbaijani lawmaker, believes that the country needs stricter punishments to protect the country’s flora and fauna. He argues that the current fines aren’t enough to protect the ecosystems. Still, although perhaps more can be done to prevent it, deforestation is a relatively minor problem in Azerbaijan, and one that has already been addressed to an extent.
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/archive/Azerbaijan.htm https://www.azernews.az/nation/103861.html https://www.azernews.az/nation/94462.html https://www.greenfacts.org/glossary/def/forest.html
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According to Prevention Web, Baku’s main natural disaster threats are floods and landslides. Floods are more frequent, but landslides have a higher rate of mortality, as one can see in below graph. From 2005-2014, however, only one major disaster occurred, and only one death. So their disaster response infrastructure hasn’t really been tested on any large scale incidents. On a smaller scale, they have been plagued by landslides. These landslides have been responded to effectively, but they are caused partly by agricultural activity. I rate Baku’s resisitance to natural disasters a B+. The Red Crescent Disaster Management Programme seems to be their main defense against disasters, and, at least in Baku, their responses have been timely. But they need to work to prevent these disasters from occurring, so that larger landslides don’t cause even more damage. Baku’s waste management needs improvements. While the collection and transportation systems work well, the landfills are unsanitary to the point of being unhealthy, and waste isn’t reused or recycled often. To become more resilient and green, Baku should consider implementing a waste to energy system, and improve sanitation in the landfills to ensure public health and safety. I rate the infrastructure a B-. Baku’s transportation infrastructure includes a bus and train system, as well as an airport. There is a metro service which is considered generally pretty safe, although in 1995 over 300 people died to carbon monoxide poisoning in an accident. No such accident has occurred since, however. From below map, it appears that the system covers most of the city, although some areas are not easily reached. Still, the system is effective overall so I rate it an A-. Baku’s water infrastructure is currently inadequate. Unlike the rest of the country, in Baku the issue is water quantity and not quality. The water delivery systems were designed in the Soviet area, anticipating that the city would not exceed 1.5 million in population. Now with a population over 4 million, much of the citizens have to ration their water. There are plans to build new pipelines that will increase quantity, however, so because efforts are being taken I will grade the systems B. If the new pipeline from Oguz is completed and works efficiently, the grade will go to an A, as water quality is high.
http://www.preventionweb.net/countries/aze/data/ https://www.azernews.az/nation/89014.html http://www.ifrc.org/docs/appeals/06/Logframes/Europe/AZB/DM.pdf http://www.az.undp.org/content/azerbaijan/en/home/operations/projects/sustain_development/solid-waste-management.html http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62079 http://abc.az/eng/news/71354.html Azerbaijan is currently below average in urban population as percent of total, as one can see in above graph (the unmarked line represents upper-middle income). Still, the number has been rising steadily in the past decade, as the country grows and agriculture is slowly replaced by more industrial fields (oil, of course, being the main one).
The capital, Baku, lies on the coast of the Caspian sea. It’s not a coincidence that the country’s largest city happens to be located near a body of water: as Sachs mentions, development normally starts near coasts because the cost of shipping goods over water is relatively low. The Baku International Sea Trade Port is probably why the city has been so successful: according to Digital Logistics Capacity Assessments, the port is a “strategic part of Azerbaijan's logistics infrastructure and a key point in the whole logistics corridor through which mineral, commodity and other products pass from central Asia to western markets.” Discussed before, there is great inequality between the cities and the rural regions of Azerbaijan. There is also inequality within the cities: in 2001, 55.70% of the urban population was below the urban poverty line, according to KNOEMA. Unfortunately, there isn’t much data avaliable on the subject, and nothing recent enough to draw any definitive conclusions. https://knoema.com/WBPS2014Jul/poverty-and-inequality-statistics-july-2014?country=1000090-azerbaijan http://dlca.logcluster.org/display/public/DLCA/2.1.1+Azerbaijan+Baku+International+Sea+Trade+Port;jsessionid=5CCEF930B244FF0BB97401E43A9D4522#id-2.1.1AzerbaijanBakuInternationalSeaTradePort-PortOverview http://data.worldbank.org/country/azerbaijan |
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