Access to land and legal security of tenure are strategic prerequisites for the provision of adequate shelter for all and for the development of sustainable human settlements affecting both urban and rural areas. It is also one way of breaking the vicious cycle of poverty. Every government must show a commitment to promoting the provision of an adequate supply of land in the context of sustainable land use policies. The failure to adopt, at all levels, appropriate rural and urban land policies and land management practices remains a primary cause of inequity and poverty. Vulnerable groups 72.
Vulnerability is the inability to compete on an equal basis for resources and opportunities.
If vulnerability is to be reduced, there is a need to improve and ensure access by members of vulnerable groups to shelter, finance, infrastructure, basic social services, safety nets and decision-making processes. Measuring and valuing the unpaid and underpaid economic and social contributions of these vulnerable groups in local and national accounts will begin to quantify and address the inequities and injustices they face. With regard to shelter, members of vulnerable groups are especially at risk when they may have no security of tenure or where they lack basic services or face disproportionate environmental and health impacts, or because they may be excluded, either inadvertently or deliberately, from the housing market and services.