Sustainability & Scarcity

A Handbook for Green Design and Construction in Developing Countries

Peter Ozolins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317643708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Durabilité en architecture

Sustainability & Scarcity addresses a gap in the literature on green building recognized by many in the fields of international development, architecture, construction, housing and sustainability. Rather than being based on the experiences of more economically-developed countries, this book describes the nature of green building in the developing world, elaborating the main issues that define sustainability in those particular contexts.

Through more than 30 years of development work in design and construction in Africa and the Middle East, the author has seen well-intentioned development projects, both in theory and in practice, that ultimately do not contribute to sustainable development. Starting from the basis of green building rating tools used in the more economically-developed countries, the author draws from his own experiences to make available to other practitioners green building strategies relevant to the developing country context that promise effective solutions to their need for sustainable green design.

The book looks in detail at examples of buildings in Tanzania, Madagascar, Nepal, Haiti, and Vietnam, illustrating the application of the green building strategies described. Fully illustrated with drawings and full colour photos, the book is a practical guide for practitioners and policy-makers working in the poorest regions of the world. Sustainability & Scarcity is quite simply an essential handbook for anyone concerned with sustainable design and building in the developing world.

PART 1

BIG PICTURE: GREEN BUILDINGS AND LEAST
DEVELOPED REGIONS

Chapter 1: Green building and the Least Developed Regions

SUSTAINABILITY AND GREEN BUILDING

Just what does the well-used word ‘sustainability’ mean, and how does it relate to notions of green building?

In 1986, Robert Repetto, noted economist and Yale University professor, formerly with the World Bank, wrote that ‘the core idea of sustainability is that current decisions should not impair the prospects for maintaining or improving future living standards’.¹ This general notion of sustainability has been echoed by numerous analysts as the basis for discussions and strategies regarding sustainability,² because it succinctly summarizes the basic situation that we find ourselves in: the way we humans live is damaging that which sustains us, and it is fundamentally unjust to leave our children worse off than we are.

Sustainability is further defined as consisting of three principal dimensions – environmental, economic and social – as expressed by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD):

sustainable development means integrating the economic, social and environmental objectives of society, in order to maximize human well-being in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.³

The German government's agency for assistance to developing countries, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), refers to sustainable development that is economically viable, socially equitable and ecologically sound. GTZ says that sustainable development means

– Economic growth for more prosperity

– Equal opportunities for rich and poor, North and South, men and women

– Natural resource use for the benefit of present and future generations.⁴

Nancy Alexander, Don Reeves and David Beckmann, in their 1993 discussion paper regarding US foreign aid, apply the sustainability discussion to the developing country context defining four essential and interrelated objectives of sustainable development which encompass and expand on the three dimensions mentioned above:

– expanding economic opportunities (especially for poor people);

– meeting basic human needs (food, clean water, shelter, health care, education and fulfillment of the human spirit);

– protecting and enhancing the environment; and

– promoting pluralism and democratic participation (especially by poor people).⁵

These citations make clear that sustainability is much more than environment and economics, which in simplistic arguments are pitted against each other as if they were mutually exclusive. Without the consideration of cultural and social parameters, efforts towards sustainability are not likely to be successful. Michael M. Cernea maintains that sustainability must be ‘socially constructed’, suggesting that a sociological perspective provides

First … a setof concepts that help explain social action, the relationships among people, their complex forms of social organization, their institutionalized arrangements, and the culture, motives, stimuli, and values that regulate their behavior vis-à-vis one another and natural resources. Second … it offers a set of social techniques apt to prompt coordinated social action, inhibit detrimental behavior, foster association, craft alternative social arrangements, and develop social capital.⁶

The cultural and social aspects of sustainability are not as easily recognized or quantified as environmental and economic aspects. Not only is the cultural and social difficult to count, but, from inside a given culture, its characteristics can be invisible to us while from the outside they can be incomprehensible. Rogers, Jalal and Boyd describe the social domain

as a complex set of interacting cultural and institutional systems that vary from one place to another. All have bodies of knowledge for adapting to the physical environment; modes of producing and exchanging goods and services; systems for finding partners, raising children, and inheriting property; arrangements for public decision making and conflict management; bodies of belief and related rituals; and systems of prestige or ranking, and aesthetics. From the outside the complexity and dynamism of these interacting systems are mind boggling. Viewed from the inside by the people who constitute a society, they fit together in a sensible and seamless way, and individuals' attitudes and behaviours reflect the values and pressures that they have internalized while growing up.⁷

Over and above the addition of social and cultural considerations, poverty must be addressed for sustainability to be attained. Rogers, Jalal and Boyd identify poverty as ‘the most significant socioeconomic dimension of sustainable development. As such, development activities that do not address poverty in contexts where poverty and the problems of poverty are endemic would be difficult to characterize as sustainable.’⁸ Rogers et al. suggest that ‘poverty must be reduced by meeting basic needs: health, education, shelter, productive employment, control over common property, and population management’.⁹

Figure 1.1 Sustainability in Kathmandu, Nepal, involves environmental, economic and cultural aspects unique to its context

While it is unrealistic to expect every proposed project to attempt to resolve or even address all these issues, it is clear that socio-economic aspects – and poverty chief among them – are critical to sustainable development, particularly in the developing countries. Projects in the LDRs that strive for sustainability should therefore include a review of how these various social/cultural dimensions of sustainability could be addressed and incorporated into the project planning, design and implementation.

The World Bank's World development report 2000/2001 identifies the following three keys to overcoming poverty:

■ security from violence, hunger and physical deprivation;

■ opportunities for health, education and decent employment; and

■ empowerment in both personal and public decision-making.¹⁰

These studies underline the importance of strategies of reducing poverty and providing sustainable livelihoods to the goals of sustainability. More broadly, the social dimensions of sustainability refer to the need for equity. Another World Bank Study, Building a sustainable future: The Africa region environment strategy of 2002 states its aims as follows:

■ make the transition to sustainable economic development through improving environmental and natural resource management;

■ empower communities and individuals to make a sustainable living based on the natural resource endowments of the region and to take responsibility for managing them;

■ reduce the burden of diseases and poor health by improving the quality of the environment in which people live;

■ reduce the vulnerability of people and economies of the region to natural disasters and severe climatic events;

■ manage and conserve the unique biological diversity of the region for themselves, their future generations, and the world; and

■ establish an enabling environment and build the capacity to achieve these objectives and maintain them over the long term.¹¹

In the light of such sustainability goals, project designers (designers in the broadest sense) must consider their task in its larger context to examine how it fits into its social/cultural context and what role it could conceivably play in addressing such challenges.

Broad and Cavanagh, in their review of development directions over time, maintain that, based on evaluation of past experiences, ‘development strategies will not succeed and endure unless they incorporate ecological sustainability, equity, and participation, as well as effectiveness in raising material living standards’¹² Dr Paul Farmer, of Partners in Health, identifies equity as the key issue to address in their work in Haiti, Rwanda and elsewhere: equal access for everybody to health care and to opportunity.¹³

It is important to appreciate the key role of labour and opportunities for livelihoods in developing countries as a critical component of sustainability. It is part of a broader understanding of what sustainability is in the LDRs, where unemployment and underemployment are so consistently high. Robert Chamber...