Sustainable Construction in Developing Countries

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Sustainable Construction in Developing Countries
Prepared by Chrisna du Plessis
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Challenges
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The trap
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Millennium Development Goals

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Reduce by half the proportion of people without
  sustainable access to safe drinking water.
• Achieve significant improvement in the lives of
  at least 100 million slum dwellers

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Johannesburg Plan of Implementation(WSSD)

• Clean water, sanitation, energy, adequate
  shelter, health care, food security and
  protection of biodiversity.
• WEHAB Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture,
  Biodiversity.
• Forever banish underdevelopment.

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Making sure that the development that does
happen, happens according to sustainability
principles.
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The barriers
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Limited awareness interest

• Little understanding of the problem
• No clear and relevant drivers
• Other priorities
• Pursuit of progress and modernity
• Resistance new colonialism

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Capacity problems

• Low skills levels across the board
• The brain drain
• Jacks of all trade - superficial knowledge
• Limited technical capacity (access to
  laboratories, computers, communications, etc.)

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Technological apathy

• Rigid, inappropriate and outdated regulations
  perceptions
• Scarcity of information knowledge on new
  technologies
• Force-fed foreign technology
• Few local technologies available
• Appropriate is a dirty word
• Limited R D funding for new built environment
  technologies

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Access to funding

• Shoestring, piecemeal budgets
• Complicated procedures
• Lack of experience in proposal writing
• Strings attached
• Matching funding
• Budget eaten by foreign components (people and
  technologies)
• Narrow, inappropriate focus (e.g. energy
  efficiency)

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What developing countries bring to the party

• Different perspectives
• Innovation
• Tradition of cooperation

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Enablers
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Opportunities
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Training education

• Train the trainers
• Refresher courses for educators
• Exchange programmes between higher learning
  institutions
• Cooperation on continued professional education
• Scholarships linked to work-back programmes
• Open systems of sharing knowledge
• Show and tell

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Mentorship

• Volunteer assistance programmes
• Brainstorming
• Proposal writing
• Technical support
• Peer review
• In-house learnerships
• Students
• Professionals
• Educators

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Partnerships

• Research
• Putting together labs methodologies with local
  knowledge and experience
• Accessing joint funding
• Construction projects
• Learnerships graduating to full partnerships
• SMME development
• Using sustainable building to create local jobs
  and industries

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Suggestions for the way forward

• Set up networks for knowledge exchange and
  capacity building
• Create a volunteer assistance programme
• Establish regional demonstration and education
  centres
• Set up a virtual marketplace for partnerships
  research, professional, or business
• Actively promote the above through the industry
  press, professional organisations, existing
  networks and government links.

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In conclusion

• Dont give us fish
• Dont give us fishing tackle
• Teach us what we need to be able to
• fish better in our own waters,
• using local skills and
• appropriate technologies