Rebuilding a Sustainable Haiti: Best Green Building Practices in Developing Countries

By Thera N. Kalmijn at Matter Network Thu Sep 16, 2010 5:50am EDT

The January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti destroyed or severely damaged an estimated 200,000 homes, 30,000 commercial buildings, and 180 government buildings.Since the earthquake, building practices and guidelines in Haiti have been a topic of global discussion with many organizations inside and outside the country hoping to rebuild a more sustainable Haiti.
But the topic of sustainability in Haiti raises some challenging questions. What does sustainability mean in Haiti? What frameworks, green building practices, and measures of sustainability are appropriate? And is it possible to use the opportunity created by the disaster to help Haiti leapfrog in its development? How might the lessons learned in Haiti be models for sustainable building in other developing countries?
A critical element to rapid and permanent adoption of green building practices in Haiti is the creation of a framework based on an understanding of what sustainability means nationally, regionally, and especially locally. Green building frameworks such as the USGBC's LEED and BREEAM in the United Kingdom are comprehensive frameworks that include detailed guidelines and economic, social, and environmental goals for sustainable buildings, but do they work in Haiti?
The USGBC's LEED framework focuses on reducing environmental, social, and economic impacts through a point system that evaluates the elements of: Sustainable Site; Water Efficiency; Energy & Atmosphere; Materials and Resources; Indoor Environmental Quality; Locations and Linkages; Awareness and Education; Innovation in Design; and Regional Priorities. LEED is useful as a reference in creating a framework for Haiti and other developing countries in that it introduces most sustainability topics that should be considered in green building and provides a common language that green builders in the developed world understand. In the United States, LEED buildings use 26 percent less energy, cost 13 percent less to operate, and use less water - attributes which provide economic incentive for investors and builders.
However, reducing operating costs, and using less energy and water to create economic incentives are not the primary motivators to build green in Haiti. The way the sustainability concepts and metrics are interpreted in Haiti (and likely in other developing countries) leads to a different set of goals, standards, and measures.
In a recent discussion on rebuilding a more sustainable Haiti, Martin Hammer, a Berkeley, California based architect focusing on sustainable building systems and the lead for Builders Without Borders in Haiti, said "the primary meaning of 'sustainability' for most Haitians is survivability and affordability." (August 2010 interview). Therefore building low-cost structures that also resist earthquakes and hurricanes are the highest priority.
Further, using less energy and water are not high priorities in Haiti. The challenge is to provide more energy, water, and sanitation to people who currently live without these basic services while reducing environmental, social and economic impacts of deforestation, pollution and disease related to current building and building use practices.
Rebuilding a Sustainable Haiti: How to Build Green in the Developing World (Part 2)
In order to rebuild a more sustainable Haiti, a culturally-appropriate sustainable building framework must be developed with an understanding of local green building barriers and opportunities. While a "Haitian Green Building Framework" shares sustainability concepts and elements with developed world guidelines such as the USGBC's LEED framework, the definition, application, and goals are different.
Goals of a green building framework in Haiti should address the country's unique economic, social, and environmental needs, focusing on improving safety, affordability, access, and quality of life through the following green building elements:
- Productive Site - an environmentally low-impact site that protects and leverages natural eco-systems, includes productive landscaping (e.g. for food production, composting, erosion-prevention, grey water irrigation, thermal comfort, etc.), and considers seismic and storm-water safety.
- Materials - building systems that incorporate a high degree of local, low-cost, low-impact, renewable, and reusable materials (such as bamboo, straw-bale, rubble, plastic bottle waste, etc.).
- Quality of Life Building Systems - buildings that incorporate simple, affordable and environmentally low-impact health and hygiene systems such as high-efficiency low-smoke cooking alternatives, basic sanitation, clean water, low-cost electricity, waste-management, and mosquito barriers.
- Technology Transfer - a process of implementing green building that includes training a local workforce to build, install, and maintain sustainable building construction systems and quality of life building systems.
- Economic Sustainability - providing building solutions and systems that are affordable for inhabitants to build and maintain (such as small-scale PV, simple rainwater catchment systems, etc.) and that create local jobs in the process.
- Cultural Sustainability - include a systematic feedback process in development and implementation to ensure culturally-appropriate solutions that will be integrated into Haitian society.
In short, a green building framework by and for Haitians needs to be: culturally-appropriate, safe, affordable, productive, environmentally low-impact, able to utilize local materials and human resources and capable of improving quality of life.
Look for Part 3 of this series next Thursday. Read Part 1 here.
Photo by United Nations Development Programme/flickr/Creative Commons
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS391769043120100923?pageNumber=2