Healing the Earth and poverty with green buildings

Developing countries still face challenges for going green, but more organisations and programmes are lending a hand 

When we think of climate change, key terms that often immediately come to mind are global temperature, carbon emissions, sea-level rise, etc. But what about extreme poverty? We are living better lives thanks to urbanisation, but it is also directly affecting rural poverty.

According to a report by CSM Medical University, Department of Psychiatry, rapid urbanisation creates a “fringe population”, in which people live mainly from hand to mouth, further adding to poverty.  

Published in the ARES digital White Paper Vol. 1, the article entitled ‘Proptech paves the way for green building adoption in developing countries’ by IFC’s Angelo Tan, he mentions that as many as 100 million people could be forced into extreme poverty by 2030 due to climate change.

Co-pollutants are responsible for more than seven million premature deaths each year, as well as an estimated USD2.4 billion direct costs to health per year by 2030. There is no time to waste, and with the building sector contributing up to 39 percent of total energy-related to carbon dioxide emissions, green buildings play a vital role in the solution.  

Many developed countries already have a mature green building market, which is something to celebrate. Yet, we see a lack of green buildings in developing countries, regions with high poverty rates.

Green buildings are a challenge to developing countries for many reasons, including the fact that “people don’t even have their basic needs met”, said Bruce Kerswill, former WORLDGBC chair, at Green Cities 2014. Proptech is one of the solutions to overcome the challenges of green buildings, as well as organisations like IFC, that offers programmes and advice on green building codes and incentives.  

This is a call to action for global green building adoption.  

Read more about the impact of rapid urbanisation in developing countries at asiarealestatesummit.com/ares-digital-white-paper-vol-1/  

Write to our editors at [email protected].