Sustainability of Social Housing in Philippines
Introduction:
This paper highlights the need for more inclusive and sustainable development of social housing in rapidly developing countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In the example of the Philippines, a multi-perspective development process for a bamboo-based building system is developed.
Sustainability Assessment Criteria are defined through literature review, field observations, and interviews with three stakeholder clusters:
(1) Builders and users of traditional bamboo houses in the Philippines;
(2) Stakeholders involved in using forest products for housing in other countries around the world; and
(3) Stakeholders in the field of social housing in the Philippines.
Through coding and sorting of data in qualitative content analysis, sustainability assessment criteria are identified clustered into the dimensions of society, ecology, economy, governance, and technology.
Definition of Sustainability Assessment Criteria:
Literature reviews have shown that a mismatch between scope and actually obtained results can be observed when inappropriate sustainability assessment criteria are chosen. This can happen due to a supply, rather than a demand driven approach of using existing criteria. To ensure a suitable selection of Sustainability Criteria, this research systematically involved stakeholder perspectives. The relevance of stakeholder involvement for environmental management has been analyzed according to disciplines and geographic context and various participatory methods were categorized. It is stated that a systematic approach for stakeholder engagement in the construction sector is a requirement for achieving overall sustainability
Strategic Development Roadmap:
Irrespective of manifold theoretical approaches towards sustainability, there remains a gap between theoretic, normative use of Sustainable Development as a Decision-Making strategy and practical applications. The overall target of the wider research project, to which this introduction paper belongs, is a descriptive performance assessment comparing two actual technology solutions with each other. This requires a proven data base and implementation track record for both technologies- the currently applied, existing one and the alternative being currently only a theoretic material potential.
Sustainability Assessment Criteria:
The Sustainability Assessment Criteria presented in this chapter are derived from qualitative data about local practices, knowledge exchange through assessing bamboo construction in Latin America and timber frame construction in Europe, as well as requirements expressed by multi-perspective stakeholder groups in the pilot country. Themes of questions are documented in Appendix, while flexibility was provided to deepen the interviews according to specific interviewee concerns. Results are presented in each of the categories, before the summary of all criteria are stated.
Bamboo construction in Latin America:
In several countries of Latin America, the indigenous population used to live in houses made from bamboo. During the colonial time, European technologies started to influence traditional practices. This was the beginning of the construction technique locally named “Bahareque”: a combination of the original bamboo frame system with cement plaster cladding and an evolvement of skill and capacity. Bahareque spread as success story in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru as a confluence of traditional and new materials and practices. Especially the Coffee Belt Region of Colombia substantial parts of the houses, up to 50 percent, have been built with this construction method in the past 200 years. Similarly to the Asian case, this development was motivated by the high availability of bamboo.
Conclusion:
The general objective of the paper to develop a roadmap for transforming the potential bamboo raw material into a sustainable building technology suitable for social housing in the Philippines has been achieved. Fifteen context-specific Sustainability Assessment Criteria have been identified through processing of qualitative stakeholder data. Data was categorized into one or several of the sustainability dimensions society, ecology, economy, technology, or governance and processed through multiple qualitative sampling strategies.
The paper then presented a roadmap describing a multi-perspective development process showing the implementation path for the theoretic potential. The roadmap contains 28 action items derived by correlation of the Sustainability Criteria with four Implementation Strategies: