Buildings account for an estimated 40% of all world resource consumption and over 40% of all waste, including greenhouse gas emissions. Developing countries have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the developed world, which rarely considered the impact on natural resources and the environment.
Rapid industrialisation in China and India represents an environmental time bomb as energy consumption escalates. The report, The construction challenge: sustainability in developing countries, highlights the failure of concerted attempts to diffuse this threat at an international or national level. It calls for:
- governments to lead by example with high standards for their own buildings
- building regulations that lay down sustainable practices
- development of low cost, simple technological solutions that are feasible in developing countries, such as use of photo-voltaic cells and geothermal loop systems.
RICS chief executive, Louis Armstrong, said: "Poorly designed and executed construction projects are an economic and environmental burden. The conflict between long term benefit and short term commercial gain means that the quick fix often wins out. Only if governments step in, as they have done in Denmark, will there be a prospect of reducing the massive waste."
