Building Partnerships ... the basin way

events
November 1999
basin Awareness Exposition
Nov. 15, 1999 at the
India International Trade Fair

Sponsored by:
Housing and Urban
Development Corporation

basin Sustainable Building
Technologies Seminar
Nov. 17-20, 1999 at
TARAgram, Orcha (MP)

Sponsored by:
Building Materials and
Technology Promotion
Council, Govt. of India

20th basin Meeting
Nov. 12-13, 1999 at
the India International Centre

Basin Knowledge Base Training for
Development Alternatives staff
by Martin Bork, MBI, Germany,
Nov. 8-10, 1999

Participants at the basin events in India strengthened their commitment to sustainable building technologies by drawing upon the rich and varied experiences of fellow practitioners from all over the world.

The two events, hosted by Development Alternatives were:
n The basin Awareness Exposition in New Delhi on Nov 15, 1999.
n The basin Sustainable Building Technologies Seminar at TARA-gram, Orchha, Nov 17-20, 1999.

The main purpose of the basin Awareness Exposition was to increase awareness amongst decision makers and professionals about the positive impacts on shelter, environment and society that can be created by the large scale use of sustainable buildingtechnologies. The Sustainable Building Technologies Seminar looked more closely at Best Practice Projects, Technology Alternatives, Dissemination Processes and Large Scale Marketing Issues.

basin Awareness Exposition
Speaking at the basin Awareness Exposition, held at the India International Trade Fair Grounds, Chief Guest Mr. V. Suresh, Chairman and Managing Director of HUDCO, Co-sponsors of the event, explained the initiatives launched by HUDCO to address the housing problem. He reiterated the importance of using building materials and technologies that were affordable and environmentally sound. Mr. Suresh welcomed the entry of basin’s information and advisory services into India through Development Alternatives with the hope that information flow would accelerate the awareness about such alternatives amongst both users and implementers.

In his keynote speech on "Multi-Sectoral Partnerships in Development Co-operation as a Response to Large Scale Need and Poverty Alleviation", Dr. R. Dannecker, Head of the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation in New Delhi emphasized that development which results from a partnership of all groups in a society is inherently more sustainable and equitable. Sharing SDC’s mandate with the audience, he stressed that the large scale housing problem would have to be looked at from this perspective.

Earlier on, in the Inaugural Session, Karl Wehrle, Head of the Building Materials and Infrastructure Section in SKAT, presented basin's activities and services. He explained the global vision of basin and introduced all the basin partners (see box). The session was chaired by Dr. Ashok Khosla, President of Development Alternatives. In his address on "New Millennium Building Technologies - an Environmental Imperative", he talked about the serious repercussions material and energy intensive technology choices (that did not create livelihoods) would have on future generations. He strongly advocated a shift to sustainable building technologies and a much stronger commitment to operationalising innovative marketing and financing strategies that could fuel demand and support a much greater supply of eco-development friendly products through micro-enter-prises.

The day's events reached a feverish pitch when Mr. V. Suresh inaugurated the basin stall at the HUDCO Build-Tech’99 Pavilion. The basin structure symbolized latest developments in sustainable building materials and technology. Designed and built by TARA Nirman Kendra, it consisted of an A-Frame in Hulas wire
girders with Micro Concrete Roofing tile cover, ferrocement channels and funicular shell roofs. The walls were built out of TARA BALRAM and Hydraform
interlocking compressed earth blocks.

The afternoon session of the basin Awareness Exposition concentrated, therefore, on highlighting practical successes achieved in projects using Sustainable Building Technology.

Martin Melendez, Vice President of Grupo Sofonias, a Latin American Eco-
Material promotion network, talked about the "Villa Hermosa" project in Nicaragua in which an affordable and incremental housing solution had been found to meet the needs of the middle class who otherwise, could not afford government housing schemes.

The next presentation was made by Francisco Fernandez, President of the Pagtambayayong Foundation in Cebu City, Philippines on "Buena Vista Homes", a social housing project built with Micro Concrete Roofing Tiles, Compressed Earth Blocks and other eco-friendly products which demonstrated how innovative solutions were also commercially viable. The construction agency, Eco-Builders, raised project funds from the San Miguel Corporation, built the houses, sold them without any subsidies and returned the funds with a profit to San Miguel.

Eric Ruiz of CRATerre, then made a very interesting presentation about a 15,000 house construction project in Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean. A long term project spread over almost 20 years, it not only resulted in cost-effective, high quality and extremely beautiful homes, but was also instrumental in setting up a genuine Small Scale building materials industry based primarily on the production and utilisation of compressed earth blocks.

These three projects brought forth the key issues of economics, partnerships and local capacity building. In the short time possible, basin partners then sought to build a comprehensive picture of vital success factors by also sharing recent lessons in the area of standards and employment generation.

Lucky Lowe, of Intermediate Technology, talked about the findings of an international research project on enabling housing standards, particularly those that were critical for the delivery and acceptance of sustainable building technologies. She told participants that standards, often colonial in origin, needed to be altered in the present context so that they could respond to the needs of the poor.

Shrashtant Patara of Development Alternatives made a presentation on the "Creation of Sustainable Livelihoods through Building Material Enterprises". He explained that success achieved on a small scale through the promotion of Micro-enterprises such as those producing and selling MCR tiles could be multiplied by a factor of 10 or even 100 if financial and marketing supports were made available.

Participants expressed their opinion on a number of the issues raised during an interactive panel discussion at the end of the day. There was without doubt, a significantly higher degree of awareness about sustainable building technologies and of course, the basin network itself as a result of the Exposition. Over the next two weeks, approximately 10,000 people visited the basin stall and found out more about how its information and advisory services could help them build better in the new millennium.

basin Sustainable Building Technologies Seminar
November 17, 1999 was a proud day indeed for the staff of DA as they welcomed their peers in the area of shelter to the brand new Conference Hall at TARAgram for the basin SBT Seminar. The venue could not have been more appropriate, built as it was with a whole range of alternative building systems. Nearly 65 interested professionals from 18 different countries including representatives of all seven basin partners gathered in Orchha for the four - day Seminar.

The Seminar was inaugurated by Mr. T.N. Gupta, Executive Director of the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council, Government of India. In his address to the seminar participants, Mr. Gupta emphasized the use of renewable natural resources and waste materials to cope with increasing population, poverty, energy scarcity, water shortages and environmental needs. While informing the participants about the services rendered by BMTPC, he explained the organization’s objective and technology evaluation methodologies. He concluded by requesting the participants to develop a model Technology Dissemination Center that the BMTPC could promote to further the reach of sustainable building technologies

The overall objective of the basin seminar was to ensure comprehensive information exchange about sustainable building technologies and to concentrate on practical aspects for professionals and organizations who wanted to learn from "small successes" and explore ways in which these successes could be multiplied on a larger scale:

The seminar was structured under five module heads. The agenda for each day was developed within this structure by a programme committee, incorporating daily feedback and suggestions from participants. The five module heads were:

Environmental Impacts: to focus on issues of energy, emissions, resource utilization, job creation and social impacts.

Best Practices: to show case projects and building systems worldwide which have created an impact using Sustainable Building Technologies.

Technology: to feature technological innovations in products and technologies mainly walling, roofing and alternative binders.

Practical Demos: to focus on production systems for various Sustainable Building Technologies.

Dissemination: to exchange views on various facets of large scale dissemination of Sustainable Building Technologies, such as training, finance, market development and technology promotions.

Impacts
The morning session of the basin Sustainable Building Technology Seminar was devoted to further understanding the impacts that Sustainable Building Technology would have on the environment and society. Geeta Vaidyanathan of DA made a presentation on Energy, Emissions and Resources in which she used a recent research project to underline the importance of benchmarking best practices. Mr. S. Shivakumar of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt. of India then made a presentation on the life cycle assessment of building materials and eco-labelling standards. Members of the working group on social impacts described features from projects that they were involved in which had demonstrated positive influences on communities.

Technology Sessions
Each day of the Seminar had a theme. These were Roofing, Walling and Cementitious Binders and Products. Thus, key presentations were made in the Technology Module by Daniel Schwitter of SKAT on "Sustainable Roofing - Design and Materials"; Christel Sumerauer of GTZ on "Walling Materials - a Global Overview"; and Otto Ruskulis of IT on "Alternative Cements". Each of these were supported by presentations on specific topics by a number of participants. The facilities at TARAgram, where active production workshops for all major alternatives were present, enabled participants to divide into two groups - one, consisting of those who wanted to delve into advanced aspects of MCR and CEB technologies and two, consisting of those who wanted to be exposed to the basics of each technology. On day three, almost all of the participants found if very useful to visit the ferrocement channel production yard, where channels were being made for perhaps the first time anywhere in the world with a mechanised process.

Sustainable Building Techology (SBT) Forum
Evenings at the SBT Seminar were probably the most interesting time of the day. Realising that it would be impossible and maybe very boring to have all participants make presentations to the plenary, an SBT Forum was organised to allow interactive exchange of the extremely rich and diverse experiences. Each presenter set up a corner and used posters, slides or videos to share his/her work. On day one, for example, Enrique Ortecho talked about CEVE’s activities in Argentina.Lionel Jayanetti described the work done by TRADA Technologies in the use of bamboo: Prof. K. Jagadish and Dr. M.Yogananda talked about building systems developed at ASTRA in Bangalore and Zeyad Ahmed Amer of the Egypt Earth Construction Association told participants about a number of methods to build modern day structures in earth. On day two of the Seminar, presentations were made by Jacques de Mevius of City and Shelter, Belgium, on CD-ROM based packages for information on shelter. Sanjay Prakash, a practicing architect in Delhi, shared his work on Solar Earth Architecture in Ladakh. Richa Angrish of DA talked about the Azadpura housing project near TARAgram, B.S.Raghavendra of DA told participants about the construction process of the Conference Hall, Lucky Lowe and Otto Ruskulis of IT briefed the participants about their organisation’s activities and Christian de Laet of Development Alternatives, Canada, spoke about sustainability through care in selecting locally available opportunities. A number of videos were also shown in the SBT Forum.

NETWORK PARTNERS

Shelter Forum is a coalition of non-governmental organizations which deal with issues of low-cost housing in Kenya. It enhances access to affordable shelter for all through advocacy, extension and networking.
E-mail : elijah@itdg.or.ke

The German Appropriate Technology Exchange
(gate) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft for Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) specializes in environmental resources protection and dissemination of appropriate technologies for developing countries.
E-mail: gate-basin@gtz.de/basin

Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) is an independent British charity helping to increase income generation and opportunities for small-scale industrial activities in developing countries.
E-mail: ottor@itdg.org.uk

The Swiss Center for Development Cooperation in Technology Management (SKAT) is a documentation centre and consultancy group. It provides technical backup to balanced development which is institutionally, ecologically and economically sound as well as technically realistic.
E-mail: info@skat.ch

CRATerre is the international centre for earth construction of the School of Architecture in Grenoble.
E-mail: craterre@club-internet.fr

The Centro Experimental de la Vivienda Economica (CEVE) is a non-governmental, professional association in Argentina. Its objectives are the promotion of low-cost housing and the creation of new job sources through technology research and development, training and technology transfer.
E-mail: basin@ceve.org.ar

Development Alternatives is a not-for-profit sustainable development enterprise that designs and promotes programmes and products which, through the use of alternative technology, contribute to the enrichment of human life.
E-mail: tara@sdalt.ernet.in

Field Trip
Even though it had to be shortened due to logistical reasons, the field trip on day three of the Seminar provided an opportunity for participants to visit the Azadpura housing project and a few other sites where TARA Nirman Kendra - Orchha had used MCR tiles, Compressed Earth Blocks, Ferrocement Channels, Concrete Blocks and other elements in houses and institutional buildings.

Large scale dissemination
The crucial issue of large scale dissemination of Sustainable Building Technologies was deliberated upon on day four using an alternative mode, that of a role playing exercise. Designed by Dr. Urs Heierli of SDC and Karl Wehrle of SKAT, two skits brought out (in often hilarious yet very serious fashion) the experiences that entrepreneurs have to go through when trying to access a new technology or market a new product. Presentations were then made by Amitabh Mukerji of HOLTEC Consulting, Dr. Arun Kumar of DA and Dr. Urs Heierli on the various factors that would play a critical role in upscaling marketing levels of alternative building materials. Their presentations offered a number of lessons from other sectors that could be used to formulate strategies for the widespread marketing of new products in the construction sector.

Working Groups
During the course of discussions on the first two days of the Seminar, a number of issues emerged that were of relevance to the objectives of the Seminar and also of specific interest to different sections of the participants. Groups were formed to probe the following issues: Integrated Building Approach, Project Scale and Technology, Quality Control, Social Impacts of SBT, Technology Dissemination Center, Training and MCR Roof Details. Each group spent two sessions thinking through their topics and then made a poster presentation of their findings on the last day.

Closing session
Dr. Ashok Khosla presented certificates to all the participant, along with a set of pen and ink drawings of the Orchha monuments for them to carry to their countries. In his concluding presentation on "Sustainable Shelter and Livelihoods", he gave an overview of five decades of development. He remarked that basic needs like livelihoods and shelter are the most unmet in the third world countries; and that these are the keys to sustainable development. One important key to sustainable livelihoods and shelter is the development of small enterprises, which act as the backbone of production in local economies. He concluded by thanking the participants for having taken time out not only to be part of the Seminar but also to visit Development Alternatives and TARAgram in particular.

Certificates of Appreciation were presented to members of the MCR Project Team at DA by SKAT/basin for their efforts in promoting MCR technology in India. The participants appreciated the work put in by DA staff into organising the Seminar.

More than anything else, perhaps, all the participants left Jhansi with a much greater resolve to continue their work towards promoting more sustainable ways of building, with many new ideas and with, lots of friends to stay in touch with in the next millenium.

by Shrashtant Patara,
Development Alternatives