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Regional
Networking to Facilitate Rural Habitat Processes in South Karnataka
Zeenat Niazi zeenat@sdalt.ernet.in A Workshop, on “Improving the Rural Habitat through Sustainable Building Practices and Regional Networking” was organized to set up a network platform amongst NGOs, Building Centres and professionals in the field of rural habitat delivery in Mysore, on the 2nd and 3rd of December, 2002 by the Centre for Appropriate Rural Technologies (CART) and Development Alternatives. The primary aim of the workshop was to bring together professionals and institutions working in the area of rural habitat for evolving a collective approach and define service packages to support and enhance quality and economy in habitat activity in the South Karnataka region. The workshop discussed success factors of various rural habitat projects and limitations being faced by agencies and individuals in their endeavors towards efficient habitat delivery. Needs of these stakeholders in improving efficiencies, effectiveness and relevance of their delivery were defined along with components of solution packages that could service these needs.
Context: concerns of rural habitat programs today There is a growing concern for quality and economy in rural habitat programs. This is coupled with the fact that improved alternatives – sustainable ways of building, energy efficient and cost effective technologies - are not reaching agencies that are involved in the delivery of rural housing. The (habitat) agencies either directly implement or use small contractors or have a community based approach towards their projects. The quality, efficiency and effectiveness of their response are limited due to their own capacities and potential. These limitations are often the lack of technical know-how regarding environment friendly and cost efficient ways of building, information, availability of quality building products and technologies, habitat finance or even the learning from varied delivery models being applied nationally and internationally.
Where the information
of such alternatives is available, delivery agencies are not At the same time, regional and national level service providers and facilitation agencies that could supply materials, skills; facilitate finance; make information; and training available etc. exist that could provide / customize their services for the benefit of housing delivery agencies so that their response to the habitat needs of the rural poor is more efficient, effective and relevant . More people could be reached with limited available resources and habitat solutions could be more responsive to the needs of the poor. This scenario is true for most of our country and has also been experienced in South Karnataka, where Development Alternatives and CART have been involved in promoting the use of cost effective energy efficient building technologies.The Development Alternatives’ Shelter Program in South Karnataka, took cognizance of these concerns in its mandate to grow from simply promoting SBTs in the region to looking at an overall and sustainable improvement in rural habitat conditions here. It became clear that if the quality of rural habitat has to be improved “sustainably” at a large scale, organizations at various levels / points in the delivery chain have to come together and network – share learning, support each other and collectively define solution packages that could enhance the effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of delivered habitat services – whether they be complete houses or toilets or infrastructure.Discussions about the most efficient way to facilitate rural habitat processes at a large scale led to the development of a networking approach that looks at synergizing the efforts of many varied groups towards a common purpose of sustainable improvement in the quality (and quantity) of rural habitat.
The Network Approach to facilitate Rural Habitat The network approach for facilitating sustainable rural habitat at a large scale has emerged from our learning of the Shelter Program over the last five years. Our experience and interactions with various habitat delivery groups nationally revealed that while the components of sustainable habitat delivery, such as Sustainable Building (CEEF) Technologies, centers of production, information, technical skills, community institutions, finance etc. exist – these exist in isolation and are not linked, nor adequate in quantity. Thus, some habitat projects are technology heavy, others look at a cheaper cost; still others look at family inputs and participation and some at innovative financing methods. Each of these models are also small in scale and not holistic enough to catalyze multiplicative processes necessary for affecting sustainable habitat improvement processes at a large scale. There is, therefore, a great need to link various components of community strengths, technical know-how, sustainable building technologies, habitat finance, information etc. at regional levels so that habitat activity can get an impetus towards quality, economy and scale. The above thinking further resulted in identifying role players at varied levels in the delivery system that need to be linked and facilitated. It is felt that players operate at three generic levels :
Each of the above operate in isolation or with insignificant links. There is, therefore, a need for a role player at the critical regional level that can perform the function of linking the suppliers of materials, skills and information to the users of these and to facilitate an interface of the delivery agencies with information, capacity building, finance and other supports available at regional, national and international levels. Further, these interface agencies could provide the useful function of defining supports required at each level, linking up delivery agencies to suppliers and to policy level facilitation bodies. Specifically, the interface groups could provide the much needed service of identifying capacity building and support service requirements at each level and facilitate these needs through the network. The Building Materials Project (BMP) of Development Alternatives, now part of the Development Alternatives – Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC) Partnership, has provided an opportunity to initiate this process. Previous active and fruitful partnership with CART in Mysore, the need for the BMP to enlarge its scope to effect desired impacts in the habitat arena as discussed above and growing links with a large number of housing delivery agencies prompted the initiation of such a networking process in South Karnataka.
The Workshop: activating rural habitat network in South Karnataka The two day workshop on “Improving the Rural Habitat through Sustainable Building Practices and Regional Networking” was inaugurated by the CEO, Zila Panchayat, Mr. Anil Kumar and presided over by the Principal of the National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, Dr. MS Shivakumar. The workshop stressed on a preview of existing housing activity in the Chamrajnagar, Mysore and Mandya districts of South Karnataka and learning from experiences was used to define ways by which the quality of habitat delivery could be improved and maintained. The workshop was attended by representatives from the government sector, the Building Centers in the region, NGOs, academicians from architectural and engineering colleges and independent building and architecture professionals. The two days were organized into experience sharing sessions (where presentations were made by various agencies) and interactive sessions, where in all participants discussed the potential and limitations of their delivery models. Group work sessions were organized to analyze three typical habitat case models that were used as study models in the workshop. These were a Building Center based housing delivery of the Mysore Building center; a community centered credit based habitat model by ODP and a grant based community centered housing project by Myrada. The analysis led to the definition of the success factors and therefore strengths of each of the case models, identification of the limitations of each of the models and the revelation of potential in each of the case models to expand the scale and value of habitat services being provided and to include the utilization of CEEF technologies. The working groups also defined the supports required in each case to enable the models to enhance their strengths, transcend their limitations and expand their potential. Further, the groups identified a certain type of service packages that would enhance capacities at various levels of the delivery chain – such as the benefiting families, SHGs, material entrepreneurs, artisans, delivery NGOs, managers of projects and programs to be able to fulfill the above. The workshop has provided a base and initiated a dialogue amongst stakeholders at various levels involved in rural habitat delivery in the region. A platform for future interaction has been created. It will now be followed up by developing further the defined service and capacity building packages based on priorities and needs of the stakeholders. These support packages will be developed for funding from government and other agencies. q
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linked
to requisite know-how, skills and capacity leading to inadequate
quality and high cost of (environment friendly) building systems.
Thus, there is a general hesitancy of non-technical (or even
technically oriented) housing delivery agencies to use Sustainable
Building Technologies in their projects.