Welcome to SVA Newsletter # 4 - Future villages
The editor, John Doolan, of Leadership magazine has been kind enough to publish another article, written by the SVA MD, Clive Norton, in the May edition. Below are excerpts from the article in the place of our regular newsletter. The full article is of course in Leadership.
The Scandinavian model for sustainable villages has lessons that can be applied in South Africa
The Scandinavian countries seem to have taken the lead in terms of sustainable villages. It would appear that the state-of- the-art definition of sustainability comes from Swedish scientist Karl-Henrik Robert, who researched and devised 'The Natural Step'. This is a set of rules based on good thermodynamic principles. In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
- concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth's crust;
- concentrations of substances produced by society;
- degradation by physical means and;
- in that society, people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
This seems at first, to be a fairly high-level philosophical approach but in practice following the tenets leads to a number of sensible outcomes and the Natural Step has already been adopted by Sweden and a number of other Scandinavian countries and is increasingly being adopted by states in USA such as Oregon.
Construction of housing
When we look at the way houses are built, in general, there are a few plus points in what we already do, and some negative points:
Many houses are made of clay bricks. This is a good use of natural and abundant raw material, but when the bricks are fired using coal to make face bricks, there is use of a non-renewable energy source.
Thousands of buildings all over the world, including large multi-storey buildings in Germany and France are made from un-fired earth bricks (Adobe). These buildings are quite durable and some of the oldest surviving structures on Earth can be found in Mexico, using no other materials than mud and water (no cement).
It is of interest that many of our traditional peoples in Southern Africa (Xhosa people in particular) make outstanding mud buildings, as can be seen in the photos of the Lubisi Dam project (see above), where a 700m 2 complex was built (on a budget of less than R2 million) out of traditional mud bricks.
The use of wood within houses is generally not very harmful, provided that the wood being used comes from trees that are not 300 year old hardwoods. Wood that is used in houses for roof trusses, doors, window frames and so on will generally last for decades.
"Clay tiles for roofing, or the use of slate, are relatively environmentally friendly, as is the use of thatch. As anyone who has stayed in a thatch- roofed house will know, the thatch provides generally better insulation than tiles or slate and the thatch is truly renewable, as grass replaces itself every year."
The use of metals, such as aluminum, steel or brass is less sustainable. The use of metals violates the first of the Natural Step conditions, namely the concentration of substances extracted from the Earth's crust. Wooden window frames, tile roofs instead of steel or aluminum, would be an improvement Electrical wiring is more difficult to replace, but energy use in houses will be covered later on in the section "Living in houses". Today, more than in the past, plastics are more widely used for guttering and sewage pipes. Plastics are made from oil-based sources and violate the second condition of the Natural Step. Similarly, paints are very often oil based.
"Flooring is made from a wide range of materials; concrete has the disadvantage of containing cement, a high-energy input material; wooden floors are less common today than earlier but would be preferred, with the same provisos as above; tiles are more friendly, except that glazed tiles often contain heavy- metal dyes to get the colours and the firing process is energy-intensive; natural-fibre carpets can be quite environmentally-friendly. "
Living in houses
Once again, the Scandinavian countries are leading lights in cutting-edge solutions around these issues. One such practitioner in the application of the Natural Step conditions is Swede Folke Günther. He has shown that with a well-designed 'wetpark' system, even a single household can recycle its water and, using rainwater collection, can even be made to be a net zero consumer of water, as can be seen from (his web page) graphics. There are a number of technologies that are brought into play here, including source separating toilets, where urine is separated from faeces at source, rather than the system used throughout South Africa, referred to by Folke as MIFSLA -— mix first, separate later. MIFSLA (employed by the water-flush toilet that is almost universal since its invention) creates an expensive problem for any municipality when the urine is eventually separated from the solid sewage waste.
Another innovation was introduced to me by a German engineer Adolf Held, who consults to a European organisation called Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung (InWEnt) (Capacity Building International, Germany). Held describes how township water supply problems were solved in Peru using the innovative 'Theory of Constraints' (TOC), the brainchild of Eliyahu M. Goldratt, an Israeli physicist turned management consultant. TOC leads to solutions that simply cannot be arrived at with conventional 'linear' thinking. In the case of Peru's water supply problems, TOC led to a solution that either; led to capital cost savings of 500 percent over conventional civil engineering practice, with improved service; or 500 percent more capacity than would be possible using the conventional methods.
There are claims that up to 40 percent of Johannesburg Metro's water is lost every month as a result of old, damaged pipe network systems.
TOC does not appear to form part of the 'classical' curriculum of the civil engineering degree at universities or technikons and so these innovations never reach the market. In the context of the massive housing supply project that the South African government has embarked upon, how much money (at 500 percent lower cost than conventional systems) could TOC save the country over the next 10 years?
Theory of social consciousness
It is an unfortunate fact that it is only when people have reached a level of higher literacy and financial independence that their thoughts turn to global sustainability and the role that they can personally play in it. This follows from Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
It is apparently only the people at the top of the pyramid who are environmentally conscious. Thus, the Swedes are now the forerunners in sustainable development, yet they, in their small numbers, are the ones whose efforts are least needed. Rather it is the billions living in poverty at the bottom of the pyramid who would need to change. But they are so busy surviving they cannot turn their minds to it.
The exception to the rule is of course the nation of USA who are so used to cheap energy and wastage of it and are so tied up by their capitalistic large vested- interest players in the energy fields that they seemingly don't think it is their problem.
Perhaps the impending next Ice Age, which now seems increasingly likely within the next two decades, will get their attention? Our target market unfortunately, mostly lives at the bottom of the pyramid and views these outlandish innovative technologies with some suspicion because they certainly do not see too many of the rich and famous using them and they therefore suspect that it is one more trick to keep them in their poverty by having to accept second rate goods.
