INTRODUCTION

The shelter crisis

Everyone needs a home. People need roofs over their heads for protection from the elements. They need security of tenure; they need a safe and healthy environment in order to live full lives. A home is somewhere to raise a family; in many cases it is also a place to work. Thus, shelter is not only about satisfying a basic need, it is intimately connected with livelihoods and economic development. For many people, however, satisfying this requirement for shelter is a very difficult proposition. The problems faced by home seekers are wide ranging. Often land to build on, housing finance and affordable building materials are almost impossible to obtain.

The world is facing a shelter crisis; and it is at its most acute in the countries of the developing world. The statistics make for gloomy reading. At a conservative estimate, over one-fifth of the world's population – more than one billion people – are homeless or inadequately housed. Predictions for the future are even gloomier: according to the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS, 1996), this number is set to double by 2010.

Population growth and increasing urbanization exacerbate the problem. In the face of declining rural economies, people continue to flood into towns in search of jobs. Large informal settlements, slums or squatter camps surround almost every major population centre in the developing world. In many cases, the area and population of these settlements exceed those of the formal town or city itself. Newsweek's first edition of the millennium forecasts that from 1995 to 2025:

• the percentage of the world living in urban areas will rise from 45 to 61 per cent;

• the number of slum dwellers will increase from 810 to 2100 million;

• but, conversely, the number of people with no access to shelter will fall from 1500 to 700 million (seeming to imply that slums will come to be considered adequate shelter).

(Newsweek, 2000, quoting from Encyclopaedia of the Future)

Meanwhile, the population in rural areas, too, will continue to grow. This means an increasing need for land, shelter and building materials.

However the problem is viewed, all statistics indicate that very little impact is being made on the world's huge housing deficit. As late as the 1980s, governments in some developing countries conceived rallying calls such as 'Shelter for all by the year 2000!' In retrospect, the exclamation mark appears sadly ironic. In relation to the escalating problem and the ineffective global response, the contribution of non-government organizations (NGOs) has been very small. Nevertheless, there are many examples of good practice that can inspire those willing to learn. There have been successes, and the housing situation in numerous communities has been improved. The challenge now is to disseminate these experiences and promote the adoption of shelter solutions on a mass scale. Building houses, assisting people to build, attempting to increase building materials production and choice, and lobbying for more appropriate building standards: all these activities can help to pave the way forward.

In view of the daunting size of the crisis, however, it is tempting just to give up. When the solution involves building low-cost housing over vast tracts of countryside, and increasing the sprawl of towns and cities, we may wish to turn our back on the problem. This option is not open, however. From whatever perspective the problem is viewed, be it humanitarian, communitarian or through the pragmatic lens of self-interest, the shelter crisis cannot be ignored. The slum areas that surround most Third World cities are a cause of suffering not only to their inhabitants: they are also a threat to the nearby enclaves of the better off; and they are a blight upon the economic development of the whole city. Bringing people into secure accommodation in safe and sanitary neighbourhoods (the so-called three S's, which are the aim of many shelter programmes) also opens up new markets among them for products and services from both local and international companies. Business cannot keep catering only for an elite, which is declining percentage-wise, who can afford their products and services.

Just as the environment cannot be preserved with a quick fix, so the shelter crisis requires a long-term view and will ultimately have to involve rich people in developed countries making sacrifices in their standard of living. The fact is that the solution cannot be found in the developing world alone. The world as a whole cannot afford the energy-intensive 'first world' lifestyle that it is being encouraged to seek: we simply do not have the resources – or the sinks for the quantity of waste that would be generated. So, there will have to be major changes in thinking. The shelter situation might be compared to food shortages in the world: there may be enough food to go around; but the problem is one of distribution and excess. We must not be afraid of saying that the shelter crisis is intolerable and that the individual must play his or her part to change things. We have a moral obligation to be courageous on behalf of the homeless and the ill-housed. And their overwhelming numbers make it imperative to develop new and creative shelter solutions.

The trend towards a more open global economy has meant that governments in the developing world have been obliged to be more market oriented and export driven. Public sector budgets have shrunk, and this has meant that state support for the social sector has declined. An example of this is in Peru, where the Housing Ministry and Housing Bank were actually closed in the early 1990s. Increasingly, the provision of shelter is being left to NGOs and the private sector; and their efforts are not enough to make more than the smallest impact on the problem.

Given these arguments, it is evident that the problem certainly cannot be solved by technology alone – appropriate or otherwise. Technology is only one component of the solution. In most cases the technology – or at least the knowledge component of technology – exists. Given the opportunity, we can choose, produce and use a variety of appropriate roofing, walling and binding materials. Naturally, there are always improvements possible in costs, energy efficiency and environmental preservation. Generally though, we have enough technology. The problem is getting it to where it is needed on the scale that is required. What is needed is to be able to apply what we know in an environment where it can have sufficient effect.

The brickmaking project discussed in this book is only one of many initiatives that technology transfer organizations like ITDG are taking. The foundation of the project is participation: communities defining their own needs and solutions, with NGOs acting as their staunchest allies. Education is the principal element of the work. Increasing knowledge is the key to empowerment, self-determination and sustainability. And that is true for both hemispheres. Education is vital in the First World too, so that developmental issues may be understood and people may be motivated to act.

The choice of brick production

What is the contribution that improved brick production makes to the shelter crisis? The short answer is that houses cannot be built without materials, and fired-day bricks are a durable and popular choice. To work in the shelter sector without promoting the increased supply of appropriate, affordable materials would not, ultimately, be viable. The production of building materials creates jobs and generates income: it can be an engine for economic development. There is an argument against promoting the production of fired-day bricks and other 'modern' building materials, however. As we shall see, these materials are energyintensive; and the energy most often comes from non-renewable fuels. One possible strategy towards more sustainable construction is to promote the use of alternative, low-energy or renewable materials, such as earth or bamboo. The production of simple earth blocks only requires around a thousandth of the energy needed to fire an equivalent quantity of bricks. Even when the blocks are stabilized with cement, the proportion of cement used is never more than a sixth of the total weight of the building material produced. Wherever possible and appropriate, these alternatives should be considered for projects.

There are limits to the usage of these materials, however. A combination of factors, including mass urbanization, consumer attitudes and inappropriate building standards are generating an increasing demand for conventional materials such as steel, bricks and cement, which unfortunately do have a substantial negative environmental impact. This trend is hard to reverse and it is therefore necessary to adopt a second strategy, aimed at mitigating this environmental impact. What this impact may be is discussed in the following section, but at this point we turn from the technology itself to the people most affected by it: brickmakers.

Reasons for working with small-scale brickmakers

Informal sector and small-scale brick production is important for poor people in many developing countries. In India, for example, around 2 million people are directly employed in brickmaking; in Bangladesh it is estimated that over 200 000 people are employed in the sector. Demand for bricks continues to rise steadily in most developing countries. Satisfying this demand can create much-needed jobs in economies where unemployment, underemployment and poverty are huge problems. Furthermore, small-scale brickmaking can create these jobs in peri-urban, urban fringe and rural areas where the need is often greatest. Creating employment outside urban areas can also decrease the continuing rural-urban drift, whereby people stream into cities looking for work – work that is often not available.

The environmental impact of brickmaking

There is also a case for working with brickmakers that stems from energy and environmental concerns. Brickmaking is an activity that can have considerable negative impact on the environment. In the first instance, agricultural land may be degraded due to clay extraction, leaving behind it a scarred and unproductive landscape. Meanwhile, indigenous biomass resources or fossil fuel reserves are depleted when bricks are burned. In most instances in the developing world, it is indigenous biomass resources that are under the most pressure. The most common fuel used to burn bricks is wood – or sometimes its derivative, charcoal. There are very few instances where the fuelwood used is being extracted from managed woodlots or where trees are being planted to replace those felled to burn bricks.

All burning processes generate greenhouse gases, which – in excessive quantities – are detrimental to the earth's atmosphere, and brickmaking is no exception (see Box 1.1). In India for example, brickmaking accounts for around 6 per cent of the country's total carbon dioxide emissions. The issues of fossil fuel depletion and greenhouse gas emissions are becoming increasingly important on the global agenda. The Kyo to Protocol on global action to reduce greenhouse gases comes into effect from 2008 to 2012. Policy makers are gradually beginning to realize that it is not only large-scale, formal-sector industries that need to take action to reduce emissions. The combined emissions from small-scale producers and the informal sector are also globally significant. Meanwhile, smaller-scale producers operate under greater constraints than large-scale industries: their profit margins are slimmer and their ability to invest in change much less. Developing effective policies and processes that can work for the small-scale sector is therefore likely to be an even more challenging task.

Where brickmaking is concerned, small-scale producers are relatively more damaging in terms of greenhouse gas emissions than their large-scale counterparts. This is partly because the brick clamps used by most small-scale producers are temporary structures with insufficient insulation, and therefore very wasteful of energy, and partly because most smallscale producers burn fuelwood, which may result in deforestation if it is not taken from a sustainable source. One of the many negative consequences of deforestation is the reduction in a carbon sink (see Box 1.1).

This may suggest that small-scale brickmaking should be discouraged in favour of large-scale production. Pragmatism directs action once again here. Just as alternative building materials such as bamboo can only provide a very small part of the solution, so supplies by large-scale producers are limited in their coverage, and small-scale producers are the only viable sources of bricks in many rural parts of the developing world (see Box 3.2 for a discussion of the difficulties facing large-scale brickmakers in Ghana). So instead of discouraging small-scale brickmaking, projects such as the one described in this book try to promote more fuel-efficient technologies by brickmakers.

This is an objective largely shared by small- and medium-scale brickmakers, who are themselves at risk from the depletion and increasing cost of fuelwood. Legislation to prevent deforestation and protect the environment is in effect or coming into effect in many countries. Brickmakers suffer from the enforcement of such legislation, being denied access to the fuel they need to burn bricks. Ultimately, many such brickmaking operations may prove unsustainable. Those brickmakers who are able to introduce, develop and adapt improved, more environmentally friendly production techniques, however, can greatly increase their chances of commercial survival. By increasing their fuel efficiency and using alternatives to wood, they can maintain or even expand their operations, supplying the increasing demand of the construction sector for bricks.

Some industrial and agricultural processes produce large quantities of combustible wastes or residues. Some of these could potentially be used as fuels in brickmaking, as a substitute or partial substitute for fuelwood or fossil fuel. In the main, these residues are not used for productive processes; they are disposed of either by dumping or burning. Research into the use of such residues in brickmaking and other building materials production is an important area of interest.

With relatively minor improvements in brickmaking practices, many brickmakers could increase their fuel efficiency. They could improve their production processes, particularly the drying and burning stages, to either save fuel or produce more thoroughly baked bricks, ensuring a better-quality product that could command a higher price. Poor product quality is often a critical issue for small-scale and informal brickmakers: in general, it means that their bricks are unsuitable for urban or industrial construction and hence they are reduced to selling at a low price.

For small-scale brickmakers in the developing world, the cost of fuel is typically half the cost of production. In parts of Asia, for example, it is estimated that up to 50 per cent of the production costs of small-scale brickmakers is the cost of fuel (Koopmans and Best, 1993). Meanwhile, in Sudan, the cost of fuel can be up to 60 per cent of total production costs (Bairiak, 1999). These figures are typical of the sector. It is apparent, then, that any improvements in fuel usage could have a positive impact on the income of brickmakers or serve to reduce the cost of their bricks.

Opportunities for innovation among brickmakers

Brickmakers are acutely aware of the problem of fuelwood scarcity and increasing price.

Generally, they are also aware of the threat that deforestation poses to the local and global environment. Some do try to address these problems: they do experiment and innovate by themselves. And sometimes these innovations result in significant improvements in production, notably fuel efficiency. For example, the brickmakers of La Huaca in Peru, who were suffering from particularly stringent restrictions in fuelwood supply, had already begun to experiment with rice husk as a fuel before they were approached by the ITDG project (see Chapter 8). Many small-scale and informal sector brickmakers, though, are not in a position to instigate systematic production trials, modifying a range of variables in a controlled way. In addition, they might justifiably shy away from making drastic changes to traditional practices just because an expert or a book recommends such action. The fear would be that a whole batch – perhaps many thousands of bricks – could be lost. Very few small-scale brickmakers could afford to take such risks or stand such a loss.

Information on innovations in small- and medium-scale brickmaking is scarce. Furthermore, very little of that information actually reaches the brickmakers themselves, and still less in a form and format that would be directly useful to them. Brickmakers can and do, however, learn from each other, especially where a number are gathered together in a particular area or where a producer's association or other form of collective organization is active. The opportunities for small-scale brickmakers from different districts or countries to learn from each other are, however, severely limited.