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During the course of 2018, 70.8 million people globally were forcibly displaced due to natural disasters and conflicts—a staggering increase of 2.9 million people compared to the previous year’s figure. Displaced people cluster in refugee camps which have very often the scale of a medium-sized city. Post-disaster and post-conflict (PDPC) sheltering therefore represents a vitally important element for both the short- and long-term wellbeing of the displaced. However, the constrained environment which dominates PDPC sheltering often results in a lack of consideration of sustainability dimensions. Neglecting sustainability has severe practical consequences on both people and the environment, and in the long run it also incurs higher costs. It is therefore imperative to quickly transfer to PDPC sheltering where sustainability considerations are a key element of the design and decision-making processes. To facilitate such transition, this article reviews both ‘existing solutions’ and ‘novel designs’ for PDPC sheltering against the three pillars of sustainability. Both clusters are systematically categorized, and pros and cons of solutions and designs are identified. This provides an overview of the attempts made so far in different contexts, and it highlights what worked and what did not. This article represents a stepping-stone for future work in this area, to both facilitate and accelerate the transition to sustainable sheltering.
Lara Alshawawreh; Francesco Pomponi; Bernardino D’Amico; Susan Snaddon; Peter Guthrie. Qualifying the Sustainability of Novel Designs and Existing Solutions for Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Sheltering. Sustainability 2020, 12, 890 .
AMA StyleLara Alshawawreh, Francesco Pomponi, Bernardino D’Amico, Susan Snaddon, Peter Guthrie. Qualifying the Sustainability of Novel Designs and Existing Solutions for Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Sheltering. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (3):890.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLara Alshawawreh; Francesco Pomponi; Bernardino D’Amico; Susan Snaddon; Peter Guthrie. 2020. "Qualifying the Sustainability of Novel Designs and Existing Solutions for Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Sheltering." Sustainability 12, no. 3: 890.
Africa is the continent with the highest number of displaced people due to wars, humanitarian crises, resource scarcity, and extreme climate events. Post-disaster and post-conflict (PDPC) sheltering always sets out with the best intention of being a temporary solution but, in most cases, it turns into a (semi-)permanent habitat. Yet, sustainability criteria are seldom accounted for in PDPC sheltering even when some of the largest ’temporary’ camps now host the third generation and house as many people as a medium sized city. The lack of consideration regarding sustainability mostly boils down to the view of sheltering as a product rather than a process, with a focus that, to date, has been either too technical (e.g., ”tents-in-a-bag”, ”plug-and-play-houses”) or too social (e.g., by investigating personal and social needs) without harmonising the two. This article aims to address this issue and advance the global debate on shelter sustainability by tapping into interdisciplinary expertise on both the African context and refugees’ sheltering. A gender-balanced panel of experts identified key features of promising solutions through an iterative approach starting from existing available designs. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was then applied to establish the weight of technical and sustainability (across the three pillars of economy, environment, and society) indicators across the identified key features. Results show that solutions which adopt natural materials and local building techniques score the highest across the economic, environmental, social, and technical dimensions. Furthermore, the relative importance of these macro-categories differs greatly across genders, with female experts assigning a significantly stronger weighting to social indicators and male experts to environmental indicators. This research sheds new light on the sustainability of sheltering in Africa and paves the way for further work in the area.
Francesco Pomponi; Alireza Moghayedi; Lara Alshawawreh; Bernardino D’Amico; Abimbola Windapo. Sustainability of post-disaster and post-conflict sheltering in Africa: What matters? Sustainable Production and Consumption 2019, 20, 140 -150.
AMA StyleFrancesco Pomponi, Alireza Moghayedi, Lara Alshawawreh, Bernardino D’Amico, Abimbola Windapo. Sustainability of post-disaster and post-conflict sheltering in Africa: What matters? Sustainable Production and Consumption. 2019; 20 ():140-150.
Chicago/Turabian StyleFrancesco Pomponi; Alireza Moghayedi; Lara Alshawawreh; Bernardino D’Amico; Abimbola Windapo. 2019. "Sustainability of post-disaster and post-conflict sheltering in Africa: What matters?" Sustainable Production and Consumption 20, no. : 140-150.