The government of India has launched important initiatives to encourage urban regeneration, especially in large and medium-scale cities. Also, building developers are actively involved in developing modern townships and housing colonies to satisfy the needs of the rising middle-class population. The present context seems favorable to promote the concept of energy efficient housing with high environmental quality as a component of urban renewal schemes. While limited actions have been initiated in this direction, there is a greater challenge to mainstream them.
One can find in India a great many professionals involved in the sustainable development field as well as a great diversity of energy or architectural alternative solutions according to the wide variety of climatic and geographic conditions of the country.
But most of these initiatives are victims of a lack of visibility amongst the authorities, the general public and the other professionals. They still have to demonstrate their relevance, their reliability but above all, their economic efficiency.
Therefore, the two main tasks carried out in the partnership between A&D and INDé will be the followings :
1_build a comprehensive database of all active players working in areas of SBE in India that could act as a dissemination tool for highlighting and mainstreaming the limited initiatives.
This task consists in the collation a list of active players in promoting sustainable built environment in India like : urban authorities, architects, designers, engineers, builders and developers, sector-specific financial institutions, manufacturers and suppliers of energy efficient and low-energy building materials, equipment and technologies, building energy and environment specialists, professional bodies, associations, NGOs, etc... It will be build up in crossing both networks of A&D and INDé.
2_identify partners/ projects that will benefit form a scheme to be put in place by FFEM (French Global Environment Facility) through a specific proposal to be submitted by ADEME.
While efforts are on to develop building codes, laws and regulations, parallel activities could be undertaken to assist the active stakeholders to adopt sustainable construction practices. The aim is not to help green initiatives to become “greener” but to help common developers, given the right support and assistance, to switch over from traditional construction to green buildings.
Our team is based in Bangalore, Karnataka state, for six months. We are two volunteers (Indian and French) hosted in INDé office.