Think home, think Smart

Considering how climate change is a major global concern, it is about time homes are built and designed to be more resource efficient toward a sustainable and greener future.

As this is already the way to go in most developed countries, Nigerians, especially stakeholders in the built industry, are beginning to warm up for the smart and sustainable built environment towards a greener future.
  
Based on this, the Green Building Council Nigeria (GBCN) which was set up to catalyse and lead Nigeria’s built environment towards a greener future recently hosted a meeting in Lagos to educate builders, architects and other stakeholders in the industry on smart and sustainable ways to build.
  
According to GBCN President, Danjuma Waniko, the vision is to lead the transformation of Nigeria’s built environment.

“One of the key characteristics of green building that we’re working to address here in Nigeria is to reduce energy consumption and to decarbonise the built environment, but of course, green building is not just about carbon or climate change, there is also the issue of resource consumption.

“The built environment, according to some research, consumes about 50 per cent, half of all natural resources that are extracted in the world. So it is also about reducing the resource footprint of building so that we use less. The more that is used, the more the environment is degraded and more pollution happens. So the ambition is to reduce demand for these resources for less pollution. This is why we are advocating for builders to be more resource efficient in their buildings, to design their building to use less energy and less water,” Waniko said.

According to him, the target is to move the Nigerian built environment from where it is now to a more sustainable future through advocacy, education and training.

“We are also working to develop green building standards. Our goal is to engage with the stakeholders in the industry to encourage them to build more sustainably and smarter.”