KARACHI: After a flood occurs and disaster strikes, that is when the disaster response sector in Pakistan starts functioning. Yasmeen Lari, an architect working for NGO the Heritage Foundation, criticises this focus on rebuilding rather than preparing beforehand.

To shift away from this practice, Lari has built over 40,000 low-cost shelters using just mud, lime and bamboo. “You don’t need wood, cement and steel to build strong homes,” she said.

Her team of architects and engineers started experimenting with new materials in disaster relief after a fifth of Pakistan was submerged in the flood of 2010, leaving 2,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Their shelters in Sindh, said Lari, have since then withstood year after year of flooding.

Last year she visited Darya Khan Sheikh, a village on the banks of the Indus River, which she had helped rebuild after the 2010 devastation. “The village was flooded with up to four feet of water but the houses were intact, their grain and water was safe,” said Lari. “Only a little plaster had come off the walls.”

Unsustainable disaster relief

Lari believes that the villagers need to know how to “make their buildings long-lasting”, or they would never come out of poverty because of re-building every year.

The materials used by Lari’s team are local, cheap and have a low-carbon footprint. “Mud is recyclable and it’s everywhere; bamboo is very strong and environmentally sustainable and you can get a new bamboo crop every two years,” she explains. “Lime is the only material that requires small amount of fuel to heat it, but twigs are enough and so there is no need to chop mature trees or burn any fossil fuel.”

The global change in weather patterns has made Pakistan vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. However, those coming forward to provide humanitarian aid promote construction with steel and cement thereby increasing carbon emissions and contributing to the climate change that triggers these events.

Lari argues the current model of disaster relief work will have to change. “There are scores of NGOs and international organisations that come with good intentions to rebuild but in the process leave a huge carbon imprint.”

Her team is working with 12 villages of between 100 to 300 people in two districts of Sindh, Mirpur Khas and Tando Allahyar, to make everything flood resistant. They are building safe shelters, eco toilets and raised earthen platforms to place grain, potable water, livestock and fodder during floods. The organisation is also training people to grow vegetables on rooftops, make compost out of human and livestock excreta, purify water with sunlight and make organic soap.

Focus on women

For many villagers, said Lari, the most prized structure is the raised stove and small outdoor kitchen area designed by the Heritage Foundation. “People don’t know what a woman goes through while cooking,”she said. “It’s our most popular product and has been transformative for the family.”

The design team took time to really understand the needs of village women. The twin burner stove is fuel-efficient and the attached chimney allows smoke to leave the house. “Because it is built on a raised platform, it automatically gives the woman an elevated position, as if she is sitting on a throne,” said Lari. Crucially, the height also protects the stove from flood waters.

Best of all, there are now trained stove makers in each village. These “barefoot entrepreneurs”, as Lari calls them, teach others for a charge of Rs 200. Local women have also learned how to make mud bricks. “We are happy because the construction is better and the techniques are shared and adopted; they are happy because they are making money in the process,” said Lari.

Published in thethirdpole.net