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I'm here in China watching television reports about the flooding in the Yangtze River that is putting the city of Chongqing and others along its banks 6 feet under water. It has me thinking about how disasters are likely to become an increasingly regular part of life.
In this vein, EDF Climate Corps fellow Rob Powell talks about the struggle to implement long-term thinking to the single-minded focus of getting "life back to normal" after a disaster. Powell writes about his role in helping Opryland recover from the Nashville flooding and the significant energy efficiency opportunities, side by side with the significant barriers to those sustainability opportunities.
Last year, I wrote about DRM -- Disaster Recovery Mentality -- and my 1995 experience in Kobe after the earthquake. While grateful for our concern and the range of potential green rebuilding options we were bringing to Kobe, the Japanese politely pointed out that anything that delayed people getting out of their tents and back into their normal lives was just not feasible.
So, the principal lesson was in order to take advantage of the "lost opportunity" of green disaster rebuilding, a green disaster plan must be in place beforehand. In other words, in order to be able to think ahead … you have to think ahead!
In the wake of Katrina and the recent Haiti earthquake, the U.S. Green Building Council has developed guidelines for green post-disaster construction programs. It seems to me that, given the likely increase in disasters and the large-scale rebuilding opportunities that they afford, a small portion of the ARRA economic disaster recovery funds should be channeled to developing green environmental disaster relief plans for FEMA, which could provided to communities as templates. Perhaps, a green disaster relief consortium could come out of the public-private partnership model described by Chris Cheatham in his blog piece.
Participants in the Global Energy Efficiency Challenge convened by U.S Department of Energy would be a logical field to draw from in populating this effort, in addition to the USGBC and its member companies. I'm sure that a number of great initiatives could spring from this public-private partnership should it come to be. Whatever happens, we need to make sure that DOE is not in charge of the program acronyms: I've never seen a worse collection of acronyms in my life than has come out of GEEC. (See the problem?)
Also featured in this week's coverage, are a couple of really great building projects. The new Kaiser Permanente La Maestra Community Health Center in San Diego is not only a great socially sustainable idea, but also a gorgeous piece of architecture. I think this project will end up serving as an important community locus for the neighborhood because it is such a bright and inviting and whimsical space.
Down under, Grocon has unveiled the highest scoring Australian Green Star project ever with the opening of the company's Pixel Building. The project also has aspirations to be the highest scored LEED and BREEAM projects as well. This project, too, is a visually arresting structure that combines both beautiful design and elegant engineering to achieve carbon neutral performance. Bravo! We need to see more of these kinds of projects.
Sustainable opportunities in the reconstruction after a disaster
I am happy to know that you have touch the re-building / post disaster as a sustainable practice, actually in many places where unsustainable practices have been the tendance, to start thinking ahead of it and trying to implement sustainability, the comunities confront a very delicate situation of resources, materials, urban sites and the most critically economics.
Well, Disasters occur and due to global warming they are likely to occur even more, but they bring a very good opportunity to undertake them from a sustainable aproach.
As an example I could argue that if any city is planning to greening a whole comunity but urban sites, materials and economics are not enought to go ahead with massive demolitions, then with a massive Earthquake there is always the opportunity to re-built from scratch a sustainable urban surround.
In the Case of Chile, where I am from, we had a massive earthquake 8.8 in Richter Scale on past February, despite the gravity of its consequences, now we are looking forward for a green reconstruction, so it is probably that sustainability and greener practices in architecture, engineering and urban planning could finally take place.
There is always a second face in the droped coin... When things look dark there is always the opportunity to make them better, Remember that always it could have been worst.
Sustainability in the broad spectre involves social responsability equity, integration, and environmental response. It will depend on how to manage the disasters, the outcome of it, and if being positive we can even think that (While there are "In Deveveloping Countries" , "Under Developing Countries" and "Developed Countries" , why we cannot start thinking in "re-developing Countries" ... (Warren Neilson 2009)
Thank you and keep posting.
Nicolas Carbone Gamarra - Architect - Green Leaf CGA
Master in Sustainable Development and the Built Environment
FEMA 365 sustainability
Good to reiterate this point, but such awareness has been around for awhile. In 1998 FEMA Assoc Director Michael J Armstrong issued a memo on sustainability in disaster recovery and pre-disaster planning, and FEMA had a whole publication - I think it was the FEMA Sustainability Planner - with lots of useful guidance in this effort. Communities need to take advantage of such free and available resources; designers need to plan in resilience and facilities managers need to have sustainable re-build, as well as contingency planning in place.