Stakeholders Advocate Environmentally-friendly Buildings  

Stakeholders in the built sector have called for environmentally friendly buildings (green building) to minimise building related pollution and achieve a healthier environment in Nigeria.

The president, Green Building Council Nigeria (GBCN) , Danjuma Waniko, who spoke yesterday at the Future Cities Summit 2023, in Abuja, said the event was organised to bring stakeholders together to discuss the Nigeria built environment and see how to move towards greater sustainability.

A green building, according to Waniko, is an environmentally-friendly building that does not harm the environment. “We all know that our environment is under pressure, we are all aware about climate change and other environmental issues like pollution and so on, and we know that the built environment that is building and infrastructure are primary courses.

“Building for example, they consume over half of all natural resources that are extracted, that is what the built environment does, the waste from building also contribute about a quarter or more of waste that is send to land flow, buildings emit carbon dioxide that are coursing climate change, so green building tries to have the built environment addressed by reducing its impact on the environment, for example by being more energy efficient we use less energy so we emit less carbon dioxide and you reduce the impact on the climate.”.

On building collapse, Waniko said green building can also help address this issues, saying building collapse is basically attributable to other low quality materials or poor quality of the construction it self.

“When you use green materials, they tend to be of better quality, they are better sourced so you have less chance of this collapse. You have more professional expertise, the green building is not always that straight forward to build so you need experts to help you.

The chairman, Board of Trustee, GBCN, Murtala Aliyu, said some states like Kaduna, Lagos and Gombe are already responding to the demand for green sensitive infrastructure.

He said “Its a global thing, everybody is talking about carbon content in the air and also utilising the green sources of energy. We need to broaden the stakeholder engagement, we need to influence government to come up with or rather sustain policies, continuously sustaining policies in this respect, so the purpose of this kind of gathering is to review the achievement so far to look at the road map for the way forward and also now have robust policies for it to be applicable by the general public.”