Shelter, Sustainability, Poverty and Peace
Discovery that a sustainable future may depend upon shelter for the rural poor is unanticipated and very surprising.
This cover, an earlier foreword version, the text and photos were the basis for a presentation at the Innovative Sheltering Symposium, which was hosted by the Netherlands Red Cross and Technical University at Eindhoven, Holland. The symposium was of interest to the international humanitarian community because there is a need for a transitional shelter mode between emergency and a return to the normal and socially healthy community in existence before a disaster. Keen insights of those in attendance as well as my own latest cost analysis are included in this update.
Evolution of this work has often led to surprising insights and fairly extensive study environmental economic analysis. Brief text that uses plain words to explain simple techniques has unintentionally articulated externalized profits of sustainable social and economic structures replace externalized costs of unsustainable culture. Existence of externalized profits marks sustainability. A crash follows unsustainable consumption for all life that has ever lived on Earth. Modern humans have the ability to prosper and let Earth heal at the same time.
More detailed steps of fiber composite construction may be found in the complete manual, listed as biological fibers and ferrocement.com roof laboratory. Recent extension of this work can be accessed under the title Shelter 2009 ... very low cost shelter example ... includes economic analysis.
Shelter 2010 ... very low cost bamboo frame shelter ... the $9± per square foot house
