Green communities in the UAE: Fact or fiction?

Day Three of last month’s World Architecture Congress—which ran alongside Cityscape Dubai—was coined ‘Green Day’ and it witnessed a bevy of architects, developers, engineers and sustainability pundits waxing intellectual about everything related to the region’s growing green building conundrum.

Throughout the day, professionals and practitioners from every corner of the industry addressed ‘community’, construction best practices, energy saving, financing, green legislation and regulation, facilities management, life-cycle costs and new ‘green’ materials and products.

Habiba Al Marashi, chairperson of the Emirates Environmental Group and board member of the UN Global Compact, began the day with a sobering—albeit refreshingly honest—sentiment.

“A 100% mindset change will be necessary to reduce carbon emissions and encourage best practices industry wide,” said Al Marashi. “Right now, it’s not just political will that is necessary. Leadership should be taken by the private sector, which is one sector [ in the UAE] that is currently lagging far behind.”

As green credentials and bizarre acronyms flittered and fluttered throughout the conference, one particularly interesting session—Delivering Green Communities, Not Just Green Buildings—brought together designers and developers to talk about how to actually deliver the level of greenness being touted for the region.

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Geoff Sanderson, Dubai veteran and principal of Green Concepts Landscape Architects (GCLA), began by directing the discussion toward the fundamental concept of community. “Without defining ‘community’,” said Sanderson, “it is impossible to really get to the heart of what constitutes a ‘green community’.”

Sanderson rightly pointed out that many of the speakers, and in fact visitors to Green Day, ply their skills and specify their products in regions other than the Middle East. He criticised the conference’s willingness to apply external experiences in the UAE without truly understanding the nature of the professional design community, the contractor community or the end users that acutally live and work here.

“It’s difficult to establish a community [in the UAE] because of the transient nature of society here. If we’re depending on a stable community, we’re struggling,” said Sanderson. “End users [tend to be] largely self interested persons with no concern whatsoever for the UAE’s sustainability beyond their own contract period. Sadly, there are too few people like Habiba Al Marashi to make a big enough difference in the UAE’s green debate.”

Decisions from the top

Mike Lewis, senior associate director at Benoy, is of the opinion that change needs to come in the form of clear and universal green legislation. Rather than fight the good fight from the bottom, he sees little point in expending the effort unless the true decision makers are on board.

“My particular concern is the fight during the project brief. We need a large-scale change in attitude at the decision maker level,” says Lewis. “It’s sad but true. It takes someone to stand up with a torch and say ‘enough’,” says Lewis.

“Decision makers need to make it happen. We have a responsibility to clients to educate them and make recommendations but that’s from the bottom up. I’d love to walk into a briefing and be told ‘We will be doing a LEED Gold building’,” adds Lewis.

Never one to buy in to altruism within the building industry, Sanderson suggests change will only come when legislation dictates that material gain is available for those willing to implement green strategies. “We should devise a system to combine regulation with reward,” says Sanderson. “If rewards were very attractive financially for developers and users, it would create some impetus. Unless that happens soon, I don’t think we’ll see anywhere near the amount of change [in the UAE] that we’re expecting.”