EcoSur consultancy for Sustainable Social Housing in Mauritius Island
UN-Habitat facilitated a two-days’ workshop giving a wide range of stakeholders including the public sector, NGOs and private building producers a platform to discuss more sustainable ways forward for the social housing sector in Mauritius. The EcoSur network presented a series of technologies and practices to diminish the consumption of cement in the sector.
UN-Habitat Housing Unit from the headquarters in Nairobi together with UN-Habitat Mauritius initiated in the end of 2013 a project analyzing the building materials and building technologies currently used in the social housing sector in Mauritius and the potential of local building materials that could be developed to build housing for the most vulnerable part of the population in Mauritius. On Wednesday 12th March, a workshop was organized with masons from the local vulnerable community. The focus of the analysis has been on environmentally sustainable “green” building materials that are easy to be used at the community level enabling participatory building processes. The public was very interested in the possibility of producing ferrocement panels in the community and build with them.
Kurt Rhyner, from Red EcoSur, shows a
model of the Pre-Cast Concrete panels
During the two-days’ workshop with decisionmakers the participants discussed the potential to make concrete production more sustainable in Mauritius by using alternative fillers and stabilizers which also could bring the cost of concrete down. Different ways to decrease the amount of Portland cement used in walls, roofs and ceiling slabs were presented by EcoSur and discussed during the workshop, including the use of different alternative fillers and stabilizers inside the concrete mix. There was also interaction about alternative building materials like bamboo, timber and recycled materials.
Based on the discussions of the workshop panel, UN-Habitat will develop a prototype house together with EcoSur to be scaled up in Mauritius. New fruitful partnerships have been developed through this workshop to support the sustainable development of the social housing sector in Mauritius. The idea of initiating a national workgroup was introduced with enthusiastic feedback from the participants.
