Green Building Council of Zimbabwe in collaboration with the SIDA funded UN-Habitat Harare Sustainable Cities Initiative (HSCI) hosted a workshop (Friday 7th February 2025) on the approach needed to develop a tailor made-green building rating tool for Zimbabwe, taking into account how the built environment can contribute towards achieving the country’s NDCs. The main speakers were Farizan R (Singapore) and Yves Sangwe (Rwanda), both green building experts who have facilitated introducing sustainable building practices and policies in several African and Asian countries. Both gave insights on the current building rating and certification tools used regionally and globally, and a discussion was held on how these processes can be realistically adopted in Zimbabwe. The workshop was attended by built environment professionals in the private sector, and government ministries. Notably, the Harare Metropolitan Province (Office of the President and Cabinet) also participated. The key take-aways from the workshop were:
- Zimbabwe must focus on the issues most pertinent to its own challenges (rather than taking a general approach based on what other countries are doing)
- Standards bodies are the ones that ultimately develop national codes (in Zimbabwe’s case this is Standards Association of Zimbabwe)
- There must always be a business case which supports green building certification, with the support of the government to enforce the measures required for effective reporting on the NDCs
- With GBCZ as a main driver, green building communities need to defragment and work collectively to first establish a minimum compliance system, before establishing a more detailed rating system.
- Need to raise awareness on green building strategies and supported with clear incentives to grow the sector
- Need to ensure that Green building is anchored within the country`s policy framework
Pictured below to the left are workshop attendees and to the left are GBCZ staff, OPC staff, presenters and UNHABITAT staff at workshop.
Good job!