Building housing justice: construction materials in informal settlements
IIED is working to advance housing justice by examining how the current value chain of building materials perpetuates climate and social injustices, and by promoting policies that ensure fair access to these materials. This effort includes community-led research, policy dialogues and international advocacy to transform the housing systems, improve climate resilience and enhance the quality of life for informal settlement residents.
Ocupação Jorge Hereda, São Paulo, Brazil in 2023 (Photo: Camila Cociña, IIED)
Housing systems fail to respond to the needs and aspirations of millions of people. In informal settlements, these shortcomings expose residents to several injustices, including housing insecurity, deprivation, discrimination and exclusion.
Transforming informal settlements and advancing housing justice require a combination of several actions and pathways for change, one of which is securing access to resilient and affordable building materials.
Building materials are important not only for their role in enhancing the quality of life and adaptation efforts of informal settlement residents, but also because of the part the building material industry plays in wider processes of climate change and environmental degradation.
Current dynamics shaping the value chain of building materials are deepening injustices, and transforming those dynamics is crucial for enhancing the capacity of informal settlements to adapt to a warming climate and address inequalities.
A housing justice lens calls for the consideration of issues of livelihoods, tenure security, climate justice and governance in the building materials value chain.
The challenge
The current housing crisis is sustained by housing systems that create different forms of injustice, exclusion and discrimination, which are unable to respond to the needs and aspirations of the world’s majority.
Informal settlements and slums, which host 1.1 billion people globally, concentrate some of the most acute manifestations of this longstanding crisis, with negative impacts on residents’ wellbeing in multiple human development dimensions.
Those living in informal settlements are disproportionately affected by crises associated with climate change, as well as increased costs of energy and building materials, feeding into a cycle of poverty and marginalisation that intersects with inequalities in gender, race, age, ethnicity, class and ability.
One of the manifestations of those injustices relates to access to affordable, robust and resilient building materials for housing and shelter. Namely, materials that are accessible and provide adequate protection from floods and other weather events, as well as insulation from extreme heat.
This is a key concern for people living in informal settlements, particularly considering poor households tend to pay high costs or a ‘poverty penalty’ for market goods.
Studies in sub-Saharan African cities have shown informal settlement households can spend as much as 15-30% of their monthly income on housing repairs and improvements. Additionally, the access to and use of building materials influence the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change and improve resilience, impacting local livelihoods and cultural practices.
Beyond the important role it plays in the lives of people living in informal settlements, the construction sector is a significant contributor to climate change Housing and infrastructure are the societal needs with the largest resource footprint globally, representing around 50% of the resources extracted annually.
The demand for building materials is growing particularly rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa, with large-scale companies behind the production of cement, for example, experiencing unprecedented levels of profitability in the region.
Sand, gravel and rock are stored at a Freetown construction site (Photo: Camila Cociña, IIED)
Responses for transformation
Addressing the social and environmental challenges related to the access to affordable and resilient materials in informal settlements requires a housing justice lens.
This means promoting policies and practices that are anti-discriminatory and radically democratic, that provide an infrastructure for more sustainable, caring and fairer cities, and that expand housing futures.
Applying these principles to the question of building materials requires transforming the ways in which interventions around construction systems are conceived. It means responses that address the penalties and discriminations that people living in informal settlements experience to access safe and durable materials; and that provide affordable solutions that work for people and the environment.
New paradigms must democratically address climate injustices, recognising how diverse voices, livelihoods and tenancy insecurities exist throughout building materials value chains.
Finally, interventions should value local knowledge in the vision of housing futures, strengthening local building practices.
Based on research developed by IIED, together with Slum Dwellers International (SDI) affiliates in Harare and Freetown, we propose the four key areas of transformation should be:
- Considering the complexity of livelihoods alongside the value chain, recognising, strengthening and making safer and more secure the diverse livelihoods that take place alongside the extraction, processing, transporting, selling, storing and assembling of building materials in informal settlements.
- Addressing tenure insecurity and risk thresholds, highlighting that advancing security of tenure is at the core of promoting a fairer and more sustainable use of building materials in informal settlements and promoting local adaptation strategies. Insecure land tenure is a key determinant of residents' decisions around building materials and a key barrier for receiving official support.
- Promoting fairer distribution of climate change burdens and responsibilities, considering the urban poor should not be burdened with decreasing their already minimal emissions. Housing construction in informal settlements should be part of just transitions toward low-carbon futures, while recognising the adaptation needs of current residents.
- Prioritising governance solutions over technology solutions, focusing transformations on the ways in how planning instruments, construction codes, economic incentives, taxes and other systems intersect with the affordability and access to building materials, and strengthening local groups’ collective capacities to assess their needs and act.
Mobilising knowledge for impact
IIED has developed three programmes to advance housing justice, through initiatives that aim to strengthen grassroots capacities, influence policy and practice and foster alliances and solidarity.
When looking particularly at the challenge of promoting resilient and affordable building materials for housing justice in informal settlements, impact pathways for transformation require local to global analysis of value chains; local and national policy dialogues; and advocacy alliances to impact decision making.
Strengthening the capability of grassroots groups to generate local knowledge and mobilise advocacy capacities
Knowledge gaps are hindering the ability to better understand and intervene in the regulations that affect the building materials value chain. Community-led knowledge production is critical in this field.
IIED developed a pilot on this topic in Freetown and Harare, which included community-led value-chain analysis and the development of videos as part of the youth-led initiative Know Your City-TV.
This work is feeding into the development of a systematised methodology with SDI affiliates that focuses on following building materials, and revealing relations, regulations and entry points for change.
Local research needs to be complemented by analysis of global flows of materials, to reveal how broader dynamics and international regulatory frameworks impact the distribution of and access to resilient building materials in informal settlements.
Influencing policy and practice
Enabling multi-stakeholder dialogue is key to addressing the climate and social injustices embedded in the value chain of building materials used for housing in informal settlements.
Dialogues in this field can open up opportunities for impact at the settlement and city levels, such as enhancing the capacity of organised communities to access and store building materials in collective ways, or identifying necessary areas of intervention and incentives.
IIED has developed methodologies to establish housing policy dialogues. Working closely with local networks of civil society groups, researchers and local or national governments, these methodologies involve mobilising diverse actors around a common intent, agreeing on common principles, and defining a plan of action to bring about change.
Fostering international alliances and solidarity
Existing networks advocating for housing justice need to identify concrete actions to make the value chain of resilient building materials fairer. These coordinated efforts can enable opportunities for impact at local and global levels.
IIED has established partnerships with important initiatives in this field, such as Roof Over Our Heads, and Cities Alliance Working Group on Sustainable Construction, which is trying to understand to what extent the urban poor can afford to be sustainable.
We have also contributed to discussions about multilateral agencies’ initiatives, such as the implementation of the UN-Habitat Resolution on Accelerating Transformation of Informal Settlements and Slums, or the Ministerial declaration of the Buildings and Climate Global Forum.
Action agenda
Advancing housing justice through resilient and affordable building materials in informal settlements requires action from all sectors:
- Funders should support more work on grounded knowledge co-production, involving communities of informal settlements and researchers, to analyse the value chain of building materials from a justice and environmental perspective, facilitate knowledge exchanges and establish connections between local and global processes.
- Local and regional governments could play a key role in identifying concrete mechanisms that enhance access to affordable and resilient building materials. These might include initiatives related to the strengthening of local livelihoods and construction techniques, the promotion of mechanisms to secure tenure in informal settlements, improving access to infrastructure and service networks, and recognising and supporting community efforts that increase collective bargaining power vis-a-vis providers and builders.
- National governments and multilateral agencies should promote commitments and policies that make the building materials value chain fairer, focusing on comprehensive packages that create more just incentives, as well as promoting pro-poor regulations that ensure affordability while promoting more resilient housing. Beyond the emphasis on public and private sector actors, commitments need to acknowledge and support the role of civil society and collective organisations in the various stages of the building materials value chain.
Authors
Alexandre Apsan Frediani is a principal researcher in IIED's housing justice team. His work explores participatory approaches to planning and design of interventions in informal settlements in cities in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
Camila Cociña is a researcher in IIED's housing justice team. She has worked on collaborative projects with researchers, communities, international agencies and public organisations in Latin America, West Africa and Southeast Asia, seeking fairer ways of mobilising diverse knowledge from a social justice perspective.
