Environmental research

The objective of the Building and Construction Improvement Programme (BACIP) has been to promote measures that will enable the extremely remote communities of the Hinduhush, Karakoram and Himalayan mountain areas in Northern Areas and Chitral region of Pakistan and to make sustainable improvements in their living conditions. This should not only allow them to optimize their investment in built-environment-related aspects but also result in improving their quality of life. As the region moves from being extremely underdeveloped and traditional to being more modern and relatively more developed, the strategic objective of the programme is to develop human resources and institutional capacities that will allow the people of the programme area to better manage this process of change. The first phase of the programme was implemented during April 1997 to December, 2000 by the Aga Khan Planning and Building Services, Pakistan (AKPBS,P), in partnership with Aga Khan Foundation duly funded by Canadian International development Agency -CIDA. The main focus has been to analyze the housing related problems of the target population and developing appropriate solutions, which are cost effective, involve local capacities & materials and remain adoptable culturally to the local people. Improving the quality of life of women through programmatic delivery , which remained the hallmark of BACIP throughout its phase length. The programme activities in the first phase comprised the following: research and development of products that improve the domestic environment and structural stability of houses, field testing the products, documentation of the products and their manufacturing techniques, and introductory level training of entrepreneurs and product promotion methodologies. Efforts were also made to undertake participatory cluster and village planning and mapping of natural hazards in villages. A total of 60 home-improvement products have been identified, out of which 40 have been tested in villages, 10 of these products are specifically designed for enhancing fuel and thermal efficiency of the rural houses in the cold region and directly compliment fuel wood and forest conservation and also reduce smoke emission in the environment . Also 15 of these 40 home improvements directly improve the quality of life of women and children Significant impact of BACIP products on improved health, poverty alleviation and environmental conservation have also been observed and their potential impact was required to be further validated and documented (the impacts have been validated and published ). In order to consolidate, extend and validate the impact, an extension phase was sought (the current phase) duly funded in partnership by the Aga Khan Foundation and US AID. As the demand is growing for BACIP products in the Northern Areas, it is strongly felt that an additional need exists for developing the capacities of local entrepreneurs in terms of formal training (over and above the existing training module) for enhancing replication rate and building local capacities for sustainable development.

Pakistan