As rising temperatures drive increasingly destructive storms and floods, Zimbabwe is rewriting the rules on how and where homes should be built to help rural communities get through the worst of the weather.
The new standards and policy recommendations in the National Human Settlements Policy also encourage Zimbabweans to move away from traditional building methods which rely heavily on timber and soil, contributing to widespread deforestation.
Percy Toriro, a city planning expert in Harare, said this marks the first time the construction of rural homes in the southern African country will be as carefully regulated as house-building in its cities.
“Whereas urban housing has always been fairly safe due to the strict standards of planning and construction, rural housing was never subjected to any standards or inspection,” he said. ”Recent cyclones have brought everyone to a realization that poor housing is vulnerable. In our settlements, sustainability must be the goal.”
Government data from 2017 showed 80% of homes in rural areas were either wholly or partially made of traditional materials like farm bricks. In contrast, 98% of urban houses were built using modern materials and techniques.
Since the policy was approved in 2020, Zimbabwe’s government has built 700 permanent homes for people displaced by natural disasters, said Nathan Nkomo, director of the Civil Protection Department, the state’s disaster response agency, which helped shape the new building standards.
With help from partners, including the International Organization for Migration, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank, the construction drive focuses on Manicaland and two western districts, Tsholotsho and Binga, all areas that have been hit hardest by harsh weather.
“We must come up with settlements that meet the requirements of habitable architecture,” Nkomo said.
The new settlements policy is not enshrined in legislation, but it creates the legal framework for local authorities to introduce by-laws that should bring houses in rural Zimbabwe up to national and international standards, said David Mutasa, chairman of the Makoni Rural District Council.
The policy says councils should ensure all new builds use materials and methods that are “economic, sustainable, [and] resilient” – for example, by insisting that homes are built with cement bricks and all construction is registered.
To curb the negative impacts of house-building on the environment, the policy bans the use of temporary wooden shacks in mining and farming compounds and prohibits building on wetlands, which are vital ecosystems that provide a natural buffer against flooding
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