South Africa: Cape Town Plans Greener Building Methods

23 April 2007
Posted to the web 23 April 2007

Patrick Burnett And Steve Kretzmann
Cape Town

Within the next five years, the city of Cape Town plans to enact a bylaw insisting on environmentally-friendly building methods to make new developments "greener".

The city has already finalised a draft version of the "Green Building Guidelines", which will form the core of the planned bylaw, said Grace Stead, the city's Agenda 21 coordinator.

Agenda 21 refers to the United Nations programme for promoting sustainable development.

This falls under the city's environmental resource management department.

The guidelines will be tabled before a council in May 2007, after which they will be made available for public comment.

Ms Stead said the bylaw would be aimed at reducing the city's carbon emissions.

The draft guidelines state that the "cumulative negative impact" of construction should be considered in a context where "every action contributes to climate change, global warming and destruction of our planet through the production of greenhouse gasses and exploitation of non renewable resources."

source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200704230340.html