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Brunel International Lecture Series: South Asia, February 2024

South Asia covers barely 7% of Earth’s landmass, yet contains a quarter of its human population. Meeting the infrastructure needs of such a densely packed population is tough enough on its own.

But, as this seventh session of the 14th Brunel International Lecture Series revealed, the region presents several other complex civil engineering challenges.

The 14th Brunel International Lecture Series is produced by the ICE and the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI).

The series shines a spotlight on equitable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure challenges around the world and how the engineering community can help to address them.

The seventh session of this nine-leg series focused on South Asia.

Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, gave the keynote address. This was followed by a panel discussion chaired by ICE vice president David Porter.

The panellists were:

  • Kapil Gupta, professor of civil engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, and Leverhulme visiting professor at University College London’s department of civil, environmental and geomatic engineering
  • Farah Kabir, country director at ActionAid Bangladesh
  • Monika Nair, associate director for engineering net zero at AtkinsRéalis
Brunel Lecutre South Asia infographic
Explore the South Asia Brunel lecture with our infographic. Click image to enlarge

South Asia in numbers

835
The region’s average population density per square mile

6.1%
South Asia’s GDP growth forecast for 2025, making it the fastest-developing region in economic terms

800 million
The number of South Asians in “hotspots” where living standards will plummet without a significant cut in CO2 emissions

Source: World Bank

What are the challenges?

South Asia, which comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, is home to 2 billion people – about a quarter of human life on Earth.

Aromar Revi addressed several challenges facing the region other than high population density and growth.

These include rapid urbanisation and socioeconomic inequity owing to a lack of adequate infrastructure.

Poor living conditions and urban density

In 2020, half of all city dwellers in South Asia were living in slums, according to the most recent estimate from the UN Human Settlements Programme.

Revi observed that 300 million people in South Asia are still living in extreme poverty. Many of them are moving from deprived rural areas into towns and cities in search of higher standards of living.

This urban population boom poses a significant infrastructure challenge for municipalities to tackle.

The effects of Covid-19

On top of that, the Covid crisis has made it harder for many national and local governments to provide vital infrastructure for urban and rural communities in South Asia.

The lasting effects of the pandemic have impaired the region’s ability to deliver on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Sustainable development on a global scale “will not happen without South Asia meeting its targets”, Revi said, adding that “keeping the balance between rural and urban areas is critical to progress in the region”.

Lack of finance

A widespread lack of access to adequate finance in South Asia is one of the main barriers hindering the development of sustainable and resilient infrastructure. There has been a shortage of investment across the region.

Revi noted that “some countries in South Asia are on the edge of a serious debt crisis”, which is making it particularly hard for decision-makers in those jurisdictions to fund long-term infrastructure projects.

“Certain trade-offs need to be made given the range of other critical priorities, such as food production, social development, education and health,” he said.

brunel south asia traffic-around-charminar-market

Migration from deprived rural areas is increasing urban population density (credit: iStock/Arshii Anjum)

What is happening now?

Two-thirds of the infrastructure required to achieve the SDGs in South Asia has yet to be built, Revi argued.

He stressed that building capacity through investments in infrastructure and job creation is key to spreading decent living standards across the region.

He noted that India, in particular, has excelled in recent years in the decentralised development of IT assets.

“With 30 million young people coming on to the employment market [in India], this will be an opportunity to create jobs and build resilient infrastructure,” he said.

Revi also pointed out that opportunities to build capacity through other decentralised technology projects, such as those harnessing solar energy, are springing up all over South Asia.

Nature-positive infrastructure

Monika Nair noted that there has been a similar decentralised approach to the development of nature-positive infrastructure across the region.

This has typically involved small local projects tailored to the biophysical, economic, sociopolitical and cultural considerations of the communities benefiting from them.

Farah Kabir, whose work with ActionAid focuses on climate justice in Bangladesh, stressed the importance of engaging with local people, particularly women, when it comes to developing disaster-resilient housing (see case study, below).

She noted that architecture, urban planning and infrastructure design remain male-dominated occupations in South Asia. This has tended to make the built environment take little account of women’s needs.

Referring to the frequent flooding that affects much of the population in this low-lying country, Kabir observed that thousands of displaced families must routinely “navigate through open slums, which are very insensitive to the needs of the women”.

This problem has informed the NGO’s approach to engagement with local communities.

Its consultation of women during the planning process, “as well as its inclusion of female experts in design implementation”, have been crucial to its efforts to provide resilient housing that better meets their requirements.

Credit: Aga Khan Development Network

Building sustainability in Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps

The Rohingya are a minority ethnic group based in western Myanmar. In 2017, a state-backed pogrom forced members of this long-persecuted community to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh in their droves.

The UN recently reported that 1 million Rohingya – many of whom are single mothers – still live here.

“Women and girls continue to bear the brunt of the refugee crisis,” says ActionAid Bangladesh’s country director, Farah Kabir. “Those we work to support have physical and mental scars.”

ActionAid supported the construction of six sustainably built women-friendly structures at some of the many refugee camps located in the district of Cox’s Bazar.

Much of the design work was done collaboratively in the field. At the camp four extension, for instance, a women-friendly space features a complex roof truss constructed by Rohingya bamboo workers without the use of plans. Built low to withstand cyclones, the structure is known as shantikhana (“place of peace”).

A facility for women to handmake and display goods has been made of bamboo and thatch.

One community support centre uses mattresses as roof insulation, while another mixes natural materials with industrial ones.

Resisting the temptation to clear trees for human development, builders have constructed a further centre around some of the site’s established betel palms.

Sustainable Development Goals:

Linking our work back to the UN SDGs is a core part of the ICE’s plan and mission. This article ties in with the following SDGs:

What changes are needed?

Nature-based infrastructure solutions have a vital role to play in climate adaptation, according to Revi, who called for more policy interventions to help civil engineers apply them.

“The integration of nature-based solutions with grey infrastructure will be imperative to delivering resilience in a much more equitable manner for the whole of South Asia,” he said.

Nair also stressed the importance of enabling more green solutions, advocating a nature-first approach to decision-making.

This, she believes, will be key to providing future-proof assets.

Nurturing the power of healthy ecosystems will optimise infrastructure and safeguard biodiversity, while protecting vulnerable communities.

Inadequate infrastructure puts vulnerable communities at growing risk
Inadequate infrastructure puts vulnerable communities at growing risk (credit: iStock/thad)

Professor Kapil Gupta outlined the increasing impact of cyclones – especially on the Indian subcontinent – with rainfall records being exceeded year on year. This trend, he suggested, is a clear indication of global climate change.

Monika Nair cited research suggesting that the worst effects of the catastrophic 2004 Boxing Day tsunami – which killed at least 35,000 people in Sri Lanka and 12,000 in India – could have been prevented if nature-based solutions had been prioritised.

Noting the importance of “interdisciplinary practices as well as integrated approaches”, she said: “We need to pledge to work with nature, harnessing its strength and learning from it.”

  • Amanda Rice, ICE climate programme specialist

About the series

Comprising a mix of physical and virtual gatherings, this international lecture series featured nine events in all, culminating in Hong Kong in July 2024. As the series progressed, it explored the regional and global challenges – and opportunities – that climate change presents to the engineering community.

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