Water Wheel March/April 2020

Abstract

Sustainable social housing as a theatre for change South Africa is struggling. This is true for much of the world, but this is where we live. We have a seemingly perfect storm of another economic dip tempered with deep social upheaval and an increasing ecological deficit as we continue, on the one hand, to depend on coal for our meagre energy supply and have to deal with new pollution threats like microplastics and pharmaceutical waste on the other. Its tight! And globally we have seen an exponential increase in natural disasters – bushfires in Australia, tornadoes in the US, continued drought conditions, tempered by destructive flooding events in South Africa. At the same time, on the other side of this paradox, we have the highest levels of research derived scientific knowledge and the largest number of knowledge-based solutions and innovations in history.

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