Removing Barriers To Environmental Comfort In The Global South

This book describes how comfort, energy and climate change in developing countries and vulnerable sectors of the population relate to buildings. The building sector is currently facing significant challenges connected to energy consumption, energy poverty and climate change effects. When studied in developing countries and vulnerable sectors of the population, these factors, which are commonplace in the tropics and the southern hemisphere, are interlinked and share a critical component: environmental comfort. Although progress has been made in environmental comfort through research and the development of standards and policies at the international level, in the Global South, where the countries with the highest levels of income inequality are concentrated, environmental comfort has its own characteristics and challenges that prevent a clear understanding from the established vision of the Global North. This book presents research, theories and techniques related to Thermal comfort, Indoor air quality, Visual comfort, and Acoustic comfort and its relationship with energy use and energy efficiency, seeking to address different barriers to environmental comfort. It shows how to improve the way buildings are designed and operated to promote healthier environmental conditions and more sustainable construction, by presenting studies and reflections carried out in the target geographical area: the Global South. In this way, this book contributes to developing the concept of environmental comfort, visualising how progress has been made in understanding it from a tropical and southern perspective, and posing common challenges. The book is intended for engineers, architects, and researchers of the built environment who are interested in environmental comfort and its influence on energy consumption, energy poverty, and other related factors in the Global South context. It is also a useful resource for decision-makers and public policy developers concerned with the indoor comfort of buildings. Moreover, the book aims to provide guidance for those in developing countries by gathering existing knowledge in the field for the tropics and southern hemisphere climatic and sociocultural contexts, allowing us to move forward in this subject with actions and proposed solutions that fit our particular needs.

This book aims to provide bases for reasoning on what challenges urban-architectural design for vulnerable communities will face in the coming years. Several issues, such as technological development, climate change, political crisis and economic uncertainties show as traditional strategies and methodologies are not sufficient to deeply solve the problems of these complex realities. These new changes, which are studied in different fields of knowledge, highlight the fact that the development of effective solutions must be characterized by multidisciplinary approaches and must be based on strategies promoted by different disciplines. For this reason, this contributed volume collects contributions and considerations from experts in various fields of knowledge working in different parts of the world, such as the Americas, Europe and Asia. The goal is precisely to provide the reader with multidisciplinary knowledge and methodologies in order to better reflect and analyze the challenges that designing for vulnerable communities will face in the next few years. These multidisciplinary studies are organized into five sections: Sustainability and Vulnerabilities in Time of the Anthropocene Approaches, Principles and Paradigms to Contemporary Research and Practice for Vulnerable Communities Designing for Vulnerabilities: Applications and Actions Social Engagement in Vulnerable Communities Between Digital and Humanist Visions Vulnerabilities in Context: Analysis and Projects in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region Design for Vulnerable Communities will be of interest primarily to researchers and professionals in the field of urban-architectural design, but it will also be a useful tool to policy makers and members of civil society at large interested in making cities more inclusive.

This book explores how, in the wake of the Anthropocene, the growing call for urgent decarbonisation and accelerated energy transitions might have unintended consequences for energy poverty, justice and democracy, especially in the global South. Dilemmas of Energy Transitions in the Global South brings together theoretical and empirical contributions focused on rethinking energy transitions conceptually from and for the global South, and highlights issues of justice and inclusivity. It argues that while urgency is critical for energy transitions in a climate-changed world, we must be wary of conflating goals and processes, and enquire what urgency means for due process. Drawing from a range of authors with expertise spanning environmental justice, design theory, ethics of technology, conflict and gender, it examines case studies from countries including Bolivia, Sri Lanka, India, The Gambia and Lebanon in order to expand our understanding of what energy transitions are, and how just energy transitions can be done in different parts of the world. Overall, driven by a postcolonial and decolonial sensibility, this book brings to the fore new concepts and ideas to help balance the demands of justice and urgency, to flag relevant but often overlooked issues, and to provide new pathways forward. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy transitions, environmental justice, climate change and developing countries. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003052821 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Bringing together the experience, perspective and expertise of Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Arthur Kleinman, Reimagining Global Health provides an original, compelling introduction to the field of global health. Drawn from a Harvard course developed by their student Matthew Basilico, this work provides an accessible and engaging framework for the study of global health. Insisting on an approach that is historically deep and geographically broad, the authors underline the importance of a transdisciplinary approach, and offer a highly readable distillation of several historical and ethnographic perspectives of contemporary global health problems. The case studies presented throughout Reimagining Global Health bring together ethnographic, theoretical, and historical perspectives into a wholly new and exciting investigation of global health. The interdisciplinary approach outlined in this text should prove useful not only in schools of public health, nursing, and medicine, but also in undergraduate and graduate classes in anthropology, sociology, political economy, and history, among others.