In a laudable move, the government, in its seventh five year plan, has made a strategic decision to protect arable land by stopping the practice of making bricks from topsoil by 2020. To provide a reliable alternative to traditional bricks, the Housing and Building Research Institute, HBRI, has introduced blocks made of sand and alluvium soil.

For a country like Bangladesh, which has been consistently underlined as a nation at the sharp end of climate change impact, any large-scale construction of buildings or industrial towns must take into consideration the environmental factor. In the last two decades, large open spaces, used in the past for agriculture, had to be used up for residential purposes, squeezing agricultural land. With major cities coming under pressure from migration of people from the rural areas, townships are expanding, gobbling up land for agriculture.

The adverse impact of this comes in two forms: firstly, food production falls and, secondly, ecological balance is hampered. In addition to saving the topsoil and protecting land for production of food, Bangladesh needs a strategic approach in dealing with a rising housing crisis.

Reportedly, the government has plans to make ten thousand flats for people living in slums, which will not only limit environmental polluting habits like open air defecating, dumping garbage in water, but also provide a chance for upward social mobility.

Keeping the recent raze that burnt a large slum in Dhaka, the construction of accommodation for low income segment must prioritise safety features, keeping these tenements eco-friendly with provisions for solar power harnessing, growing of high yield vegetables in small spaces and, sustainable treatment of garbage.

While it’s encouraging sign that there is an alternative to bricks, the usage of the new item has to be popularized through country-wide campaign with special emphasis on the potential advantages. In Bangladesh, most people are wary in picking up a new item in place of something which had been in usage for ages, therefore, the success of the sand-based blocks depend on how successfully the product has been marketed.

As per records, almost half of the 9700 brick kilns in the country operate without approval and this is an area where some strict measures are required. The kilns produce twenty-five million bricks annually emitting 15 million tonnes of carbon in the air which eventually pollutes the environment. Keeping this continued vitiation of nature in mind, an immediate drive is essential to curb illegal kilns and popularize the usage of alternative to bricks.