Greening a society for a resilient development

Abstract

In line with accelerating urbanization, latest technologies are being deployed in construction activities to cope with the rapid pace of development. In most of the cases, time and money are the primary concerns, while neglecting the vital environmental aspects. The unawareness and ignorance of the people who have a profound influence on the environmental issues often lead to disastrous outcomes. Hence, the environmental abuse has resulted in global warming, climate change, pollution and other human-induced catastrophes. In this paper, the destabilizing pressure on the environment associated with the construction industry was addressed. The aim of this paper was to induce an awareness that can enhance the collaboration and participation of the building team society within the construction industry towards administering a more sustainable environmental management and thus creating a resilient, low carbon city. The objectives were to identify the green strategies that were currently available in Malaysia and to study how accessible they were to the participation of the construction key players (i.e. contractors). A systematic review was utilized to locate, assess and evaluate all research studies that have addressed this issue. Published studies and reports were collected based on a set of specific criteria pertaining to the issue of the construction industry with relevance to environmental sustainability. From our results, it can be seen that there were many efforts being carried out by both government and the private sectors to encourage the practice of green strategies. However, it tends to lack a holistic configuration framework for the transitioning towards a green society and sustainable development in the construction industry. Thus, this study highlights the significance in understanding the importance of collaboration from the society in the construction industry to create a sustainable and resilient development.