Yasmeen Lari is widely recognized as Pakistan’s first woman architect, with a focus on the intersection of architecture and social justice. Since her official retirement from architectural practice in 2000, her U.N.-recognized NGO Heritage Foundation Pakistan has pursued humanitarian relief work and historical conservation projects in rural villages across Pakistan, but particularly Sindh. In light of this year’s devastating floods, she spoke with The Standard via Zoom on what the country can do to build disaster-resilience and reduce pollution. Excerpts:
You have been working in disaster-hit areas for many years. Can you share how that journey began and how your focus evolved?
I gave up my architectural practice in 2005, thinking I’d return to work in a few months, but it didn’t work out like that and we’ve been working on disaster relief since then. In 2022, massive floods affected the whole of Pakistan, but particularly Sindh, my province. Since I work with sustainable methodologies, we started working on that too, launching a pilot project of a few thousand houses made of sustainable materials like bamboo, lime and mud. However, while these homes are flood and earthquake resistant, most people want pukka (brick and mortar) houses.
Regardless, we launched the One Million Households program aiming to reach 1 million of the 3 million families of Sindh impacted by those floods. That helped me understand the country’s situation better, the poverty, the malnutrition, the total lack of facilities.
Many relief efforts are short-term. What systemic failures are stopping long-term rehabilitation?
The areas I’m working in, through the One Million Households program, are now food- and flood-secure. That means that around 15,000 villages are growing their own vegetables, breeding their own chickens, fish. We have also taught them mechanisms to protect them from floods.
Unfortunately, the tyranny of the rich and the privileged of this country means people don’t care about the lives of the oppressed. They lack sanitation or access to clean water, much less piped water. This is a great injustice and means leaving all these people to their own devices to basically just die.
So that’s my current focus though it is difficult as nobody seems to be aware of how bad the situation is. People are forced to drink from filthy ponds, which are also used as watering holes by animals. This leads to the spread of waterborne diseases such as hepatitis. That’s what I’m trying to do something about now.
Can you describe your “zero charity” model and how it helps people rebuild sustainably?
It is a holistic model. Thus far, we’ve provided around 7,000 families, roughly 50,000 people, with one-room houses that have shared toilets, water, solar panels, and access to clean food. There are also flood mitigation efforts and plantation so they have access to fruit and vegetables. We are helping them develop income generation through products aimed at the impoverished; in a way using the potential of poverty to make people come out of poverty.
This has required significant aid, around $150 per family, but only in-kind, as I don’t believe in direct cash transfers. But the resources to scale this up are difficult to secure, and we have to rely on working without charity or funds. I’m hoping that by next year, most of them will actually be okay and be able to escape poverty.
How do you view the government’s approach to disaster recovery and housing?
The government’s constructions are one-room houses built with expensive materials. They lack water, toilets. They also lack disaster resilience, leaving beneficiaries at risk of further agony in future. If the whole area is flooded again, their lives will come to a standstill. The people we’re helping were flood secure in the last floods, didn’t have to leave their villages, started to build their own houses with their own money. Our efforts have helped build around 50,000 houses and 35,000 toilets, which are shared.
Under the zero charity model, these people have also independently built 700 schools, enabling the education of about 70,000 children.
That’s my ultimate appeal: Put your faith in people, in trying to see what the potential of poverty is and forget about money. If we share knowledge, guide people, we can help them overcome hunger, achieve food security, flood mitigation, and eventually income generation. Through this step-wise process, a family can escape poverty within 36 to 44 months.
We make sure not to accept any government help, because their policies tend to ignore basic rights such as access to shelter, food, clean water, and sanitation. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, it doesn’t seem like there is much empathy for the poor. Most of our impoverished aren’t incompetent; they just lack the capacity to achieve success because they genuinely start with nothing and no one tells them anything.
Currently there are 26 million children out-of-school countrywide, including around 8 million in Sindh alone. Many schools in this province are not in a state fit for children, with many of the buildings damaged by the last floods yet to be rehabilitated. This threatens the prospects of future generations, creating a population of illiterates.
Beyond rural areas, how do you see urbanization and housing challenges in cities? Additionally, what is your take on Pakistan’s view of global warming?
This is a complex issue. We must all realign our thinking of how we develop our cities to tackle the threat of climate change, which is a very real threat. Approximately 40% of our emissions are due to the way we build and we don’t take enough steps to reduce them because we point to the country being responsible for around 0.5-1% of global emissions. This doesn’t matter; any emissions we produce are harming our environment. Just look at the smog in Lahore, the stubble burnings, we aren’t doing enough to end these practices.
Destroying slums in the name of environmentalism is not a solution. It has never worked in any country of the world. In Karachi, per my experience, more than 50% of the population lives in slums with literally no facilities. It is likely the same in other major cities. These are the people that comprise our support staff, and the state treats them miserably, forcing them to live under inhumane conditions.
My solution is the One Eco Street at a Time project.
Under this project, we take neglected streets and turn them into climate-resilient community spaces. They are now becoming an extension of living spaces in slums, allowing children to play in them. In one street, we’ve established a street library, enabling community commons.
Another potential solution to the slum problem is by ensuring they have access to their basic needs, such as physical infrastructure, energy, and properly insulated housing. The galvanized iron sheets often used for roofing turn the homes into ovens. Concrete is not the solution.
You often advocate against concrete and steel. Why?
Concrete and steel are among the most highly energy consuming materials in production. I have not used them in any of my projects for the past 25 years. They also emit so much heat, creating impossible conditions for living in a warm climate. Concrete roads also boost water wastage, as they don’t permit groundwater absorption. You can see the consequences of this even in places like Lahore, which is blessed with plenty of rain otherwise. We need to focus on saving all the water. This eventually leads to areas becoming fertile once more. The Miyawaki forest style is particularly helpful, as it changes the soil and boosts plant growth.
Our city planners must also consider the potential devastation caused by earthquakes when developing high-rise buildings. Just look at what happened in Myanmar and before that Turkiye. The tremors caused all these multi-story, concrete buildings to collapse and there is very little chance of survival if you’re buried beneath the rubble of a concrete building.
Do you think there is anything we can glean from a country like Japan, which has implemented architectural techniques designed to mitigate the effect of earthquakes?
Japan is a different world altogether. We cannot even begin to compare ourselves with that. They are a highly disciplined society that takes care of each other. Over here, we cannot expect the same because corruption levels are so high. One of the worst affected by pilferage are buildings, and we need to examine our domestic needs. Instead of concrete high-rises, we should focus on low-rise buildings constructed with sustainable materials. Lime is a great alternative that has been used for thousands of years; instead of concrete, we should utilize it more.
We also need to recognize that we cannot afford multi-story buildings from any point of view. They are very environmentally damaging. Look at the wonderful Walled City of Lahore, narrow streets with medium-density buildings. High-density construction in our context only benefits the rich, giving them more space to build sprawling compounds.
Given your years of work, what message do you have for architects, policymakers, and communities?
I’ve been involved in sustainable development since 2005, starting with recycling building materials from debris, then using bamboo and focusing on zero carbon footprint structures. In that time, I’ve spoken at universities across Pakistan and much of the rest of the world. We need to stop hiding behind the fact of our emissions remaining below the rest of the world and focus on reducing pollution that is making it hard for our people to live. It is far better to save people’s lives than develop large-scale buildings that only add to pollution and climate change.
Unfortunately, I’m not very hopeful that things will improve any time soon. I don’t see many architects in this country accepting my view on things. Even with tree plantation, I’ve seen some efforts, but they don’t go far enough. Rather than planting trees as road dividers, we need to plant them in the streets and discourage the use of polluting vehicles. If we did this next to every slum, we would see immediate health benefits.
If we act with sincerity and focus on low-impact, low-tech, low-cost construction, we can eventually achieve zero poverty. The focus should be on the common good and this requires us to change our direction, our way of thinking. This is the only way we can be counted among the world’s progressive nations.
It will not happen with multi-story towers. It requires our citizens feeling confident, taking the initiative to act in their own interest, which needs more investment in human resource. A return to tradition, to what has been proven successful in the past, is the need of the hour. Once we re-adopt those traditions, we can focus on innovating them for modern needs. But without a rethink, none of this is achievable.