Housing is not just

houses
An Integrated vision based on
recognition of territory and
negotiation
2
3
4
Introduction

When Johnny Åstrand, first told me, in front of all

SDD1 group — Write a book— I thought that he was
teasing me. Then I recalled his particular pedagogy
and the way he makes you accept tough tasks and
long walks in his already famous intense courses and
study visits. In fact so was it, and when he told me
again to do so, I knew that this was a real issue that I
was going to assume.

The text is written in English as this is the original

language of the HDM course at Lund and because I
devote it to many men and women from nations and
countries manly from Africa and Asia where
colonization from XV to XX centuries was not able to
leave to most of the people a decent way of living in
harmony with their climate, their resources and their
culture, but this language as its colonization heritage.

Colonisation has not ended with XX century; actually

it looks like it has adopted a new form with the so
called globalization which I found it excellent as it
deals with communication between nations in real

1
SDD stands for Shelter Design and Development, a
Housing Development and Management (HDM) program at
Lund University, granted by the Swedish International
Development Agency (Sida). Johnny Åstrand is also HDM
Director. The particular group is SDD Spring 2007 course.
5
time, access to products and economies from all over
the world for every body common good.

It seems rather democratic and pretty acceptable that

each person on the face of earth shall have the chance
to experience the excitement of knowledge and
history expertise even at the instant events that are
taking place2. This unique phenomenon in our history,
joined to the huge capacity to backup information,
may be the perfect tools to stop inequity and bring fair
opportunities for all.

The incredible speed of changes has not reached

housing the same way trade and communications have
done. To build, yet, has an opposite connotation from
information or communication, it is done to last. And
with the rest of artistic expressions reveal the cultural
state of a society at each epoch. This particular
heritage of nations becomes the starting point of
identity and many global initiatives pledge for its
conservation and restoration.

Since XIX century, housing in cities became a

quantitative matter. Qualitative aspects were set aside
as well as traditional know-how practices were
dropped favouring the number of shelters for the

2
This generation had the chance to see in direct TV the 9-11
disaster.
6
newly raised hand labour class, crucial for
industrialisation. At that time mankind and dwellers
were not quite aware and concerned with pollution or
harmful practices. Nowadays we are aware of it and
as thoughtful and conscious beings we must look for a
healthy and sustainable housing for everyone.

• From conservation to health: RSS3, Chagas

disease Santander experience, CINTROP-
UIS4, M.D. Victor Angulo.

In 1997 I knew about some tropical diseases,

particularly malaria and dengue, but I didn’t know a
word about Chagas disease5, when I was invited by
Red de Solidaridad Social, RSS to make some
recommendations about a Chagas disease control
strategy based on housing improvement. I didn’t
imagine that this consult was going to turn over my
professional career. The particular case came from a
research study of Dr. Victor Manuel Angulo Silva,

3
Red de Solidaridad Social, Colombian Presidential agency
in charge of managing the subsidy programmes of nation
created at presidential period 1994-1998.
4
The Centro de Investigaciones en enfermedades tropicales
de la Universidad Industrial de Santander, founded by
Víctor Manuel Angulo in 1991..
5
In 1909, Carlos Chagas discovered and described the
aetiology and the vectorial domestic transmission of
American trypanosomiasis. He also called it: “The poverty
disease”.
7
Director of Cintrop-UIS. The particular study was
essaying four different strategies for Chagas disease
control: three of them based on insecticides and the
fourth dealing with housing improvement. As the
WHO6 funds to finance the essay were not enough to
finance the dwelling improvement, Dr Angulo
involved Santander Governor and six Mayors from
endemic municipalities in addressing their housing
improving subsidised projects, currently administrated
by the presidential office RSS. As Dr Angulo’s
proposal was rather innovative, RSS charge me to
make some recommendations about “Housing
improvement for Chagas disease control”, because
current actions of housing contractors were to torn
down rural houses (or worst, to leave them upstanding
in risk conditions able for domiciliation of the vector)
and replace them with the repetition of a typical
design of a two bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and
a corridor of about 40 sqm total built area, without
considering the built patrimony of the families, or to
improve the house by adding a new bedroom and
upgrading the bathroom and the kitchen leaving the
rest of the dwelling in risk conditions for Chagas
disease transmission. My former Architectural
Conservation speciality, lead me to find out that over
6
WHO, United Nations World Health Organisation

8
19,000 sqm were going to be torn down, generating a
severe damage to vernacular architecture and the
destruction of cultural roots of places.

This first experience and the particular success of my

proposals for changes for an integral vision for
actions from government, academic and community
actors; intra and peri domicile analysis of dwellings;
total upgrading instead of partial interventions and to
make increase the amount of housing subsidy, from
USD 1,200 to 1,800 for each dwelling (512 units in
six municipalities). Then the following nomination of
this experience by Colombian Health Ministry to Best
Practices contest at Dubai in 19997; the following
edition of an integrating protocol of the National
Chagas Disease Control Programme and the National
Rural Subsidy Housing Programme for INS8 in 2000;
convinced me about the creation of Cesos Corporation
as a Non-for profit organisation, on September 25,
2003 with the following social mission: “To promote
health and general welfare of communities in
harmony with environment, by means of the study,
promotion and execution of investigations and
projects in the fields of Physical Sciences, Human

7
http://www.bestpractices.org/database/bp_display_best_pra
ctice.php?best_practice_id=954
8
INS: Instituto Nacional de Salud, National Health Institute

9
Sciences and Arts”. Then as a new NGO, Cesos
developed for the INS in 2004 a social participatory
strategy for Dengue disease sustainable control,
involving new approaches leading to an efficient
social an environmental management system for
municipalities. We have also prepared and held
conferences and congresses, presented lectures,
supported small women rural organizations and
solved consulting on Social Housing Quality. This
expertise is Cesos main strength as well as its board
and closer volunteer collaborators. The corporation
integrates working teams depending on the purpose of
the project to be executed from a large Data Base of
professionals. Each project has a Responsible director
and an Administrative manager that become vocals at
the Board.

• From health to housing: Casanare, Ministry

of Housing, Environment and Territory,
SDD.

The former activity brought me some popularity

among Health functionaries. I was invited by Dr Juan
Manuel Naranjo, who was occupying the Public
Health Direction for Casanare department invited
Cesos to organize a congress about housing
improvement for Chagas disease control.

10
Casanare is a large department (44.640 sqkm) located
at the east of the country in the Orinochean natural
region with huge oil and natural gas reserves, its
population in 2005 Census was of 133.226 inhabitants
that compared with 1993 Census figure of 161.440
shows us the general emigrational phenomena to
larger cities. Two percent of population is native and
live in 10 reserved areas that occupy 3,3% of territory
with dramatic livelihood conditions due to
acculturation from a nomad way of living in their
extended vernacular territory of the Orinochean plains
to a restricted territory where they are pushed to
become farmers instead of semi-nomad hunters
gatherers, forced to live in colonisation dwelling
schemes offered by the government agencies, that are
neglected as they don’t respond, for example, to their
traditional separation of sanitary services from the
cooking utility, or to the use of zinc metal tiles that
doesn’t offer bioclimatic protection to shelter
compared to traditional palm roofs, much less
expensive as they are easy available in the region and
incredibly efficient to keep comfortable temperatures
inside dwellings in hot tropical climates.

Then, I was invited to develop part of a consultation

for the Ministry of Housing, Environment and

11
Territory9, about shelter quality standards. This
allowed me to visit several social housing projects
across the country verifying sadly the extremely bad
quality of urbanism, building and habitability
conditions in most of the cases. I could corroborate
the lack of participation of the final user in the
planning and execution of these projects, not even in
the recognition of the family composition to
determinate the size and characteristics of the
dwelling, much less in the adaptation to biological,
cultural or climatic local conditions. In our diverse
country it appeared as we have reached an “ideal”
unique prototype present in all climates, cultures and
local conditions.

With this precedent information I was accepted to

Shelter Design & Development course at HDM in
Lund University where I could develop and present
the project: “Healthy and Sustainable Habitat in
Colombia. Integrated Housing in Rural and Urban
Areas of Small Municipalities”. This is a
demonstrative project of a protocol to create The
National Health and Sustainable Habitat Programme
in Colombia. It justifies and describes a process that

9
Consultoría para la formulación de guías de asistencia
técnica a entidades territoriales para proyectos de Vivienda
de Interés Social-VIS y sobre estándares de calidad de VIS
12
starts developing a Geographical Information System
(GIS) tool by which the municipal authorities and the
communities, with support of academic institutions
are able to recognize their identity, their territory and
establish agreements to address urban land, wealth
and development in the small municipalities
throughout the country.

• Towards a systemic and holistic vision.

The task then is to introduce a new way to harmonise

housing to environment through a systemic and
holistic integrated way to approach to territories and
communities, which is the reason of this book that I
wish to present to people involved in social housing.

13
PART ONE

1. Identity

Perhaps you may have found yourself in the middle of

a crowd where you don’t know anybody, but you feel
safe because people are like you somehow. Certainly,
you will share some interest about the meeting, or you
might dress similarly, probably you speak the same
language, and many people are alike you. Identity is a
security factor that allows you to act freely and
comfortably, opposite to a different situation where
you do not recognize elements from your background.
On this other pole, when you walk through a
neighbourhood where the buildings are so similar that
you may say they are all identical, you will not only
be insecure, you will get lost. This can certainly
happen to you in any of the official social housing
neighbourhoods built in the last decades in Manila,
Mexico, Lima, Bogotá, or many other cities with a
large growing rate.

This is the heritage that ideal Renaissance cities and

modern mass housing production left to the actual
city. An urbanism that doesn’t replicate landscape
accidents denies topography and fills up waterways. It
struggles against land and gives priority to the straight

14
line over organic shapes. Flying across the USA you
can appreciate this, and curiously the organic way
some roads around oil fields are traced, or how rice
terraces were built two thousand years ago, see
pictures 1, 2 and 3.

Picture 1. Rice terraces, Bantad, Philipines

Picture 2. Over Arizona or New Mexico, USA

15
Picture 3. Oil drilling, Texas, USA

I don’t want to suggest that land cannot be managed,

what I want to emphasize is that we must not scarf the
planet. The consequences of the ‘non-identification’
with terrain are well known and are a cause of many
of the wrongly called “natural disasters”. So, to build
a ‘terrain-comprehensive urban environment’ is a first
clue to have friendly neighbourhoods humanized
cities and harmonious livelihoods.

The former huge step does not come alone. To reach

this civilized target, deep changes have to be
accomplished, starting by individual ones. It is an
identity recovery issue on individuals that will lead
society to a better urban rich world. This change must
be supported by the current formal educational system
for coming generations, and bred from a non formal

16
pedagogic approach for adults and populations that
live in deprived conditions all over the world. Here
urbanism and education touch each other in a
sentence that a young Philippinean from Ifugao told
me, walking through the old rice terraces, “…they
have given us education, but it was not focused…”
There stands all the matter: ‘focuses’. And then, some
questions arise: Is it a global focus, or an international
one, or a national one, a regional, or a local one? The
answer is yes, to all of them, but within priorities.
Focus shall be defined at first instance individually
then locally, and gradually or concentrically to the
other levels.

There is where education for new generations shall

assume its role to raise kids focused within
themselves and their territories. In the first order the
body and the closest surround, in farther ones the
natural, economical, social, and political environment.
A compulsory Territory Cathedra must be
implemented into formal educational systems from
nursery school to the highest educational levels. But
let’s leave this immediate task for future generations
to specialists’ activity: to introduce changes in
educational national curriculum.; as we have to be
concerned with millions of people all over the world

17
living today in jeopardize, on a high degree of
unsatisfactory environment, full of inequity,
segregation, discrimination, degradation, injustice,
lack of secure tenure, among many other inhuman
conditions.

To brake down these unfair conditions it is not only

necessary to teach values, but to deeply inculcate
them in the interior of individuals, in their emotional
feelings to get a truly non rational or automatic
attitude in accordance with them. Thoughts and
actions shall become consciously “right”, to live
joyfully and well being in common good.

Human rights are written, even officially recognized

by country bylaws but they are not yet culturally
performed. Formative-pedagogic-cultural processes in
informal educational activities of action learning by
‘creating’ shall impact for changes on individuals’
behaviour for a civil society change leading to a
happy and richer world.

Culture is something particular to each individual and

tacit agreements are done to build it up from personal
and local surround, to global levels. As the
constitutive unit of culture is a personal one,
coherence between what we think or desire, what we

18
say and what we do, consents to the consolidation of
collective cultural levels. It is practically impossible
to be happy not being coherent or doing what we
know that is “wrong”, living in a constant interior
struggle. A clue to evaluate coherence in our lives is
our behaviour towards morals and law. We are
remembered for our acts, words are gone with the
wind, and it is about time to put them in deeds.

Besides its incidence in development, how

convergence of Law, Mores and Culture, influence
housing?

In a convergent situation corruption does not prevail,

the “right” thing is to build real nice, happy and
healthy dwellings. Actual situation is opposite, as
housing is also a business, forcedly generating profit,
it doesn’t matter to act “wrong”, facilitating
corruption and producing an unhealthy housing
environment with very low living quality.

How can we change this historical gap? For the

change I will propose forward a methodology to
implement communitarian processes towards building
better neighbourhoods and cities where people
identify themselves in a commune by thinking and
acting consciously of each step they take.

19
2. The Triple R

An integral comprehension of the Triple R strategy

must be fulfilled because it is the basis of a conscious
behaviour in pro of a healthy and wealthy
environment. This tripod has a logical staging.

In first place conscience is arising about benefits and

urgency of Reduction by opposition of unlimited
growing10. Humankind is getting aware that our
splendid planet is limited to a very fragile spot in the
middle of the cosmos and that many resources are not
being used properly to get a better living for
everybody and that we must reduce or definitively
avoid the use of many products that are harming the
environment and consequently putting in danger
human life. As many of these products harmful and
not harmful are still being produced we shall use them
until their last stand, while future industry re
accommodates to pro-life standards.

The second logical step is Reusing which is a practice

that also forwards to diminish the manufacture of
short-life products. To reuse you might need to do
10
Industrialization and post industrialization vowed for
development based on growing. After 1992’s earth summit
of Rio sustainability concept emerged, nowadays harmony
between parts is prevailing in response to ethics and
aesthetics congruity.
20
some reparations to keep in function the utility, by
opposition of throwing it away and getting a brand
new one. You can apply this principle even in
housing; as a matter of fact in Chagas disease control
program in Santander, Colombia, we avoid the
demolition of many vernacular houses from poor
people at countryside that were “beneficiated” with a
housing subsidy for building a new mini house of
40sqm with poor bioclimatic conditions. We got that
government approved that family could use the
subsidy’s money improving their old house to healthy
conditions, using local and traditional materials in a
typical reusing process.

The third one refers to all the products that don’t stand
any other use, these shall get going into a Recycling
process that recovers the raw materials and make
them able to be used in the production of new
products, hopefully pro-life ones.

As there is still a lot of garbage making, recycling has

become a very profitable business in this decade.
Actually the objective is not to recycle or to favour
this new business, but to manufacture only useful
products with a very long profitable life for the raw
materials as they are made out of biodegradable
material.

21
 2.1. Re-creation

To reinvent and redesign to be able for RRR

To put in deeds RRR, a great creative effort must be

done. It is a diametrical position to change from a
culture of waste towards a systemic, complex and
open economy11. Cultural appropriation of new pro
life habits will overcome in a democratic society in
the measure that new actions entail new benefits. The
reinvention and redesigning of strategies, processes
and products is impositive to politicians,
entrepreneurs, industrial designers, architects, among
all social actors. There are already many “conscious”
actors. that have introduced into their social mission
the “zero emissions” concept12. They are pioneers of
this new century task and they envision it as a “green”
opportunity for business. So, major scientific
developments, based on ethical principles for life
preservation will give common people decent options
for a new way of living far different from waste, as
we will only get or buy what we really need, and
clean production will predominate over dirty one13. It
11
Gunter Pauli, “Volver a Adam Smith”, Innovar 14, p. 12
12
Ibidem, founder and director of Zeri foundation, 1994:
Zero emissions Research and Initiatives.
13
Sylvain Darnil, Matieu Le Roux, 80 hommes pour
changer le monde, 2005
22
is a new economical scope where prevails a practical
logic for life preservation. Artists are also involved,
since the beginning of XX century, Duchamp’s avant-
garde rhythms of his time with his provoking ready-
mades, questioned the absolutism of crafting, or
Chaplin’s critical movies to machinism and
Taylorism14 in its bad consequence of using time and
motion studies simply to extract more work from
employees at less pay.

Contemporary, there are already several artists that

with his constant provoking way to show beyond
reality and question society, shall be our allies to get
to communities. I met a Tarija, Bolivia a wonderful
puppet man, Federico Rocha who has developed a
series of plays engaged with health improvement and
environmental conservation. By his “Pedrito and
María” puppet play for Chagas disease control with
housing improvement, adults while laughing were
shown in the mirror of theatre how irrational was their
domestic behaviour while kids would be able to recall
to their parents about good house holding habits in

14
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), Frederick
Winslow Taylor devised a system he called scientific
management, a form of industrial engineering that
established the organization of work as in Ford's assembly
line. He moved management theory from early time-and-
motion studies to the latest total quality control ideas.
23
their familiar milieu. Artists can support our task in a
lot of manners; Chris Jordan’s Picture 315 has already
undertaken it.

Picture 3. Chris Jordan, Cell phones #2. Atlanta

2005, 44 x 90”
His images are invaluable tools for pedagogical
purposes about raising consciousness among
communities, and to question whether we have to
focus on a number of changes in our consumption
habits and to start a cultural process to reinvent and
redesign.

15
Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass
Consumption: “As an American consumer myself, I am in
no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we
reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer,
our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist
the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So
my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a
kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most
comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking
self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake.”
24
Changing habits, braking paradigms is a cultural
process based on education through pedagogical
process of “learning while doing” in a focused way
into the milieu that has not yet been incorporated in
formal educational programs. There is a simple
practice that I propose to pupils in my walking
courses, to explain RRR, the most vivid one is about
the use of paper: If you write or print on the two faces
of the paper instead of one (it is “bad seen” to present
a homework with the two faces of the sheet printed),
you are reducing in 50% the use of paper, thus half of
the trees needed to make paper will not be felt down.
It is also profitable to keep the paper that has one of
its faces not used, to profit it for a rough draft. This
habit has taken root amply but the concept of what
you are doing is often confused with recycling instead
of simply the reusing one.

2.2. The Balance

Back in year 1999 I recall the day I read Gunter

Pauli’s enlightening article “Volver a Adam Smith”16
when I understood thoroughly the RRR strategy. I
hope that, when you read this, most of the world has
done it also. Pauli’s point, based on Adam Smith 1767
theory, is the zero emissions vision. Nowadays, some
16
Gunter Pauli is founder an director of Zeri foundation

25
companies have adopted this statement in their
institutional mission17. This is another clue to make
safer and pleasant environments, and above all to
preserve the world for the benefit of future
generations.

Beyond the reduction of garbage, new entrepreneurs

generations ought to be aware that a balanced
behaviour is essentially the only way to avoid global
warming, but they will find out that balance is also a
great deal, economically rewarding, environmentally
friendly and socially accepted. Simultaneous and
numerous actions in this direction can become into
the braking point for preserving future life on our
planet.

As Pauli states, economical science contradicting

Adam Smith’s theory, keeps its practice improving
micro economical aspects about management but
leaves aside the fundamentals about the more efficient
17
Herman Miller: Our sustainability goals by the year
2020:
• Zero landfill
• Zero hazardous waste generation
• Zero air emissions (VOCs)
• Zero process water use
• 100 percent green electrical energy use
• Company buildings constructed to a minimum
LEED Silver certification
• 100 percent of sales from DfE approved products
26
combination of the three economical components
stated by Adams in IIXX century: capital, labour force
and raw materials18. Currently, emphasis is made only
on the first two, neglecting the incorporation of the
last in the equation. As a direct consequence of this
nonsense, a great amount of raw materials become
environmental polluters.

So, a balanced re-creation, where the full use of raw

materials, the proportional valuation of labour hand
with a minimum risk for capital loss, had to be done
in a contemporary conservative thought contrasting to
the theory of endless growing equivalent to
development. The new production and consumption
model to recreate should be able to respond to the
alleviation of the critical conditions of thousands of
millions of people that live overwhelmed by poverty,
lacking elementary resources as clean water, food,
health services, shelter, energy and productive
occupation all over the world.

2.2.1.Capital

Richard S. Fuld jr, former president of Lehman

Brothers declare to the U.S. congress commission that

18
Adam Smith’s theory: Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, published 1776
27
one of the causes of company’s bankruptcy was the
simultaneity of virtual transactions, what put in
evidence that, in fact, there is a large amount of
capital that doesn’t really exist. This remind me about
a play game where there is a number of chairs with
one chair less than those of the number of players
who dance around them until music stops and each
one must take a chair obviously leaving one of them
standing. Lehman Bros. didn’t have liquidity when
the music stopped. Why? Because that money doesn’t
exist as it matches to a speculation of the capital
gambling.

Capital became a purpose instead of an instrument,

new interchange media will arise and in Antanas
Mockus19words: “In XXIII century money will exist,
but only in the Museums”. So, a truth dimension of
capital function to get sustain of life in the planet
must take place, finding its place as mere tool to
create value for welfare, health and happiness of
mankind.

2.2.2.Labour force

“To produce more with less (hand labour)”, this

popular economical paradigm of XX century has

19
Bogota’s Mayor in two period.
28
conducted manhood to the unequal situation that 80%
of resources are consumed by 20% of population. It
also has permitted that 20% of people owns 80% of
global wealth. This distorted vision has favoured
increasing productivity and growth as the modern
economical ideal, in disregard of human free and
creative occupation. It has generated added value to
products and returned it to the capital in detriment of
the labourers’ incomes. This coarse and unbalanced
situation not only uses ‘full employment’ as an
unreachable task, but it is the main cause of the
existence of such a pollutant and wasteful society. The
industrialized city from its beginnings in IXX century
legitimate the furnishing of sufficient and cheap
labour hand that has been recurrently packed in
“shanty towns” all over the world20 as an
ineluctable need of having a large inventory of
labourers disposed to “work more for less (pay)”.

Added value to products by account of hand labour is

currently easy to figure out, so that a proportional
welfare of mankind is set up, and in a further appraise
of interchange means, different than money, hopefully
equity will arise. Meanwhile, an intensive use in

20
Term used for the first time around 1953 to design
squatters in Moroq
29
complete production cycles of raw materials may
generate plenty of occupation for many people.

2.2.3.Raw materials

Finally, due to climate change, the use of the third

component of the equation is driving to collapse the
whole system, the irrational use and abuse of natural
raw materials. Our mother earth is been exhausted by
the unconscious exploitation of natural resources over
the last two centuries. To waste them as if they were
unlimited is carrying us to a self destruction in a very
short term. There are still running all over the planet
many industrial processes that merely 10% of raw
material is spent while the remaining 90% is wasted
to the sewers or directly poured into the water
streams21 . It is about time to reconsider these shaming
activities that harsh environment and replacing them
through systemic processes able to use the residual
materials from one industry as raw material for
another one. Human activities are boosting carbon
dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” concentrations
in the atmosphere to dangerous levels. The result is
rising global temperatures and an unstable climate
that threatens humans, economies, and ecosystems.

21
Gunter Pauli, ibidem p. 31

30
3. More urban, more rich

Parodying Göran Tannerfeldt and Per Ljung book:

More urban less poor (an introduction to urban
development and management) my proposal leads
about how people can become richer instead of just
less poor. I strongly oppose to the ineluctability of this
sad human condition of poverty. It is overwhelming to
listen to the reports that 60.000 million tons of food is
thrown to the garbage just in the United States of
America, additional 6.000 thousand tons in Great
Britain have the same destiny annually. This shows us
that hunger reasons far differ from poverty or lack of
food and recall us the unbalanced and non
proportional conditions of urban development, which
follows the wicked system that nowadays prevails.
The concentration off huge populations in few urban
cities only favours massive consumption industries
whose enormous benefits grow proportionally to the
inutility and futility of what it is produced and to the
fact that free hand labour mobility is restricted to
these gigantic centres, contradicting the angular stone
of free market as Adam Smith quoted.
Megalopolis at service of the accumulation of capital
are perhaps the worst historical human mistake that is
jeopardizing life on earth by its effects on

31
environment as the main source of greenhouse gases
and its expected impacts on an unstable climate22
The urgency of Mitigation: Policies and behaviours
designed to reduce greenhouse gases and increase
carbon sinks.
To end poverty by the creation of value, a
XXI century global goal.

22
Climate Change Reference Guide, Worldwatch
Institute ,2009
32