Examining earthen dwellings as opportunities for disaster resilience: furthering the potential for achieving UN-SDGs

Vernacular construction techniques like earthen practices have a greater role in post-disaster self-recovery and rehabilitation efforts that utilize indigenous knowledge, skills, and locally available resources. The present review aims to examine the positive and negative effects of various hazards on earthen structures in brief, and further investigate the opportunities and best practices of earthen construction techniques for disaster resilience. Through case studies, this study demonstrates that in some countries, various modifications and adaptations have led to a disaster-resistant earthen construction design. In contrast, in many other regions where such measures were not incorporated, the vulnerabilities of the earthen-built environments in rural settings increased. Further, this study investigates the relationship between earthen-building techniques and the aspiration to achieve relevant targets of various United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) by utilizing a scoring matrix. As a study outcome, this paper presents a conceptual framework for disaster-resilient recovery planning with the vernacular housing approach highlighting “engineered for disaster resilience” as the key component for adopting vernacular techniques. This study also found that earthen materials and methods have a visible positive contribution for achieving the relevant targets of SDGs 01, 07, 09, 11, 12, and 13. Such studies on the interconnectedness between adopting indigenous knowledge and locally sourced building (earthen) materials, and SDGs can help inform and inspire policymakers, practitioners, and developers to formulate strategies for disaster reconstruction and resilience that are community-centric.