Applicability of Sustainable Construction and Environmental Resilience in a Circular Built Environment in Southern Africa

Lately, sustainability has dominated academic, practice and policy discourse. The construction industry is singled out as one of the unsustainable sectors due to its linear methods of extract-use-dispose. Globally, linear construction practices are responsible for approximately 50% of raw material extraction, 36% of all emissions, 40% of energy consumption and 50% of waste resulting in natural resource scarcity and waste management catastrophes. In Africa, only 4% of the waste is recycled, whereas 90% is illegally dumped, and the balance is unaccounted for. Consequently, circular economy (circularity), anchored on reduce, reuse, and recycle principles, is widely perceived as a sustainable alternative to linearity. The primary objective of circularity in the construction industry is to advance sustainability by creating a circular built environment. Closely related to circularity, sustainable construction practices also pursue sustainability. On the other hand, environmental resilience from ecology explores how the natural environment adapts to external stressors, promoting sustainability. Nonetheless, the extent to which sustainable construction and environmental resilience non-conflicting factors jointly influence the attainment of a circular built environment remains unknown. The overarching aim of this study was to develop a tailored model for Southern Africa, demonstrating how sustainable construction, environmental resilience factors, and building lifecycle practices contribute to the region's circular built environment transition. To do so, the study was premised on pragmatic philosophy and adopted an exploratory sequential mixed-method research design. The study was divided into two phases. First, through a Delphi study, 11 purposively sampled circularity experts identified 73 drivers contributing to a circular built environment in Southern Africa. Second, a questionnaire comprising these practices was administered to a purposively random sample of 400 stakeholders in Southern Africa. Only 282 participants fully completed the survey. Data was cleaned and analysed through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM). Results show that, generally, there is an awareness of the sustainability concepts, namely circular economy, sustainable construction, and environmental resilience. However, environmental resilience is the most practiced concept, implying that the environmental-related policies enunciated across the region were bearing fruit. v Furthermore, 15 hypotheses were validated, and the results show that environmental resilience, design, construction, operation, and use practices significantly influenced the circular built environment transition. Sustainable construction only impacted design practices. Surprisingly, the results show that sustainable construction and environmental resilience were unrelated. Unlike environmental resilience, sustainable construction or circularity policies are yet to be fully adopted. In conclusion, the study proposes a Southern Africa Circular Built Environment Framework (SACBEF) that demonstrates the applicability of sustainable construction and environmental resilience practices throughout the design, construction, operation, and use phases. The framework also outlines significant barriers and stakeholders in promoting circularity transition. To the knowledge of the researcher, this study is the first of its kind to adopt a multidisciplinary thinking and explore and validate the relationship between cross-cutting concepts, circular economy, sustainable construction, and environmental resilience in promoting circular built environment transition in Southern Africa. Furthermore, the lifecycle assessment perspective provided an in-depth understanding of which building stages influenced circularity in Southern Africa. Future studies should explore the extent of convergence or divergence between sustainable construction and environmental resilience in promoting circularity.