UN-HABITAT has an important role in supporting institutions, professionals and the private sector in the housing and construction sector to mitigate climate change, writes Mohamed El Sioufi, Head of UN-HABITAT

Meteorology plays an important role in the design, alignment and orientation of buildings, streets and urban colonies. Mitigative measures to ameliorate adverse impacts in tropical climates are suggested.

Conference on evolving strategies for improving the air quality of Indian cities New Delhi, 1st October 2008.

This paper mainly emphasizes on the more or less modern concept of green building, mainly emphasizes on the more or less modern concept of green building, mainly emphasizing on their environmental impact, the various materials required and their rating system in India. Few examples of green buildings in India have been cited too.

Green buildings eat, drink and spend less. Societies that worry about their resources encourage their architects and construction companies to be conservationist. The Indian Green Buildings Congress (IGBC) has been trying to encourage a change in priorities. It faces the challenge of sensitising builders even as the backlog in infrastructure presents a huge business opportunity.

Despite being located in the seismically highly vulnerable region, Uttarakhand shows an elaborate tradition of constructing multistoried houses. Both the local dialects of the region (Kumaoni and Garhwali) have unique words for identifying four different floors of a building. This suggests common occurrence of multistoried structures in the region. Rajgarhi area, Uttarkashi District has a large number of intact multistoried