Barriers to solving environmental problems caused by building constructions in Nigeria: Trudgills’s framework

Abstract

Our environment has been compromised through unwise and unplanned use of land, air, and water exacerbated by population increase, science and technology so much that some areas in Nigeria no longer support life as it ought to. Continuous impacting negatively on the environment to afford us the luxury building construction can afford, eventually leads us to short term and long term economic and environmental grief. At various forum, conferences and literatures, scientists have raised this concern. Not only have concerns been raised, solutions and recommendations were proffered, yet the problems linger. This work adopted Trudgill’s a range of possible barriers to a better environment occasioned by many facets of human activities on earth, ranked the barriers according to Likert’s scale to determine which of these barriers hinders solving environmental problems caused by building constructions. Data from building and construction practitioners were collected using a questionnaire on masons, architects, land surveyors, structural engineers and clients/contractors through semi-structured. The result indicates that lack of political will and political ideology to implement the solutions proffered and the recommendations made in various researches was ranked as the first or major barrier to solving environmental problem caused by building constructions followed by economic insufficiencies. The third barrier according to the study was technology related barrier. The study recommends green building initiative by government and all stake holders in the construction sector