Prize winner
Organisation name
Aga Khan Planning and Building Services (AKPBS)
Country
Pakistan
Contact details
Website http://www.akdn.org/
Email akpbsp.k@akpbsp.org
Testimonial
"Not only is the Alcan Prize a very welcome source of new funds at a critical time, it is also a vote of confidence from some of the world's leaders in sustainability."
Financial resources
US$780,000
Geographical focus
Pakistan, India/Asia
Issue focus
Poverty alleviation, environment, health
Key achievements
- Have demonstrated that affordable, relevant and appropriate approaches to built environment infrastructure can play a leading role in achieving sustainable development goals
- Integrates research, design and implementation with capacity building, skills training and microfinance for community members by acting as a development organisation as well as a service provider
- Integrated water supply and sanitation intervention programme nationally recognised as best practice in Pakistan
Mission
AKPBS works to improve the built environment, particularly housing design and construction, village planning, natural hazard mitigation, environmental sanitation, water supplies, and other living conditions. AKPBS achieves these goals through the provision of material and technical assistance and construction management services for rural and urban areas. The current priorities of AKPBS are:
- To remain a lead agency in Asia for water and sanitation programme design and implementation in the rural areas
- To expand capabilities to implement village mapping and planning activities to include disaster mitigation (landslides and flooding prevention, and earthquake structural resistance) and management issues; and
- To achieve optimal cost-recovery methods for low-cost housing and physical infrastructure improvement projects.
Background
AKPBS acts through national service companies, the main ones of which are AKPBS,P (Pakistan) and AKPBS,I (India). The service companies plan, organise and finance activities and operate facilities and programmes in close collaboration with other AKDN institutions, government agencies and selected external partnering agencies. The national service companies are officially registered as not-for-profit, non-governmental organisations in each country. The international sponsor of the national service companies is the Aga Khan Planning and Building Services S.A., which is incorporated as a not-for-profit company in Geneva, Switzerland.
Partnerships
In its role as both development organisation and service provider, AKPBS,P has formed strategic partnerships with the national, provincial and local government in Pakistan. Its civil society partnerships include USAID, CIDA, UNDP, PPAF (Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund), IUCN, WWF Pakistan, KfW and the World Bank. Various institutional partnerships have been formed with organisations such as SCAT, ADPC and Alama Iqbal University.
Impact achieved
For over 25 years AKPBS has been working to assist local communities in areas such as:
- Habitat risk reduction
- Energy efficient building and construction improvement
- Water supply and sanitation
- Natural resources conservation
Over 50 per cent of all illnesses such as pneumonia, acute respiratory infections, eye infections and diarrhoea/dysentery can be directly attributed to living conditions. AKPBS works to improve the built environment of the most disadvantaged members of society to directly alleviate problems such as this and to directly address many of the Millennium Development Goals including:
- The eradication of hunger (eg. by reducing expenditure on the maintenance of poorly constructed housing
- The empowerment of women (eg. by reducing labour of women by providing simple household products)
- Reducing child mortality (eg. by improving air quality and insulation in the home)
- Ensuring environmental sustainability (eg. by reducing dependency on wood as fuel for heating and cooking)
- Creating global partnerships for development
In Pakistan, AKPBS,P is now a professional authority in built environment improvements and integrated water supply and sanitation provision.
