Green school design: A strategy for tropical developing regions

Abstract

In order to achieve the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations, sustainable education in tropical developing regions will play a significant role with regard to the rapid growth in population, economy, and climate problems in these regions. The green school movement has been developing in the West for a few decades. The movement has vital influence in leading the global sustainable education system with their visions, themes, teaching curriculum, and green campus design. However, the promotion of green schools in tropical regions faces barriers due to a lack of awareness, and a regional poor education development. This research is aiming to generate design strategies for green schools in tropical developing regions based on theoretical and practical perspectives. In order to achieve this aim, a theoretical design framework will be built based on a summary of checklists from world-leading green school networks, presenting the up-to-date requirements of green schools, to a global standard. This theoretical framework is to examine and analyse green school practices from tropical developing regions. Previous award-winning green schools will be analysed under this summary of checklists. This process is to illustrate how much “green” they have achieved and to investigate their unique design solutions which can be a complement in building the design strategies for these regions. Two schools have achieved most of the requirements from the checklists. However, the result shows that some of the themes are poorly achieved and some of them have a very high rate of feasibility. Advanced solutions for dealing with energy resources, water treatment, sustainable land, school integration, and waste treatments have been applied in these schools at low cost and with simple maintenance. The benefits from green school practices in tropical developing regions play a significant role in these regions with their contribution of advanced design solutions. An updated design strategy based on theoretical and practical perspectives will be built at the end of the research as a primary design guide. This strategy is aiming to lead new schools from tropical developing regions towards becoming green learning facilities.