Co-Benefits of Adopting Green Concept for the Sustainable Building Construction in Sri Lanka

Abstract

As the world moves closer to achieving sustainable development, the idea of green building has emerged as one of the most important trends in the construction sector around the world. Buildings that are environmentally friendly use less energy and less water, which saves money while preserving natural resources. As a result of growing interest in the topic on a global scale, the development of environmentally friendly buildings has recently appeared as an emerging trend in Sri Lanka. According to the findings of several studies, the initial expenditure required for the construction of environmentally friendly buildings is considerably more than that of conventional buildings. When adopting a green idea for the construction of buildings, a developing nation like Sri Lanka needs to understand the genuine advantages as well as the difficulties that may arise. Therefore, the purpose of the research was to investigate the co-benefits connected with green buildings for a country like Sri Lanka and then to examine each co-benefit in terms of the amount of time that it may expect to be realized. The primary method for collecting data was a questionnaire survey. The statistical approach of the relative importance index was utilized to analyze the collected information. According to the findings, the development of an environmentally friendly building offers various environmental, economic, and social co-benefits to the owners as well as the users of those built environments. Further, the article discusses the relative levels of the significance of each building element within the context of sustainability, green building barriers, and green building approaches in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, most co-benefits are only attainable in the long run, which takes generally more than two years following the construction of a green building.