Implementation of Environmental Sustainability Strategies for Real Estate Development in Developing Nations: An Empirical Study from Ghana

Abstract

Real estate development is an important physical development activity in every economy. However, conventional real estate development poses multiple threats worldwide to environmental sustainability especially in emerging economies. As a developing country, Ghana is one of countries that did not attain Millennium Development Goals (MDG7 for instance) before the promulgation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, this paper examined the main environmental sustainability strategies implemented by real estate developers in Ghana to safeguard the environment. After synthesizing relevant literature on real estate development in the context of sustainability, a conceptual basis for the research was established, then a closed-ended questionnaire was set and used to gather field data from purposively sampled developers from Accra and Tema Metropolitan areas which are noted for active real estate development in Ghana. Using descriptive (frequencies and weighted mean ranking) and inferential (chi-squared) statistics, the field data was analyzed using SPSS v23. The analysis revealed that out of the ESS attributes for real estate development established from the literature, less than 30% were mostly implemented in the country. With a p-value of 0.05 (chi-squared), none of the main attributes of Energy Efficiency (EE) and Water Efficiency (WE) strategies were implemented during the post construction stage of real estate development (RED) process albeit they implemented at the pre-construction to the construction stages. However, except one of the three Sustainable Site Planning and Management (SSPM) strategies which was not implemented in the pre-construction stage, the rest were implemented through the RED process. Hence, the level of implementation of strategies SSPM, EE, WE and construction materials and resources efficiency (CMRE) for real estate development was generally low. As a result, stakeholders in the physical development process of the country need to significantly influence real estate developers to implement more environmentally efficient strategies in real estate development.