Lime-Stabilised Soil Building in Cox's Bazar

Re-Alliance founding member and natural building specialist Bee Rowan, collaborating with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and a group of refugee Rohingya peoples living in Cox's Bazar, undertook a Lime-stabilised Soil building project. Lime-Stabilised Soil (LSS) is a sustainable, eco-friendly building material composed of a mixture of soil, lime, and other natural materials. LSS building is a low-carbon and cost-effective strategy, making it an effective, locally sourced solution for many displacement contexts. In Cox's Bazar, prone to disasters such as flooding and fires, LSS buildings are shown to be more resilient to fires, floods, and extreme heatwaves.

To test Lime-stabilised Soil technology’s effectiveness compared to conventional building materials like cements, the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, was chosen as the test site. This area frequently faces crises of monsoon floods, cyclones, fires, and heatwaves. Existing shelters often fail to withstand these climate-related disasters, leaving the camp community highly vulnerable.

The team created effective Lime-stabilised Soil mixes using local subsoil collected from 11 different camps. Using this new material, a fire resilience test was conducted to explore its potential as a fire-resistant material. The results were positive. While a traditional shelter burned down in just five minutes, the LSS-plastered shelter remained intact after 20 minutes of direct fire exposure. This experiment demonstrated the material’s effectiveness as a firebreak in a real-life scenario. Beyond fire resistance, LSS has also shown superior compressive wet strength and thermal performance, which helps shelters cope with heavy rains, flooding, and intense heatwaves.

The efforts to showcase LSS technology quickly gained support, leading to wider scaling and adoption. IOM received additional funding to build over 2,000 LSS shelters across the camp. Also, large agencies including UNHCR and Caritas adopted the technology, resulting in a pilot of 51 LSS shelters. Moreover, this project has received approval from the Bangladesh government to increase the use of LSS in the camp.

Lime-stabilised Soil has strong potential as a future technology for shelters in displacement contexts worldwide. Already, approximately 300 Rohingya refugees were trained in shelter construction and have begun training groups. Continued interest and commitment to Lime-stabilised Soil building will help reduce reliance on conventional, unsustainable materials, providing safer and more resilient shelters in vulnerable communities globally.

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