If providing a decent shelter is an immediate concern for developing countr
ies, the reduction of global emissions such as carbon dioxide is a cause of
concern for industrialized countries. A short focused policy prescription
for a country like India would be to provide a decent shelter for its more
than 15% citizens, who do not have adequate housing. However, a sustainable
path would be to develop a well strategized path to meet current needs of
housing and also to reduce absolute contribution to global emissions throug
h those construction techniques which are environment friendly. We develop
an optimization framework to analyse a sustainable path to meet housing sho
rtages in India, considering that the sustainable path should not be at the
cost of engineering design criteria. The criteria to measure sustainabilit
y in this paper is cost effectiveness, efficient utilization of resources a
nd environment friendliness. A computer model called 'MHOPE' has been devel
oped to estimate resources and construction techniques required to achieve
housing for all in India. The technologies incorporated in the model are su
itable for India, however, the model can be upgraded to include the house c
onstruction technologies suitable for any other country of interest. The re
sults indicate that it is not possible to provide housing for all in India
with the present set of construction techniques which are predominantly cem
ent and brick based. However, if low cost housing techniques, which use loc
ally available materials, are used, we can achieve this target of 'Shelter
for all'. It will not only reduce cost, but also reduce CO2 emissions becau
se locally available materials are less energy intensive. The paper quantif
ies the level of investment, resources and employment required to provide s
helter for all. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. Ail rights reserved.