Prior to the United Nations Climate Change Conference- COP28 which is scheduled to be held between November 30 and December 12 this year, the World Green Building Council has recently gone on to submit a response to the world’s first global stocktake GST citing climatic impact as well as the potential of the world’s infrastructure as a crucial climate solution so as to deliver a resilient future.
The GST happens to be a two-year process that offers the worldwide community a reason to reflect on their progress towards collective goals that have been agreed upon in the Paris Agreement, which highlight the areas of progress as well as identify key gaps before nations submit their respective updated Nationally Determined Contributions next year. These NDCs are essentially action plans that the signatories to the Paris Agreement put forward to outline how they intend to meet their commitments on climate.
The World Green Building Council’s response highlights the impact as well as the opportunity that an integrated as well as holistic approach to action can have when it comes to closing the gap to 1.5 degrees. Globally, buildings are responsible for 37% of worldwide emissions, 34% when it comes to energy demand, and 50% in case of material consumption.
The built environment, which happens to be the largest of all the sectors when it comes to contributing to climate change, can go on to deliver transformative change to decarbonize the worldwide economy, and at the same time it also takes into account other challenging societal issues such as resilience, energy security, biodiversity, and health.
Both the industry and the government must recognize the potential in the sector that goes untapped and make sure that the buildings are appropriately referenced in their 2024 due updated NDCs. The pressing need for the government to address such emissions is pushed further by the challenges facing the world, specifically in the fields of rapid urbanization and population growth.
This indeed presents a dual issue for the sector, while also building a city the size of New York every month. The World Green Building Council has structured its response to GST in three predominant sections that go on to discover the role of buildings when it comes to adaptation, mitigation, and climate resilience.
The process of the world’s first global stocktake will end at COP28, which is scheduled to be held in Dubai, where it is expected that the process will go on to reveal the important sectoral gaps that exist, thereby compelling nations to address them as they look forward to updating their NDCs next year.
According to the CEO of the World Green Building Council, Cristina Gamboa, the worldwide stocktake should go on to serve as a call to action for governments when it comes to how their actions and policies, as well as buildings, will help them hit their goals that they inked under the Paris Agreement. She added that one must remember that 1.5 degrees Celsius is not a target but a limit.