CANCUN, MEXICO-As delegates work to advance a new global climate change pact at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, 40 environmental and business organizations joined forces to urge governments to prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment and increase investment in this sector. Partners in a new broad-based international action network called the Global Leadership in Our Built Environment Alliance, led in partnership by the USGBC together with the World Green Building Council and its members, environmental organizations, and businesses, are working together around the world to advocate for sustainable building and infrastructure practices as a key strategy for combating climate change.

“While diplomats try to hammer out a new agreement on climate, the world is not stopping its economic development. China is projected to build the equivalent of 10 New York Cities over the next decade,” said Jane Henley, CEO of the World Green Building Council, a leading organizer of the GLOBE Alliance at the event. “We must immediately begin putting the policies and financial measures in place to decouple economic growth from its impacts on the climate and the environment, in both developing and developed nations.”

Henley continued that “We’re asking parties to make sure that building efficiency measures, sustainable urban development and transport strategies in the programs are fundamental platform being negotiated under the Framework Convention—and we’re calling on governments to commence rigorous sustainability and investment plans for these sectors when they return home from Cancun.”

The built environment is the sector with the single greatest opportunity for reducing CO2 emissions worldwide, at the lowest cost. But without action, global emissions from buildings—which account for over a third of total greenhouse gas pollution—are projected to double by 2030. Current Kyoto-era programs such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have failed to take on infrastructure and buildings, leaving little financial flow to developing countries to address the giant polluters and learn to build more efficiently.

Today the GLOBE Alliance called on the international community to invest in the built environment as a leading strategy for reducing emissions by ensuring sustainable building, transport and infrastructure activities are recognized as nationally appropriate mitigation actions and to reform the CDM to accelerate investment, among other principles.

Instant Insights /

Emissions Reduction, Key Topic at Climate Summit

Related Stories

Recommended For You