Paris is hosting a two-day event starting Thursday entitled The Buildings and Climate Global Forum.
Co-organised by France and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) - and backed by the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction - the event is billed as gathering for the first time ministers and high-level representatives of key organisations to work together on building decarbonisation and resilience following the Conference of the Parties (COP) 28.
Hosted at the Palais des Congrès de Paris, governments will be asked to endorse a common declaration outlining common principles to achieve decarbonisation and climate change resilience in the buildings sector.
Ahead of the event, UK-based development consulant, Arup, said it was aligning with the The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to call for the carbon footprint of all new and refurbished buildings to be measured, and for international co-operation on sharing data.
Roland Hunziker, director for built environment at the WBCSD, said: 'Arup’s own journey to a standardized WLC data collection across its global portfolio is a significant case for what is needed at industry level. We encourage companies to build on these learnings and challenges, and call on all actors in the industry to join our efforts in driving harmonization in whole-life carbon accounting through a globally consistent and transparent approach.'
Nigel Tonks, building decarbonisation expert at Arup, said: 'You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Paris is the first time our industry has come together with national governments from all over the world, to tackle its impact on climate. Standardising carbon measurement and reporting will make wide scale adoption of whole life carbon measurement much easier.'
'It will improve the insights we can draw from data to give property asset owners, investors, and developers the best advice they need to make the right decisions that lead to halving emissions across new and refurbished buildings. Unless the buildings sector is made a priority for decarbonisation, we will fail to keep temperature change under 1.5°C.'
