Three interventions on climate and inequality in construction
Next month governments will gather to review progress and make new commitments to address the climate crisis, at the COP26 global conference in Glasgow, Scotland. While much of the emphasis will be on transforming the energy sector and speeding up the transition away from fossil fuels, buildings will also be in the spotlight. November 11th will be an official “Cities, Regions and Built Environment” day. Rightly so: buildings and construction together account for almost 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions, and 50% of extracted materials.
Mitigating and adapting to climate change will involve transforming the way we build. As with all aspects of climate change, technological solutions will play a role. But they are only one part of the picture, and have to be applied alongside deep policy and economic interventions that mitigate risks both to the climate and to people.
Three interventions that would help dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of buildings are: curbing over-speculation in real estate, adapting and making the most of existing buildings, and innovation in building materials.
At the same time as addressing the climate crisis these interventions, done right, can have social benefits as well. They can help reduce the housing crisis and realize the right to adequate housing. They can reduce human rights abuses through materials supply chains – from killings by “sand-mafia” to instances of forced labor in the multi-tiered supply chains of materials such as iron, steel, and bricks. And they can spur the creation of new jobs while strengthening the resilience of supply chains.
Curbing speculation in property
The debt crisis of Chinese property developer Evergrande has highlighted the way that highly-leveraged property investment not only creates economic fragility and deepens inequality, but also leads to an over-building mentality that consumes finite resources. As the Financial Times reported, there is enough empty property in China to house over 90 million people. The crisis has led to the recognition “that the old build, build, build playbook does not work anymore and that it is actually getting dangerous.”
From Phnom Penh to Los Angeles, to multiple new cities in Africa, forms of real estate development that view property as a place to park money fuel over-construction. Housing and anti-corruption advocates have long elevated the harm caused by speculative investments in property; its climate impacts need attention too.
Adapting and retrofitting existing buildings
The COVID-19 pandemic accentuated the fundamental role of housing - and the buildings and places that we have access to - as a determinant of heath. Meanwhile some countries’ economic stimulus packages have recognized the opportunity to invest in retrofitting buildings to improve their energy efficiency (you can track examples of these investments here). And “adaptive reuse” is coming into its own – recognizing, for example, the opportunities to convert empty hotels or offices into housing.
None of this is easy. In New York City, for example, on the one hand the Democratic nominee for Mayor has plans to convert the empty hotels that mushroomed throughout the city in recent decades into housing, but in the office space market, a dual-track is emerging in which high-end offices are still in demand from tech firms and others, while the lagging demand for older buildings means they may well just face demolition and re-build rather than adaptation. But momentum is there and opportunities abound. In the UK, so far over 200 architecture practices and individuals support the Architects Journal’s “RetroFirst” campaign to prioritize retrofit over demolition and rebuild.
Transforming materials
The World’s population is growing, and moving. New construction – a lot of it – is inevitable. The International Energy Agency and others have projected a mind-boggling doubling of floor space globally by 2050. While construction practices have improved in terms of the energy efficiency of buildings once they are in use, there is a long way to go to reduce the “embodied” carbon that is contained within the materials to build them, including their transportation to the construction site. Cement alone – a key material in concrete – accounts for about 8% of the World’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Strategies can include government action through procurement leadership and regulations to move markets, industry innovation, and initiatives to track the materials “passports” of buildings, or stimulate local economies around locally-sourced and circular construction practices.
Imagination to create a path forward
All the interventions above will involve people with multiple skillsets and mindsets, from campaigners to policy-makers, from innovators to investors. And they will involve a good amount of imagination, to break away from business-as-usual and navigate a more sustainable path forward.
Science-fiction writers have already painted us clear pictures of not-too-distant climate-constrained and divided futures, or even parallel presents, that are shaped by extractive real estate and its counter-forces (check out The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi, The City We Became by LK Jemisin, and Blackfish City by Sam J Miller). The challenge will be injecting enough vision and commitment to shift what have become entrenched market models.
In the latest episode of his Power, People & Planet podcast, campaigner Kumi Naidoo speaks with Dr. Tolullah Oni, a public health physician, urban epidemiologist, and Founder of UrbanBetter. Speaking specifically of the trajectory of African cities but with implications for elsewhere, she says:
“What keeps me up… is missed opportunity…both in terms of the young population as an African region, and in terms of the opportunities to do things differently. So we don’t have cities that have been this way for 400 years, we are changing, and we are growing. It doesn’t make sense to make sense to say ‘we are going to be Dubai’, or ‘we are going to be New York’, and then start walking backwards and [undo] all the things that don’t work for health or for the environment. That missed opportunity to imagine a different way.”
As governments update their “nationally-determined contributions” (NDCs) towards the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change let’s hope that they are hard at work imagining a different way.
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More reading:
“Analysis: COP26 looms over real assets”, IPE Real Assets
“Built for the environment”, RIBA and Architects Declare
“The case for…never demolishing another building”, Guardian