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WORLD GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL ABOUT THE WORLD GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL The World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) catalyses the uptake of sustainable built environments for everyone, everywhere. Transforming the building and construction sector across three strategic areas — climate action, health & wellbeing, and resources & circularity — we are a global action network of over 70 Green Building Councils around the world. As members of the UN Global Compact, we work with businesses, organisations and governments to drive the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Through a systems change approach, our network is leading the industry towards net zero carbon, healthy, equitable and resilient built environments. GREEN BUILDING COUNCILS Green Building Councils (GBCs) are independent, non- profit organisations accelerating the uptake of sustainable buildings. As members of WorldGBC, they convene businesses and governments to collectively drive environmental, economic and social impact within the built environment on a national, regional and global scale. BETTER PLACES FOR PEOPLE The Better Places for People (BPFP) is a global programme of the WorldGBC dedicated to supporting GBCs, partners, and the global network to transition towards a healthy and sustainable built environment, creating substantial improvements to human health, wellbeing and quality of life for everyone, everywhere. The work of Better Places For People is aligned to WorldGBC’s North Star Goal , “a built environment that delivers healthy, equitable and resilient buildings, communities and cities”, while underpinning the six core principles of the Health & Wellbeing Framework , catalysing social and environmental impact across the entire built environment value chain. Cristina Gamboa CEO World Green Building Council The Race to Resilience campaign, delivered by the UN High-Level Climate Champions, calls on all of us to act in solidarity with the +4 billion people suffering from the impacts of our changing climate. To support this ongoing call to action, WorldGBC is proud to share this practical guide, inspiring the much-needed transition towards people-centric resilience and adaptation at different urban scales. It’s time to enable the capacity of the built environment to deliver social value and ensure the resilient solutions we need are implemented in our disrupted world. It's time to get resourceful and listen, learn, and respond to the needs of our communities. And it's time for impactful policy responses from local and regional leaders, to enable this much needed transformation. We invite all stakeholders with a responsibility of infrastructure assets to take ambitious climate action in alignment with the Race to Resilience. It’s time to embrace and scale low carbon, highly resilient and equitable built environments for everyone, everywhere. THE WORK OF WORLDGBC’S 'BETTER PLACES FOR PEOPLE' GLOBAL PROGRAMME IS KINDLY SUPPORTED BY:
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FOREWORD CLIMATE CHANGE RESILIENCE IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT Nigel Topping UN High-Level Climate Action Champion for UK COP26 Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin UN High-Level Climate Action Champion for Egypt COP27 In the past 20 years, natural disasters have affected 4.4 billion people, claimed 1.3 million lives, and caused $2 trillion USD in economic losses ( World Bank , UN ). By 2050, over 970 cities could be subjected to extreme heat, with over 570 cities impacted by sea level rise, to name just two impacts of our changing climate ( C40 ). Far too few cities are prepared for these changes. The extreme heat, floods, droughts and wildfires seen in urban hubs around the world in recent years has shown how unbearable, and unliveable, our cities could become – unless we act to build resilience while mitigating further changes. Our built environment is continually growing to meet the demands of changing, urban-centric populations. Two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2060, yet half of the urban fabric to accommodate them has not yet been built. It is critical that design and investment decisions taken today consider the scale, scope and severity of climate change impacts that will affect these built assets. Coupled with ageing infrastructure and under-investment, these challenges are already having devastating consequences for communities around the globe. Regardless of where you live or where you do business, we all need to build resilience to climate change. The built environment sector has the opportunity to lead the resilience agenda, placing adaptation on par with mitigation through how we design, manage and occupy buildings and infrastructure for the worlds’ people. As part of the UN High Level Climate Champions’ Race To Resilience, initiatives are catalysing action by non-state actors to build the resilience of 4 billion people vulnerable to climate risks. Initiatives that train people with the skills to build homes resilient to extreme weather, design policies with governments at all levels to make the infrastructure systems we all rely on resilient to climate shocks and share best practices, so knowledge is available to all. In this guide, World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) collates effective and practical steps that can be taken on a building, community, and city scale in order to adapt and build resilience. We encourage the broad range of built environment stakeholders set out in this guide to engage with their role, to exert their influence and to implement change. Under the inevitable impacts of climate change, resilience action is essential to build community capacity to survive and thrive in our built environments. 2
