Transforming the Built Environment through Sustainable Materials

Published on February 16, 2022

The aims to support Ghana and Senegal in West Africa and Bangladesh and India in South Asia in promoting circularity in buildings through the creation of an enabling framework for the responsible acquisition of building materials while developing a sustainable materials market for the buildings and construction sector. The project will also seek to underline the importance of sustainable materials in high level international processes such as the UNFCCC COPs and the G7.

Supported activities will enable countries in further raising the climate ambition of their NDC targets in the buildings and construction sector by 2025, specifically integrating actions and targets to reduce embodied carbon. By taking a sub-regional approach and engaging with regional intergovernmental organizations that lead regional economic integration programmes, the replication and adoption of best practices from the pilot countries will be accelerated and facilitated in each sub region.

The project has a specific focus on promotion of local, low carbon, sustainably sourced materials for buildings and construction. Dedicated roadmaps will be developed including measures on guided preferential procurement, integrated urban planning, supportive policy frameworks coupled with appropriate financing opportunities and reporting systems, and creating a robust supply chain, will facilitate circularity and sustainable materials uptake in the sector in the four target countries. Pilot projects will be undertaken for applying low carbon resource efficient building materials and circularity practices in the buildings and construction sector including support public sector buildings construction projects (public buildings – e.g. schools, hospitals - or social housing) at municipal/city level to integrate responsibly sourced materials and circularity, support for eco-innovation and circularity approaches in the production of building and construction materials and products, and support to pilot monitoring and data collection systems. The project will also seek to establish materials and circularity knowledge platforms for buildings and construction value chain stakeholders, support collaborative research as well as the updating of curricula for academic and vocational training, facilitate regional peer-exchange, engage in high level international processes and global dissemination of experience, tools, results and good practices for scale-up and replication.