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SDG12 Resource Efficient Housing - Inception Report

  • Published on February 7, 2022

 

The objective of the Inception Report is to narrate the first stages of the SDG12 Resource efficient housing programme. Preliminary research, stock taking, and country selection processes developed by the participatory UN organizations (PUNOs.) The following sections summarize the activities including stock taking of regional buildings and construction trends, especially for the selected countries, methodology of country selection and the profile of final countries.

Additionally, the report describes the discovery phase of the advocacy package, including the identification of generic information and tools that draft the guidance documents for advocacy and mainstreaming of sustainable housing and construction. The report includes the next steps that will occur in the following phases of the project, including task assignment, project roadmap, swot assessment, risk identification and mitigation strategies.

This Inception Report is a programme output for the attention of the Steering Committee of the OPN MPTF and will be made available to the selected pilot countries, OPN SBC Programme and the IRP-One Planet Network. 

 

The buildings and construction sector accounted for 36% of final energy use and 39% of energy and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2018, 11% of which resulted from manufacturing and procurement of building materials and products such as steel, cement and glass (GlobalABC, 2019)—making the building sector the single most significant industry in terms of emissions. In addition, the building sector consumes 12% of freshwater and 30% of raw material and it generates approximately 20% of water effluents and as much as 40% of landfill waste globally (WEF , 2016). With the building stock set to double by 2050, emissions, energy and resource consumption of the sector is set to increase.

  • -  Lack of sustainable and adequate housing is reflected by the unprecedented multiplication of substandard construction and housing solutions and the number of carbon-intensive buildings and construction

  • -  Need of green policies, regulations to develop frameworks for sustainable housing throughout the different countries, especially including affordability. 70% of the countries that submitted the NDCs mention buildings, most do not include concrete policy actions or targets for their buildings and construction sector (GlobalABC, 2019)

  • -  Involve governments and other entities: 1) regulators of financial markets 2) investors in the construction sector, 3) urban and territorial planners have significant influence along the construction value chain..

  • -  Looking forward to implementing the SDGs and Paris Agreement. The building and construction sector plays a key role in implementing the SDGs and Paris Agreement, and the decisions made today in the rapidly urbanizing developing countries will have long-lasting impacts on the state of the planet and life on earth.

  • -  Material efficiency. UNEP’s International Resource Panel demonstrated that material efficiency strategies in the buildings and construction sector would significantly reduce GHG emissions (IRP, 2019)

  • -  Green procurement: there is a huge opportunity for introducing more sustainable production, procurement and consumption approaches in the buildings and construction sector that mitigate environmental pressures and change building practices to provide adequate, attractive and affordable housing. In this context, there is an urgent need to take stock of the successful sustainability approaches and experiences in the sector to inspire and influence governments to overcome policy shortcomings and reveal the full potential of this sector for sustainable development.

  • -  Green case studies. there is an urgent need to take stock of the successful sustainability approaches and experiences in the sector to inspire and influence governments to overcome policy shortcomings and reveal the full potential of this sector for sustainable development. ‘50% of the building stock that will exist in 2050 is yet to be built out of which in average housing can make up from 45-70%’ (UN-Habitat, 2015)

  • -  Analysis of the construction value chain. What type of construction is built and used and where, how much is being built, how is it being built? (IRP-OPN, 2020)

  • -  Focus on developing countries and affordable housing stock. African and Asian countries and the changes of society’s consumption patterns resulting from economic growth, it is critical to support countries to transform their buildings and construction sector as it has the potential to drive them towards sustainable development by introducing and promoting green and resource-efficient practices in the buildings and construction industry. 

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