Resilient Design Finds Audience at COP27

At this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), an industry guide on resilience made its debut. Developed by the World Green Building Council, the UN High-level Climate Champions, and C40 Cities, the guide highlights steps that can be taken on a building, community, and city scale to adapt to climate change.

Even while emphasizing the importance of the built environment, the authors state that we won’t be able to design our way out of everything. The guide suggests careful management of the built environment can protect people from “continual or gradual climate impacts.” However, “most sudden and extreme weather events cannot be mitigated or lessened in severity with even the most conscientious design or planning interventions.” Building in areas of “known risk of extreme weather events” should be avoided at all costs, says the report. And, where buildings already exist in high-risk areas, evacuation and recovery programs should be instituted.

Nevertheless, design choices can make a big difference in response to hazards like high winds, droughts, floods, severe temperature change, and wildfires. The guide recommends that designers take steps to learn about climate change impacts and adopt new design practices, including:

• Assessing the risk of climate change on physical assets, infrastructure, and system stressors through future scenario modelling
• Implementing passive design and retrofit techniques, while designing to protect and efficiently use natural resources
• Selecting materials appropriate for likely future weather events, prioritizing circularity and low embodied carbon materials

The report lists many specific building-scale strategies, like graywater reuse systems, avoiding large volumes of glazing, using vegetation for windbreaks, and providing access to an off-grid energy supply.

“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 world’s people,” stated Nigel Topping, UN high-level climate action champion for UK COP26, and Mahmoud Mohieldin, Ph.D., UN’s high-level climate action champion for Egypt COP27 in a press release. “Regardless of where you live or where you do business, we all need to build resilience to climate change."

For more information:

Climate Change Resilience in the Built Environment
https://worldgbc.org