Balance for Better:

celebrating the women leading our green building movement


 


Dear GBCs and Partners

Welcome to the March edition of WorldGBC's monthly Global Update newsletter. On Friday 8 March, we celebrated International Women's Day, a global day highlighting the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Under this year's theme of #BalanceforBetter, the day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. To mark the occasion, WorldGBC showcased seven of the many talented women leading our global green building movement and told their stories in this blog - read it here.

We are delighted to see our story was picked up by the Environment Journal in the UK and also featured in the Thomson Reuters Foundation coverage for International Women's Day. This demonstrates both recognition and admiration for the achievements of these women individually and for our movement in channeling gender parity, and serves as a reminder of the importance and necessity of gender equality in helping us towards meeting our shared goals.

With regards to green building leaders, our search for new Board members and Regional Chair and Vice Chair positions continues until the end of the month. We strongly encourage Established GBCs to put forward a number of influential individuals. To find out more about nominating candidates for our Board, click here.

For the Regional Chair and Vice Chair positions, we're looking for leaders from Established GBCs to help strengthen our five Regional Networks: Africa, Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and MENA. Please contact your respective regional head for more information. 

Thank you for your ongoing support and active involvement.

Yours sincerely

Cristina Gamboa, CEO, World Green Building Council

Regional spotlight: Europe Network

In February, WorldGBC's Europe Regional Network welcomed Ramboll as its first engineering partner to collaborate on driving sustainable design and innovation across Europe’s building sector. Meanwhile, the European Commission published a new report on the Level(s) framework: Taking action on the total impacts of the construction sector, which assesses the full lifecycle of buildings to understand their huge potential for emissions reductions, efficient and circular resource flows. Finally, the next ERN meeting will take place in Oslo, Norway on 21 May alongside the Urban Future Global Conference (22-24 May) of which WorldGBC is proud to be an official International Networking Partner. WorldGBC speakers include CEO Cristina Gamboa and ERN Director James Drinkwater. See the full programme here. All GBC members can benefit from a special ticket rate of €375 by quoting the code UFGCspecial-WGBC. For more information, contact James Drinkwater - [email protected]

GBCs are making the Americas green again

How can we upscale ambition to advance delivery of net zero carbon buildings? Presenting a valid, unshakeably strong business case is unquestionably integral. Last month, CaGBC released a much-awaited report for our industry: Making the Case for Building to Net Zero Carbon. The report demonstrates definitively that zero carbon buildings offer meaningful greenhouse gas reductions and positive financial returns. You can download the report here.
Meanwhile, California became the first US state to join the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, as an extension of the commitments made at the Global Climate Action Summit. Already a leader in building energy efficiency, the state is also committed to slashing greenhouse gas emissions. Over in Costa Rica, Belen became the first city in Central America to join to the Building Efficiency Accelerator with the collaboration and leadership of GBC Costa Rica. For more information, contact Juanita Alvarez - [email protected]

MENA Green Building Congress - Thank you!

In February, we held the inaugural MENA Green Building Congress in Amman, Jordan, sponsored by MENA Regional Network Partner Majid Al Futtaim. All nine GBCs from the MENA Regional Network convened with fellow leaders from government, business, city and civil society from over 20 countries for a successful three days of events to exchange ideas on best practice for green buildings. Topics discussed included sustainable reconstruction and rehabilitation in post-war and disaster zones; how to advance net zero buildings; approaches to tackle embodied carbon and a thematic workshop on WorldGBC's Better Places for People project. An unforgettable trip to the magnificent Petra concluded the event. A summary of outcomes and recommendations from the forum will be released shortly. Meanwhile, you can see photos from the event on Flickr. For more information, contact Mohammad Asfour - [email protected]

Representing GBCs through global alliances

A number of GBCs have been enquiring about the value of becoming individual members of the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GABC). As an initiating partner of the GABC and member of its Steering Committee, WorldGBC sits in representation of the interests of all member GBCs. At the most recent GABC meeting in February in Ottawa, WorldGBC was able to gain further clarity on the work led by the International Energy Agency and GABC on the global and regional decarbonisation roadmaps and ascertain how our movement will be able to contribute to the development of these. We also took the opportunity to discuss opportunities to scale our Building Efficiency Accelerator related work in the Asia Pacific with the World Resources Institute, and initiate a conversation with the Programme for Energy Efficiency in Buildings about supporting energy efficiency work in the MENA region. For more information, contact Sarah Millar - [email protected]
 

Healthier Homes, Healthier Planet - in Spanish

Spanish speakers will be delighted to learn our Healthier Homes, Healthier Planet guide is now available in Spanish - you can download it here. Thank you to Guatemala GBC for the translations! Released in December 2018 at COP24, the guide outlines actions to make homes healthier for people and planet, and was produced as part of WorldGBC's Better Places for People project. We strongly welcome GBCs to translate WorldGBC materials into their local language. Similarly, Turkish GBC recently translated our research on green, healthy schools into Turkish - you can download it here. For more information about Better Places for People and to enquire about translating materials for the project, contact Catriona Brady - [email protected]

World Green Building Week 2019 - stay tuned

Throughout February we held a series of consultations with our Green Building Councils on the theme for this year's World Green Building Week (23-29 September). This year's theme will be centred around carbon emissions from building and construction with a focus on embodied carbon emissions from the before-use and after-use stages of a building's lifecycle, alongside operational emissions from the in-use stage of a building's life. WorldGBC will soon start work with a creative agency to shape the campaign. We will hold a series of consultations with GBCs and Partners in May to shape the final messaging of the campaign before launching the campaign resources on 5 June, World Environment Day. For more information, contact Georgie Eldridge - [email protected]

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