climate change

iiSBE has completed an updated version of its position paper on "Climate Change and Plan B", which outlines some of the major climate change issues that affect the built environment, and what steps may be taken to address them. Three of the files are available here.

We are now launching regional versions of this paper. So far we have colleagues in Egypt, Brazil, Philippines and Greece committed to participate. We welcome other expressions of interest to help develop versions that are suited to other regions. Please contact Nils Larsson at larsson@iisbe.org.

Staff

A new document developed by a group of about a dozen iiSBE members outlines the views of iiSBE (the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment) on the likely impacts of climate change and the range of reactions that may be expected. The document suggests that it may require some extreme climate-related events taking place in major cities of the developed world to cause governments to take resolute action. In such a case, there is a danger that the immediate needs of adaptation, repair and reconstruction may cause vital mitigation activities to be deferred.

The iiSBE position paper provides a series of 21 suggested actions that could be launched immediately, or at least would be ready for implementation when circumstance allow. The proposed actions are all aimed at rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but also include some longer-term mitigation actions. They are all generic, which means that application to any specific location would require adaptation and fine-tuning of the strategy.

This is a working paper and we welcome comments and suggestions.

Nils Larsson

CIB, UNEP-SBCI and FIDIC have decided to develop and implement a large-scale international survey on effective climate change mitigation measures in 2016. The content will benefit from the experience of the small pilot survey carried out by iiSBE in late 2015.

We have recently come across a high-quality and primer on climate change, published by the SBC Energy Institute in Gravenhage, the Netherlands. The FactBook is dated October 2015, so it is quite up to date, and it covers all major issues related to climate change within its 75 pages. Go to or download the file here.

Happy New Year from iiSBE staff.