How to best advance learning on carbon footprint policies? Quick inputs by existing initiatives
• Mona Abdulghani Naji Mohammed, UNEP
• Melanie Jans-Singh, GlobalABC Whole Life
Um year and a half I think Harry introduced the the first event we did last year um and then how we’re we’re trying to to kind of continue this with a focus on the built environment with um with a coalition that we’re calling the whole life cycle policy Coalition for
The built environment and so it’s called wcp code and what we’re trying to do is replicate the Nordic construction Forum on an international level so it’s quite a bold ambition and we do invite you to to join us in this oh can you not hear usly
Sorry um and so we’re gonna have a short presentation showing you what the Coalition does and the global ABC so onto Mona talk about the global ABC um so the whole life cycle policy Coalition is hosted by the is a working group group under the global ABC the
Global ABC is the Global Alliance of buildings and construction which is hosted by unap um as you can see here we have quite a lot of members in the global ABC we bring together actors from all over the value chain um so we have 39 countries 11 public agencies 93
Private sector um Enterprises and networks and then many other um Partners as well that you can see on the screen um the global ABC was founded at cop 21 um and is hosted by unip again um and the ambition for the global ABC is to lead a zero emission efficient and
Resilient buildings and construction sector um and with that we have four different aims but we really focus on advocacy work we work for the well we’re hosted by the UN and the idea is that we bring together the different actors and advocate for um you know the uh the
Mission that we have the vision that we have the zero emission efficient and resilient buildings and construction sector and then we are also um you know we do a lot of tracking uh progress in this field so we have an annual publication called the buildings Global status report which reports on where we
Are with regards to um meeting the uh Paris commitment um in the building sector from there we also work jointly with um particular governments uh depending on the different projects that we have um and we support them in setting priorities and measures based on the different conditions that they are
In and then finally we also work with the private sector to identify priorities and strategies towards building a decarbonized and uh resilient um sector um so with that the whole life cycle policy is one of the subw workking group groups of the material working group under the global ABC that we’ve
Been co-leading with the life cycle initiative as well as does in UK so I’ll hand over to you Mel to take us through thanks um so our our aim is to amplify existing initiatives but also to connect initiatives that are already working in this space because we always
Feel that we know everything and every time we we start working on a project we discover there’s another initiative doing something similar so the aim is to try and have some place where this could all be brought together and so as Mona said on the on the left um we’ve got the
Secretariat hosted by the global ABC and life cycle initiative and this is how we set up for the moment um so we’ve got a core group which meets every month and we discuss and just track where we’re all at so you can see there’s quite a lot of groups
Who might be familiar with some of them some of them you heard from this week yet um such as the iddi the carbon leadership Forum are doing a lot on this base we’re co-leading this with the wbcsd the world Business Council for sustainable development um we also got
Involvement from Edge which is um a different version of the ggnb which is more used in emerging markets for example and then we have um every quarter or every two months we meet the with a wider group people who can’t come every month but just want to keep posted
So it’s a place to present to a very wide International audience what’s your doing on the topic if you feel like you wanted to feedback um on on what you’re working on we’ve organized ourselves across four aims um which will ring quite true compared with everything we’ve said this
Week um so the four aims that we’re focusing on are improving data collection and the digital infrastructure to collect emissions data um because if we’re trying to expand whole life cycle policy across the world it’s not just about collecting data but it’s about developing the infrastructure
To collect data um as we don’t all have the same pipelines the same computer power the same access to data and even knowledge about how to use a spreadsheet like I was doing a life cycle assessment and people had you know the meters cubed were actually meters squared you know
There just there’s a lot of of data requirements along the whole pipeline that that need to be upscaled secondly we there’s a lack of uh agreement on complex life cycle assessment methodologies um so that’s the second aim we’ve been discussing them a week thirdly it’s upskilling policy makers so
Consider embodied Admissions and create a central place to find this information so this is going to be either about what policies you could do but as more and more policies are implementing learn about the challenges in the implementation of those so for example we heard how Netherlands and Denmark are
Implementing and they’re going to see how does it work will companies comply and then if there’s a space we can learn about this then countries we haven’t develop the the legislation yet can learn and skip that learning process so there’s place for leap frog um when you’re a bit further behind and
Fourthly diversify the voices working on whole life cycle policies and standards in the built environment in the moment the standards are built by the West for the world um and we’re again here are a group of people who want to be speaking to the world but we’re really just
Speaking to people who are already very aware and so the aim of this is to try and bring people to this room or similar rooms to upskill but also just learn and see how we’re learning differently one a really good example for me is often I was talking with a concrete expert from
Germany who couldn’t understand how someone on a construction site might not know the exact mix of the concrete and not be able to track that um when in those of countries there’s no you see boarding workers don’t even have um uh health and safety gear let alone will
They give the they will be able to track the as built emissions across 19 indicators so we really and we don’t often know what we don’t know so I don’t even want to assume but I think we just need to try and aim for that so through this whole life cycle policy Coalition
We’re trying to put create a place from which into which we can pour funding to enable these four aims and also group existing initiatives so we’ve got these four aims we’ve got all these organizations what we’ve done is mapped activities so it’s actually a massive spreadsheet but it
Doesn’t look very nice on a slide so instead you have a lot of pretty logos um so um these are the the initiatives that we’re aware of are part of Global ABC are part of these are different groups themselves um and we’ve mapped what people are doing so you can find
Out so for example on improving data collection the carbon leadership forum is doing a lot of work on benchmarking in the US then there’s an international initiative called Globe which is trying to build an international database of whole life cycle assessments um there’s building transparency which is trying to
Expand its model to other countries there’s the IDI which is trying to develop a baseline for collecting data in 27 different countries and like and there’s the life cycle initiative who is developing a database of all the databases of embodied carbon data so that’s just a few examples of all these
Initiatives and we’re trying to bring those together um and I can go through each of these I can tell you about what all these initiatives are doing but the aim is that everybody would be able to find that out very easily through this one place the number of countries we can
Currently reach through this network is over 50 countries of practitioners um influences through here so it’s just it’s a place a portal to reach others but we aim to do is amplify not always do new things but we’re not just a talking shop we’re also produce outputs so but we’re
Very slow at doing it um but so last year we had our first Workshop so on the top here you can see the events and then you’ll see the outputs and what we aim to be the outcomes of what we produce um because in the end to do something you
Need to have people you need to put resource you need to put time so we’re focusing on specific things the first is publish a global review which Harry discussed today today we’re going to gather a review from all the members of the whole life cycle policy Coalition uh
And and you attending here today and publish that the second thing we’re going to do is over the next few months produce 10 recommendations for the building’s breakthrough so France is gathering a 100 construction ministers in March to discuss how to decarbonize buildings and uh announce uh the building breakthrough and the action
Plan we’re aiming to um produce 10 recommendations on whole life carbon so as a as a whole life cycle policy Coalition we’ve developed a task force to produce these recommendations and we’ll be also sending this out for review the same way as we’re sending it out for review for the whole life cycle
For the the bigger report and you can see the ambition so the aim is we’re not going to create an event just gonna like here uh Nino has has organized this event and so it’s about tagging amplifying things you know every time you want to create an International
Event you’re trying to reach the same organization so it’s a place where you can reach all these organizations without having to yourself know every single email address um so yeah that’s it really um thanks for your attention and yeah we’ll probably discuss a lot more