Nearly two thousand political leaders, diplomats, construction professionals, investors and members of civil society from around fifty countries are working Thursday in Paris on the decarbonization of the building sector and the means of adapting construction to climate warming. .
While the UN predicts a doubling of built areas by 2060 across the globe, building and construction
“are a sector where global greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase”
, underlines the minister's office. of the Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu, co-organizer of the event with the UN agency responsible for the environment (Unep).
“The sector is not on track to achieve decarbonization by 2050 (...) It therefore becomes imperative to fundamentally rethink the way we construct and use our buildings in order to ensure the success of climate policies and to respect the Paris climate agreement”
, signed during COP21 in 2015, adds the French ministry.
The debates should conclude with a
“Chaillot declaration”
on Friday, negotiated for several months in the wake of major international UN climate conferences, the latest being COP28, organized at the end of 2023 in Dubai.
The building sector is today responsible for 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions, 37% of energy-related CO2 emissions and captures half of global consumption of raw materials.
Housing, but also tertiary or industrial buildings, are increasingly subject to rapidly developing climatic hazards - storms, floods, droughts, rising temperatures.
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The participants in the exchanges are architects, construction materials manufacturers, real estate developers, financiers, engineers, but also large international organizations such as the OECD or the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The governments represented at this first Forum include those of the United States and China, the two countries that emit the most greenhouse gases.
Also represented are Japan, Germany, Egypt, Brazil, Turkey, and many African countries such as Ivory Coast, Cameroon and South Africa, underlined the minister's office.