The United Nations Environment Programme – Sustainable Building and Climate Initiative (UNEP-SBCI) is a partnership of major public and private sector stakeholders in the building sector, working to promote sustainable building policies and practices worldwide.

UNEP-SBCI works strives to present a common voice for the building sector stakeholders on sustainable buildings and climate change. It draws on the UNEP’s unique capacity to provide a global platform for collective action.

Goals

The UNEP-SBCI’s activities are guided by four key goals to ensure that the Initiative achieves its mission and promotes the worldwide adoption of sustainable buildings and construction practices.

1. Provide a common platform for dialogue and collective action among building sector stakeholders to address sustainability issues of global significance, especially climate change.
2. Develop tools and strategies for achieving greater acceptance and adoption of sustainable building practices throughout the world.
3. Establish baselines, which are globally recognized and are based on a life cycle approach. Focus has initially been concentrated on establishing baselines for energy efficiency and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, but is now expanding to account for additional indicators such as materials and water.
4. Demonstrate through pilot projects and inform policy developments of the important role buildings have to play in mitigation and adaptation to climate change at local, national and/or global levels.

Objectives

To meet these goals, UNEP-SBCI shall implement its work plan focused on the following corresponding objectives:

1. Outreach and partnership activities to raise awareness of the significant opportunities for engaging the building sector in tackling climate change and increasing participation in UNEP-SBCI.
   1. Contribute to UNFCCC Negotiations by providing direct advice and support to policy-makers at all levels on mitigating building-related GHG emissions.
   2. Support policy development relating to sustainable buildings through funding research that provides policy scenarios for achieving very high-efficiency and low-GHG emission buildings, with a focus on developing countries.
2. Frame A Common Language for performance assessment of energy efficient & low carbon buildings, as a basis for consistent global reporting of building related GHG emissions.
3. Facilitate the piloting of tools at city, portfolio and individual building levels to build baselines of performance by building type and climate region.