Transforming tomorrow, today – by Georgina Smit

Georgina Smit is Head of Technical at the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA). She oversees certification and research-related products that drive the property sector to design, build and operate buildings in a more sustainable way.

She manages the Technical team at the GBCSA who are responsible for independently certifying green and net zero buildings and identifying market leaders.

COP 27, branded the “Implementation COP” with an emphasis on action, has come and gone with several debates, opinions and expectations. What did it actually achieve?

On the positive side, a loss and damage fund was agreed to by developed countries. This means that there is an agreement between developed countries to establish a dedicated fund for developing countries that experience the unavoidable effects of climate change. Acknowledging that the loss and damage of vulnerable communities in developing countries are disproportionate has taken some time and is counted as a significant step on the global stage of collaboration.

Unfortunately little to no real commitment was made with regard to phasing out fossil fuels, increasing adaptation funding and limiting emissions to a 1.5 degrees Celsius trajectory – all of which are key items for us to act on if we are serious about climate change. As it stands, we are far from limiting temperature rise: “we are far from the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C. Policies currently in place point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century.” (UNEP, 2022)

Watching COP outcomes from the sidelines, I was left asking myself, what can we transform today, so that tomorrow is built better? It made me think of a recent trip I went on where GBCSA was invited as part of a delegation from Cape Town and the Western Cape to Barcelona, by Bauhaus Earth and the Institute of Advanced Architecture for Catalonia (IAAC). The purpose of the trip was to understand what Barcelona is doing to achieve its 2050 net zero commitments by addressing transport, operational emissions, and embodied carbon in the building sector, and to explore the possibility of future collaboration.

We were invited to an amazing exhibition at the iconic Mies van der Rohe Pavillion in Barcelona, titled Mass is More, which drove a point home in relation to implementing change right now, to alter our future trajectory.  The installation shows how the use of wood, particularly Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) can significantly reduce the high CO2 upfront embodied emissions that are associated with building materials. The conceptual thinking behind the architectural installation was also about a look-out viewpoint to our future, built on the foundation of our past; acknowledging that solutions and our concept of what is beautiful and functional change, and evolves over time.

The exhibition reminded me that those in the built environment have many options for agency. There are so many ways we can affect change right now. This is not to say that several options are not without their challenges and uphill battles – but just that the impetus to act, and to act now, can be expressed via several outlets. And this, I found hopeful.

Most of us are already busy with the foundational basics of greening buildings. We all appreciate that transforming tomorrow is going to need more than that, however.  Key ways to transformation over and beyond what we are already doing, and with an emphasis on action, must continue its focus on increasing capital allocation in the direction of green projects, and neutralising impacts of development projects via net zero targets. Bold goals but ones that every individual green building project can contribute towards, today.

Transforming tomorrow, today. How are you currently implementing change?