From an aerial view, golden-brown specks cover the grass like ants. Zoom in and you’ll see antelopes, hundreds of thousands of them, crossing the savannas of South Sudan.
The central African country has been ravaged by war over the last few decades, making it unsafe for scientific research, and data on the movement of wildlife there has been limited. But a report published estimates that the nation is home to the largest known migration of land mammals on Earth.
Five million white-eared kob, 300,000 tiang, 350,000 Mongalla gazelle and 160,000 Bohor reedbuck are thought to traverse the landscape each year, moving from the savannas in the south of the country towards the wetlands in the north and east.
The estimates come from a 2023 aerial survey of the land around the Boma and Badingilo national parks and Jonglei region, referred to as “the Great Nile Migration Landscape.”
The latest results have astounded scientists: while wildlife has decreased in many areas of the world due to human development and climate change, this data shows that migration has not only survived years of war but expanded.
“If the numbers are right with these species, it looks like they’ve increased since 2007. It looks like they’ve increased since the 1980s even,” says Mike Fay, lead researcher and conservation director for African Parks in South Sudan.
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📸: Marcus Westberg
Recent initiatives suggest the construction industry is accelerating its shift towards sustainable building design through workforce reform, advanced technology, and sharper policy direction. The UK’s renewed focus on training aims to build environmental literacy across the sector, producing engineers and architects skilled in whole life carbon assessment and low carbon design. The initiative responds to a growing demand for professionals capable of evaluating embodied carbon in materials and optimising life cycle cost from concept to demolition. By embedding life cycle thinking in construction, the programme positions carbon neutral construction not as a distant aspiration but a measurable standard for every project stage.
Digital innovation is advancing rapidly. Greyparrot’s recognition on TIME’s Best Inventions list underscores the vital role of artificial intelligence in enabling a circular economy in construction. Its AI-driven waste analysis tool provides data that supports lifecycle assessment and resource efficiency in construction, improving the reuse of renewable building materials and reducing the carbon footprint of construction waste. The technology aligns with broader efforts toward circular construction strategies, ensuring that construction processes contribute to genuine emissions reduction and sustainable material specification rather than incremental efficiency gains.
European policy adjustments are influencing how large firms report their environmental performance. The streamlining of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is reshaping accountability across the continent, reinforcing the necessity of assessing embodied carbon, net zero whole life carbon, and the environmental impact of construction projects. Large contractors are being pressed to connect disclosure with measurable outcomes through BREEAM and the forthcoming BREEAM V7 framework. These tools are helping the sector benchmark low carbon construction materials, life cycle cost analyses, and environmental product declarations (EPDs) against net zero carbon standards, extending their reach from procurement to end-of-life reuse in construction.
Technical innovation on the ground mirrors these policy trends. Passive fire protection technologies, once viewed solely through a safety lens, are now evaluated as part of sustainable building practices where resilient insulation and fire barriers enhance both energy efficiency and environmental sustainability in construction. These systems embody eco-design for buildings, supporting energy-efficient buildings that reduce operational and embodied emissions simultaneously. This link between safety and sustainability demonstrates that low-impact construction principles can coexist with practical performance and cost effectiveness.
Attention to people and purpose is reinforcing these changes. The confirmation of Prince William’s attendance at COP30 frames the climate agenda within a human context, aligning diplomatic advocacy with the technical challenge of decarbonising the built environment. For developers and design professionals pursuing sustainable architecture and green construction, the message is increasingly clear: the path to net zero carbon buildings hinges on integrated design, accurate whole life carbon assessment, and disciplined use of low embodied carbon materials. The sector’s current trajectory suggests that sustainable construction is evolving into a data-led, ethics-informed discipline where environmental accountability is as fundamental as structural integrity.
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