From the rainforests of Central and South America to the savannas of northern Australia, the world's equatorial regions are home to thousands of unique bird species, from macaws to toucans to hummingbirds, who thrive in hot and humid environments.
But as climate change accelerates, tropical regions are seeing ten times the number of dangerously hot days than they did 40 years ago, threatening the survival of some of the world's most colorful birds, new research shows.
The notion that bird populations are steeply declining is not new – a 2019 study found bird populations in the US and Canada have dropped by 30% since 1970, signifying a loss of almost 3 billion birds. However, much of this loss has been attributed to more direct human impacts, such as habitat loss from farming, logging and mining, or even building collisions.
The study underscores the threat extreme heat poses to birds in tropical regions and helps explain why birds are dying even in remote and protected areas, typically considered havens of biodiversity.
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📸 : Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images
Sustainable construction is redefining its priorities as environmental sustainability in construction shifts from technology-driven solutions to place-based, resource-conscious design. Across climate-stressed regions, the focus is turning to whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment and life cycle cost as essential tools to measure and control the carbon footprint of construction. Developments in the US Mountain West are embedding low carbon design principles, addressing drought and urban growth constraints through sustainable building design that integrates water efficiency, green infrastructure and renewable building materials into district-scale masterplans.
In India, reconstruction efforts in landslide-prone regions expose the financial and environmental risks of neglecting embodied carbon in materials and sustainable building practices. Resilient schemes now apply eco-design for buildings and life cycle thinking in construction to avoid repeating failures, reinforcing that whole life carbon and embodied carbon metrics must guide future housing strategies.
Urban housing demonstrates the growing viability of net zero carbon buildings and low carbon construction materials, supported by sustainable material specification and green building products that deliver measurable performance improvements. Investors are tying building lifecycle performance to life cycle cost benefits, transforming sustainable design into a mainstream financial metric rather than a niche initiative.
Corporate campuses and mixed-use retrofits are consolidating a retrofit-first logic. The drive to decarbonise existing stock is aligning with circular economy in construction principles, end-of-life reuse in construction and circular construction strategies that minimise demolition and embodied carbon losses. Achieving net zero whole life carbon and BREEAM V7 certification is becoming the benchmark for responsible modernisation, integrating resource efficiency in construction and environmental product declarations (EPDs) into procurement systems.
Uneven policy frameworks and material supply constraints are prompting adaptive low-impact construction strategies that incorporate circular economy thinking and carbon footprint reduction across borders. Designs must allow flexibility to meet differing lifecycle assessment standards while maintaining alignment with global goals for decarbonising the built environment.
Future-ready sustainability depends on district-level efficiency, hazard-aware land planning and community-led stewardship. Success belongs to those who demonstrate environmental sustainability at the level that truly counts—the whole place—delivering net zero carbon outcomes through sustainable construction that unites performance, resilience and economic viability.
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