Photos by James Whitlow Delano @jameswhitlowdelano for @everydayclimatechange
As summer reaches record heat, and talk turns to the warming planet, it again becomes clear to me that only a few voices in the US can get a word in edgewise.
We need more voices, voices of those in the field witnessing and documenting the devastating consequences of our changing climate – not the same celebrity climate activists.
1. A fishing boat left behind on Lake Poopo, formerly Bolivia's second largest, that has completely dried up in large part due to climate change. Lake Poopo dried up completely in 2015. Poopo was suffering for years with increased meltwater diversion and contamination of water along its source, the Desaguadero River but prolonged decrease in rains and intense drought, due to climate change, led to this 2,400 sq km (926 sq. mi.) lake, an area five times larger than Lake Tahoe, to dry out completely, killing estimated 3 million fish and thousands of birds.
2. Riding this road in Bulakan (correct spelling), every day, during high tide is likely riding out to sea, due to rising sea levels and subsiding ground from over-exploitation of an underground aquifer. Bulakan (correct spelling(, Bulacan (correct spelling) Province, The Philippines
3. 2023: The sun filtered through the smoke of the forest fire in San José de Palco. Bío Bío, Chile. In the 13th year of a megadrought in Central Chile, over 425,000 hectares (1,050,197 acres) of forest have burned, most of it in dessicated monoculture tree plantations of highly flammable exotic species of eucalyptus and Monterey pine. At least 26 people have been killed and 2,000 injured.
4. The advancing Sahara: Small fields of wheat, irrigated by water from a solar powered pump drawn from a 15 meter deep well, are planted amid sand dunes which are encroaching upon the palmeraie oasis of M'Hamid. Morocco This palmeraie is drying out due to the the climate crisis and a dam build at the top of the valley at the base of the Atlas Mountains.
The strongest signal for sustainable construction is a shift from headline materials to delivery systems, skills and resource risk.
BIM4Water’s 2026-30 roadmap places digital twins, standardised data and asset information at the centre of water infrastructure performance, strengthening whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment and life cycle cost decisions across design, procurement and operation.
CDP’s warning that major companies face almost $400bn in water-related impacts shows why sustainable building design, low carbon design and environmental sustainability in construction must address scarcity, flooding and operational resilience from the outset.
Circular economy capacity is becoming a practical construction priority. Hertfordshire’s £24m waste transfer station, designed to manage 140,000 tonnes of material a year, reflects the infrastructure needed to support circular economy in construction, resource efficiency in construction and end-of-life reuse in construction.
The move underlines the importance of circular construction strategies, sustainable material specification and better evidence on embodied carbon in materials, including environmental product declarations (EPDs), low embodied carbon materials, green building materials and low carbon construction materials.
The skills gap remains a critical constraint on net zero carbon buildings and net zero whole life carbon. The NFB and CITB-backed heritage construction skills plan matters because retrofit, repair and conservation are central to cutting embodied carbon and reducing the carbon footprint of construction. The greenest low carbon building is often the one already standing, provided the workforce can repair it properly. Software, BREEAM, BREEAM v7, eco-design for buildings and sustainable design frameworks will not deliver carbon footprint reduction without tradespeople able to turn policy into durable, energy-efficient buildings, green infrastructure and low-impact construction. Net zero carbon, carbon neutral construction and decarbonising the built environment now depend as much on capacity, competence and building lifecycle performance as on capital.
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