“The verdict is clear: the climate crisis is in overdrive (…) More coal,...

UN Climate Change 23 days ago

“The verdict is clear: the climate crisis is in overdrive (…) More coal, oil and gas will lead to a more combustible future.” – @unitednations Secretary-General @antonioguterres on the new August to October global climate forecast released today by the World Meteorological Organization. El Niño is strengthening – adding fuel to a planet already on fire. The Pacific waters driving it have never been this warm this early in an El Niño – and temperatures are still rising. Today’s latest news from WMO indicates: 🔴 Sea-surface temperatures in key monitoring regions to average nearly 3°C above normal. 🔴 Nearly every land area on Earth is expected to be hotter than normal. Taken together, that risks shattering every seasonal record – and driving even more severe effects worldwide. We are in uncharted territory. El Niño does not bring heat alone – it profoundly affects the world's rainfall. India’s monsoon is already running well below average. Forecasts point to worse ahead for a subcontinent where more than a billion people depend on the monsoon. Hotter and drier conditions are forecast from Central America and the Caribbean to parts of South America, South Asia, the Southwest Pacific, Europe and Africa. We need far more action on four fronts. 1️⃣ Protecting people before heat becomes deadlier. 2️⃣ Make work safer. 3️⃣ Protection from extreme heat must be designed into our cities, homes, schools and hospitals. 4️⃣ The world must stop fuelling the crisis. The real change that is driving these events is the accelerating climate crisis driven by fossil fuels. Every new fossil fuel project approved today makes tomorrow’s heatwaves more dangerous, and our world less secure.

layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 11 hours ago



Britain’s hotter summers are resetting briefs. Passive cooling is being treated as baseline in sustainable building design, with Passivhaus‑led approaches using external shading, cross‑ventilation, airtight envelopes with heat‑recovery and fabric that dampens diurnal peaks to keep interiors habitable during heatwaves.

Teams are assessing overheating risk alongside U‑values within lifecycle assessment and whole life carbon assessment,

linking resilience with whole life carbon, embodied carbon and life cycle cost. The strategy advances low carbon design and energy‑efficient buildings, supports net zero carbon buildings and net zero whole life carbon targets, and embeds life cycle thinking in construction under eco‑design for buildings and sustainable architecture to improve building lifecycle performance.

Circularity is moving from rhetoric to delivery. IKEA’s second‑hand marketplace is normalising reuse, and clients are demanding salvageable systems and verified remanufacture in office fit‑outs and home refurbishments. The UK deposit return scheme’s confirmed operator should raise volumes and quality of recycled polymers, widening supply for insulation, carpets and acoustic panels.

Specifications are tightening around environmental product declarations (epds), audited recycled content and traceable provenance to cut the carbon footprint of construction and the environmental impact of construction. Material choices are shifting toward low embodied carbon materials, embodied carbon in materials disclosure, low carbon construction materials, renewable building materials, green building materials and green building products that enable the circular economy, circular economy in construction, circular construction strategies, resource efficiency in construction and end-of-life reuse in construction, reinforcing green construction, eco‑friendly construction and low‑impact construction.

Project briefs now fuse comfort and circularity. Design teams are hard‑wiring passive cooling, design‑for‑disassembly and adaptability from day one, with procurement rewarding reuse and high‑recycled components as standard sustainable building practices and sustainable material specification. Manufacturers able to certify secondary materials at scale and supply robust environmental product declarations (epds) are set to gain share. Planners and investors are benchmarking environmental sustainability in construction and decarbonising the built environment through breeam and emerging breeam v7 criteria aligned with carbon footprint reduction, sustainable construction, carbon neutral construction, net zero carbon and sustainable urban development, supporting green infrastructure. The market signal is clear: climate‑ready, low carbon building is a performance requirement grounded in sustainable design and construction.

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