• Energy Research
• 11. Sustainability close
• 1. No poverty close
• SA close
• English close

With the rising environmental problems there are international movements towards sustainability and greening the built environments in order to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of buildings and human activities on environment and human health. This paper presents a range of K-12 Green Schools that were intentionally designed to utilize school building as a 3D-text book for Environmental Education (EE). The aim of this paper is to examine the methods and strategies of designing green school as a teaching tool through case study analysis of the selected schools. The cases provide a diversity of geographic locations, climates, green strategies and coasts. The research depends on the descriptive analytical approach for literature review; multiple-case study analysis to investigate the attributes of green schools that teach. The results revealed a set of approaches for utilizing green schools as a 3D-textbook for EE EQA - International Journal of Environmental Quality, Vol 39 (2020)

Suggested citation: Pörtner, H.O., Scholes, R.J., Agard, J., Archer, E., Arneth, A., Bai, X., Barnes, D., Burrows, M., Chan, L., Cheung, W.L., Diamond, S., Donatti, C., Duarte, C., Eisenhauer, N., Foden, W., Gasalla, M. A., Handa, C., Hickler, T., Hoegh-Guldberg, O., Ichii, K., Jacob, U., Insarov, G., Kiessling, W., Leadley, P., Leemans, R., Levin, L., Lim, M., Maharaj, S., Managi, S., Marquet, P. A., McElwee, P., Midgley, G., Oberdorff, T., Obura, D., Osman, E., Pandit, R., Pascual, U., Pires, A. P. F., Popp, A., Reyes-García, V., Sankaran, M., Settele, J., Shin, Y. J., Sintayehu, D. W., Smith, P., Steiner, N., Strassburg, B., Sukumar, R., Trisos, C., Val, A.L., Wu, J., Aldrian, E., Parmesan, C., Pichs-Madruga, R., Roberts, D.C., Rogers, A.D., Díaz, S., Fischer, M., Hashimoto, S., Lavorel, S., Wu, N., Ngo, H.T. 2021. IPBES-IPCC co-sponsored workshop report on biodiversity and climate change; IPBES and IPCC, DOI:10.5281/zenodo.4782538 This report presents the main conclusions of the first-ever IPCC-IPBES co-sponsored workshop which took place in December 2020. The workshop explored diverse facets of the interaction between climate and biodiversity, from current trends to the role and implementation of nature-based solutions and the sustainable development of human society. This report is underpinned by the Scientific Outcome, which includes seven sections, the complete references and the report glossary. You can find the Scientific Outcome here https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4659158

Saudi Arabia is finally catching up with the rest of the developed world in terms of environmental awareness. In the past, while much of the rest of the world spent its time pondering issues such as global warming, water, air, and soil pollution, over-exploitation of resources, and a myriad of other environmental concerns, the Saudi people and government seemed to be primarily focused on expanding their capital in a globalized economy. However, in 2015, for the first time, this trend began to show legitimate change. This new emphasis on environmental concerns has caused some interest and uproar, specifically in the economic sector. The research, therefore, concentrated on the barriers, strategies, and opportunities that might impede or encourage Saudi Arabia in its quest to develop a greener and more sustainable economic infrastructure. After carefully considering the available literature, data, and reliable statistics, the report concluded that, while change will be difficult and, possibly slow, Saudi Arabia should expect to see greener projects and initiatives transpiring in their homeland over the course of the next several years.

Micro and small enterprises (MSEs) are the engine of economic growth in Nigeria. But they also contribute heavily to the climate change through their choice of energy. Mostly prefer source is the fossil fuel for electricity generation despite the growing awareness of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by embracing renewable energy technologies across the globe. Meanwhile, MSEs accounts for a large proportion of businesses in Lagos State, Nigeria and the situation is not different. Hence, this study investigated the factors influencing willingness to adopt renewable energy technologies among the MSEs. The study surveyed 300 MSEs between January and March, 2017 in Lagos State, Nigeria. Using logit regression, the results showed that creating awareness and knowledge about renewable energy, adequate government policies, trust, peer-effect, development of renewable energy markets and technology acceptance factors (if it makes life easier, simple to use and improve the quality of work) are all positive and statistically significant in influencing the willingness to adopt renewable energy technologies among the MSEs. Cooperation between private enterprises and relevant government agencies supported by ‘political will’ is required to promote the aforementioned factors influencing the willingness to adopt RETs in Nigeria. International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, Vol 19 (2019)

One of the most discussed topics of Environmental economics is the choice of the appropriate functional form to examine the income-environmental impact relationship. Since the developing economies encounter different development stages, the use of relevant specification and technique gains special importance to reveal the country specific relationship. Considering the afore-mentioned points, this study employs the time-varying cointegration approach to investigate the CO2 emissions-economic growth relationship in the case of developing country, Azerbaijan. Time-varying cointegration approach a) takes into account the varying nature of elasticity of emissions and b) does not require the functional specification to be a polynomial. The results document a long-run relationship between carbon emissions and income. The study also concludes that the EKC hypothesis does not hold in Azerbaijan. The positive and time-varying income elasticity of carbon emissions, slightly decreasing at the end of the time period, can be seen as an indication that the country has implemented a number of successful emission/pollution regulatory measures.

{"references": ["Ljungberg, Lennart Y. \"Materials selection and design for development of sustainable products.\" Materials & Design 28, no. 2, 2007, pp 466-479.", "Bakhoum, Emad S., and David C. Brown. \"Developed sustainable scoring system for structural materials evaluation.\" Journal of construction engineering and management 138, no. 1, 2011, pp 110-119.", "IPCC. \"IPCC WG1 Fourth Assessment Report.\" Cambridge University Press: New York, 2007, Retrieved from http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf.", "Hoffman, Andrew J., and Rebecca Henn. \"Overcoming the social and psychological barriers to green building.\" Organization & Environment 21, no. 4, 2008, pp. 390-419.", "Rogers, John Peter. \"The strategic adoption of building information modelling by Malaysian engineering consulting services firms.\" 2013.", "AGC. \"The Contractors' Guide to BIM.Ed. 1.\" The Associated General Contractors of America, 2006, retrieved from http://www.agc.org/and workflows, Wiley, Indianapolis, IN.", "Azhar, Salman, Malik Khalfan, and Tayyab Maqsood. \"Building information modelling (BIM): now and beyond.\" Construction Economics and Building 12, no. 4, 2015, pp.15-28.", "Edwards, Brian. Rough guide to sustainability. London: RIBA Enterprises Ltd., 2010.", "Vincent, Peter. Saudi Arabia: an environmental overview. CRC Press, 2008.\n[10]\tGasson, Christopher. \"Tariff policy: a global perspective.\" In Saudi water and power forum, Jeddah. 2008.\n[11]\tTaleb, Hanan M. \"Towards Sustainable Residential Buildings in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.\" PhD diss., University of Sheffield, School of Architecture, 2012.\n[12]\tAlnatheer, Othman. \"Environmental benefits of energy efficiency and renewable energy in Saudi Arabia's electric sector.\" Energy Policy 34, no. 1, 2006, pp. 2-10.\n[13]\tAlrashed, Farajallah, and Muhammad Asif. \"Saudi building industry's views on sustainability in buildings: questionnaire survey.\" Energy Procedia 62, 2014, pp. 382-390.\n[14]\tBanani, R., Maria Vahdati, and A. Elmualim. \"Demonstrating the importance of criteria and sub-criteria in building assessment methods.\" PhD diss., WIT Press, 2013.\n[15]\tReed, R., Bilos, A., Wilkinson, S., & Schulte, K. W. \"International comparison of sustainable rating tools.\" Journal of sustainable real estate, 1(1), 2009, pp. 1-22.\n[16]\tLarsson, N. User Guide to the SBTool assessment framework. iiSBE, 2012,October 24.\n[17]\tShaawat, M. Essam, and Rehan Jamil. \"A Guide to Environmental Building Rating System for Construction of New Buildings in Saudi Arabia.\" Emirates Journal for Engineering Research 19, no. 2, 2014, pp. 47-56.\n[18]\tTaleb, Hanan M., and Steve Sharples. \"Developing sustainable residential buildings in Saudi Arabia: A case study.\" Applied Energy 88, no. 1, 2011, pp. 383-391.\n[19]\tAlyami, Saleh H., Yacine Rezgui, and Alan Kwan. \"Developing sustainable building assessment scheme for Saudi Arabia: Delphi consultation approach.\" Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 27, 2013, pp.43-54.\n[20]\tAbdallah, Moatassem, Khaled El-Rayes, and Liang Liu. \"Operational performance of sustainable measures in public buildings.\" Journal of construction engineering and management 139, no. 12, 2013, A4013008.\n[21]\tSimos, J., \"evaluation environmental: Un processus cognitif negocie. These de doctorat, DGF-EPFL, Lausanne, 1990a.\n[22]\tSimos J. \"Evaluer l'impact sur l'environnement: Une approche originale par l'analyse multicrit\u00e8re et la n\u00e9gociation,\" Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, Lausanne, 1990b \n[23]\tRoy, B., Bouyssou, D. \"Aide multicrit_ere _a la d_ecision: M_ethodes et case, Economica.\" Collection Gestion, Paris, 1993.\n[24]\tRoy, B., Mousseau, V. \"A theoretical framework for analysing the notion of the relative importance of criteria.\" Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis 5, 1996, pp.145\u2013149.\n[25]\tShanian, A., Abbas S. Milani, Natasha Vermaak, Katia Bertoldi, Tom Scarinci, and Miklos Gerendas. \"A combined finite element-multiple criteria optimization approach for materials selection of gas turbine components.\" Journal of Applied Mechanics 79, no. 6, 2012, 061019.\n[26]\tAutodesk. \"Revit 2010 API: Developer's Guide, Version 1.0.\" Autodesk,2009,http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112andid=2484975.\n[27]\tWu, Wei. Integrating building information modeling and green building certification: The BIM-LEED application model development. University of Florida, 2010."]} Achieving environmental sustainability is one of the important issues considered in many countries’ vision. Green/Sustainable building is widely used terminology for describing a friendly environmental construction. Applying sustainable practices has a significant importance in various fields, including construction field that consumes an enormous amount of resource and causes a considerable amount of waste. The need for sustainability is increased in the regions that suffering from the limitation of natural resource and extreme weather conditions such as Saudi Arabia. Since buildings designs are getting sophisticated, the need for tools, which support decision-making for sustainability issues, is increasing, especially in the design and preconstruction stages. In this context, Building Information Modeling (BIM) can aid in performing complex building performance analyses to ensure an optimized sustainable building design. Accordingly, this paper introduces a roadmap towards developing a systematic approach for presenting the sustainability of buildings using BIM. The approach includes set of main processes including; identifying the sustainability parameters that can be used for sustainability assessment in Saudi Arabia, developing sustainability assessment method that fits the special circumstances in the Kingdom, identifying the sustainability requirements and BIM functions that can be used for satisfying these requirements, and integrating these requirements with identified functions. As a result, the sustainability-BIM approach can be developed which helps designers in assessing the sustainability and exploring different design alternatives at the early stage of the construction project.

Since ancient ages, humans sought to find a shelter. They started a long way of creating, modifying, and developing their shelters. During the continuous seek for luxury, he ignored architecture designs that respects the surrounding environment and climate. This type of architecture represented our historical roots that presents the local culture and environment of any country; and it is the result of creative interacts of humans and the nature. The aim of bioclimatic architecture is to create urban areas and buildings that are designed to fully cover their energy requirements without induce environmental damage. this study focuses the traditional /historical architecture in Arab countries, especially the natural conditions that influence the architectural decisions of sustainability, that could be used as a new vision for eco- adaptive architecture. In addition, it encourages analyzing and taking advantage of environmental conditions around buildings to maintain ideal living conditions through minimal consumption of energy, to achieve sustainability that recently has become a philosophy of architecture. EQA - International Journal of Environmental Quality, Vol 39 (2020)

Amid the current global climate change, countries are facing a critical challenge in consideration of dealing with its consequences. In Bahrain, the urbanization process has been of grave consequences upon the urban open spaces quality. Therefore, a low percentage of vegetation and “CONCRETE FORESTS” occurred, which acts as heat absorbents towards the building' inner spaces. Consequently, overpriced monthly electrical bills were resulted due to the excessive energy consumption in cooling the building. Furthermore, these cement blocks emit heat towards the surrounding urban spaces, deteriorating the urban quality of the city. Lamentably, these factors have released socio-economic and environmentally unsustainable perception of cities in Bahrain. In the old part of Manama city, the capital of Bahrain, we find this problem very clear. According to the field survey, most of these buildings' facades either have no or minor climatic treatments. Paints and lesser types of thermal insulation; as well as; using natural materials in building blocks is the existing treatment-seeking least insulation impacts. The research presents the green walls upon buildings’ facades as a cooling method of the interior spaces during summer and for a thermal insulation technique as well. This technique will add value in controlling the reasons of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) and overcoming as well in Bahrain. SHAPING URBAN CHANGE – Livable City Regions for the 21st Century. Proceedings of REAL CORP 2020, 25th International Conference on Urban Development and Regional Planning in the Information Society, 1219-1230

Digital transformation provides opportunities for agri-food systems to monitor and manage global soil, climatic and genetic resources; address pervasive information asymmetries among the stakeholders along the agri-food value chains. It serves as a foundation for a more efficient, equitable, and environmentally sustainable economic development including urban, peri-urban agriculture, and rural growth. However, challenges to maximizing the intended benefits and lowering the costs of organizing the transformations for equitable access by all stakeholders require innovative policy and strategic approaches. This brief investigates the extent to which policy pathways can accelerate the inclusive digital transformation that can also address the potential risks of the digital divide, highlighting the need for improved inter and intra-ministerial coordination and global governance architecture. PRODIGEES, Horizon 2020 MSCA-RISE, Grant Agreement #873119