It’s not enough to be singularly focused on meeting climate targets. Nature and biodiversity are the new frontiers, whether it be measuring one’s impact on nature or harnessing its power to address existential threats
The Green Building Council of Australia has taken the first step towards an inaugural Nature roadmap for the Built Environment with the release today of its building with Nature 2.0 report at the Transform conference in Sydney.
Following an initial volume in 2018, the report sketches out the symbiotic importance of nature and biodiversity to the built environment and sets out pathways for the industry to move towards nature positive outcomes, calling for collaborative action between government and the private and not-for-profit sectors.
“Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse is the fourth biggest global risk for the next 10 years, according to the World Economic Forum,” GBCA head of Green Star Strategic Delivery Elham Monavari told the conference. “Nature is complex – unlike carbon there is no one unit of measure. For the industry, there are competing priorities, a lack of data on impacts and a difficulty in identifying impacts beyond a project’s boundaries.”
The report acknowledges findings from the federal government’s 2022 State of the Environment report that noted that habitat loss and degradation is threatening thousands of plant and animal species across Australia. Some 7.7 million hectares of land has been cleared across the country, and 93 per cent of this did not require any approval or consideration of reducing our impact to nature.
The report also noted the expansion of cities and the detrimental effect placed on biodiversity and ecosystems.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature defines “nature positive” as “halting and reversing the loss of nature measured from its current status, reducing future negative impacts alongside restoring and renewing nature, to put both living and not-living nature measurably on the path to recovery.”
The property industry’s concerns for nature have accelerated in the past decade, according to the report. In 2022, a quarter of Australia’s top 20 Real Estate Investment Trusts had nature specific targets, up from just 10 per cent in 2017, and half of all trusts surveyed use nature-based offsets to reach their climate targets.
Despite the progress, the report identified numerous barriers and challenges to improved nature stewardship, including competing priorities and the tendency to view nature in a “silo”, – separate from other existential concerns – a perceived lack of government leadership and policy, and a lack of data and metrics to consistently measure nature-based outcomes in the built environment.
Among nature-based challenges, the top four concerns for the property industry were land clearing, biodiversity loss, climate change and the heat island effect.
The GBCA addresses nature challenges in its ratings framework through the Responsible Products Framework, which includes criteria for the socially responsible extraction of material resources, a transparent chain of custody, eliminating chemical exposure, water use reduction, and reductions in material use and activity.
The report highlights GPT, which has developed a Biodiversity Assessment Matrix tool to collect and analyse data to improve biodiversity outcomes.
Applied to the Highpoint Shopping Centre development in Melbourne, the tool delivered an assessment for groundcover, non-living habitat and vegetative composition and vegetative connectivity.
Applying the tool returned several recommendations, including reassessing invasive species management, choice of pesticides and increasing non-living habitat such as rock features and hollowed tree trunks to create “lizard lounges” and “bee hotels”.
Nature-based financial returns
Harnessing the power of nature not only provides so-called “soft” benefits such as improved social interaction and employment, but can positively contribute to economic development, according to the World Economic Forum.
WEF’s urban-nature based solutions lead, Cristina Gomez Garcia-Reyes told the audience that using nature-based solutions for key urban challenges such as heatwaves, flooding and biodiversity loss are 50 per cent less costly than their equivalent “grey” or artificial solution and provide 28 per cent more co-benefits such as social interaction, and employment.
Unused car parks are identified as ripe for conversion into biodiverse green space in cities such as Los Angeles, where up to 25 per cent of the urban footprint comprises parking lots
With more than 75 per cent of the world’s population forecast to be living in urban areas by 2050, cities will increasingly need to look to nature for solutions.
Unused car parks are identified as ripe for conversion into biodiverse green space in cities such as Los Angeles, where up to 25 per cent of the urban footprint comprises parking lots.
While potential solutions are plentiful and promising, Garcia-Reyes said developers needed to scratch the surface and achieve positive outcomes for biodiversity.
“Sometimes the approach to this is purely cosmetic but it must go beyond this. We must take into account biodiversity and learn from economists to reintegrate nature into the built environment and have a. more regenerative approach and not only greening cities because it’s beautiful to add trees into an urban area.”