Sustainable and climate-friendly reconstruction of built environment after conflicts and disasters

Many areas across the globe have experienced large-scale damage caused by ongoing conflicts, extreme weather events, environmental degradation, and water stress. Reconstruction of these built environments is often taking place without supporting sustainability regulations. This leads to lower resilience of the newly-built infrastructure to climate shocks, and overlooks the opportunity to recover better, keeping in mind social, environmental, and economic aspects. To change this, sustainability has to be put at the forefront of recovery.

Assessment by the World Bank suggests that Ukraine reconstruction and recovery from Russia’s aggression will cost more than USD 400 billion, with the highest estimated needs (50%) in transport, housing, and energy sectors. Integrated into these needs are critical steps toward building Ukraine back better with an emphasis on transforming into a modern, low-carbon, disaster- and climate-resilient country that is aligned with European Union policies and standards. With the massive scale of the damages, Ukraine is facing a big challenge in defining and implementing a sustainable and climate-friendly reconstruction.

International and Ukrainian experts will discuss frameworks, technologies, policies, and practical steps toward a sustainable reconstruction of infrastructure and built environment after conflicts and disasters. Speakers will discuss how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during reconstruction to avoid unnecessary climate impacts and share experience in planning reconstruction on national and city levels.

Moderator: Nathalie Bernasconi, Interim Co-President and Co-CEO, International Institute for Sustainable Development

• Oliver Rapf, Executive director, Buildings Performance Institute Europe

• Mohammad Asfour, Founding chair of the Watershed and Development Initiative Jordan, author of the Sustainable Reconstruction & Recovery Framework

• Lennard de Klerk (online), Lead author of the Initiative on greenhouse gas accounting of war

• Oleksandr Senkevych, Mayor of Mykolaiv

• Maksym Vereshchak, Key Expert of the Covenant of Mayors East

• Anna Ackermann, Member of the Board of the Center for Environmental Initiatives “Ecoaction”; analyst at the International Institute for Sustainable Development

Watch the recording of the event: