Excellencies and Colleagues,
As many speakers emphasized during todays high-level roundtables, increasing access to affordable, sustainable and climate-resilient housing is a pressing global challenge.
Today, 2.8 billion people live in inadequate housing. Over 1.1 billion live in slums and informal settlements, many of them in in sub-Saharan African cities.
We must ensure access to housing for everyone. But we must also take climate change into account. Buildings already account for 35 per cent of global energy-related CO emissions. And as the world adds the footprint equivalent to the size of Paris every five days, we must ensure that all new buildings are low-carbon and resilient.
This resilience must account for heatwaves, which are becoming more frequent, more intense and longer lasting. The urban heat island effect can drive local temperatures up to 10C higher than surrounding rural zones. And, as we know, the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have not done enough to lower warming predictions. By 2050, the number of urban poor exposed to dangerous heat could increase by 700 per cent.
Solutions do exist. From climate-smart building design and sustainable materials to retrofitting existing homes and passive cooling. Nature-based solutions are particularly cost-effective. When cities integrate natural systems into the built environment such as through wetland restoration, urban forests and green and blue infrastructure they can re-establish the ecological functions that regulate water flows, buffer floods and droughts, moderate temperatures, and sustain biodiversity.
Friends,
We are seeing momentum building on such solutions. The Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), coordinated by UNEP, is backing a transformation of the sector guiding countries and cities toward zero-emission, efficient and resilient buildings. The endorsement today of the Belm Call for Action on Sustainable and Affordable Housing by the Intergovernmental Council for Buildings and Climate, for which UNEP hosts the secretariat, is a step forward.
The Beat the Heat Implementation Drive (Mutiro contra o Calor Extremo), launched today by UNEP and the COP30 Presidency, is another move in the right direction. Over 150 cities have joined the drive. These cities are committing to deploying urban heat assessments and action plans; deploying passive cooling solutions like cool roofs, reflective surfaces and green corridors; and using public procurement to promote climate-friendly cooling technologies.
And, while the NDCs were not as strong as we had hoped, many of these pledges now explicitly recognize the vital role of cities and regions in delivering climate solutions. And cities and regions are indeed vital. This is why UNEP is supporting cities in implementing national policies that contribute to achieving national climate goals from building codes in Ghana to low-carbon buildings in India.
So, we are moving forward, and we are doing it through strong cooperation, for instance UNEPs work with UN-Habitat on Greener Cities Partnership, and with twelve other UN agencies and multiple governments and stakeholders through the Local2030 Coalition. We are collecting new ideas for actions and establishing new partnerships.
I invite you all to the upcoming UNEA-7 Cities and Regions Summit, in Nairobi on 5 December, which will be an important milestone to reflect on the outcomes of the discussions here and to accelerate sub-national action. And I look forward to hearing from the panellists on what their cities, regions and national governments are doing to increase access to affordable, sustainable and climate-resilient housing.
