Sustainable Leadership for the Built Environment

Career Climbers / 4th June 2025

Kayla Friedman

The built environment encompasses all of the physical places that are created from the finite natural resources that we as humans depend upon. There is a dependent relationship between the two that is intimately connected to our ability to livesuccessfully on the planet.

In fundamental terms, there is no material that our built environment is constructed from that is not extracted or made from some aspect of our natural environment. With global population numbers expected to reach 10 billion by 2061, that means there will be 2 billion more people who need homes, places to work, places to be educated, places to pray, places to heal, and the associated infrastructure that will allow those places to function and let people move between them. What does their future look like?

To help understand the scale of the challenge, I like to share this visualisation that I learned from one of our CISL Fellows, Will Day. He notes that Greater London has a population of just under 10 million people. It has a mixture of high–density and low-density areas. It has built areas and natural recreation areas, cultural areas, and arguably everything people need to thrive in a diverse community. Although many people prefer not to live in cities at all, Greater London probably offers a range of living environments that most people would find agreeable. For us to accommodate 2 billion people to the standard of living that is provided by a place like London, we would need to build 200 of them by 2061, or about one Greater London every nine and a half weeks- give or take.

This is not particularly good news for the planet, given that in 2019 it was calculated that the built environment was responsible for 39% of global energy related to carbon emissions- 28% from operational emissions and 11% from materials and construction. Between 40-50% of resources extracted for global materials are used in construction markets, and as much as 32% of landfill waste comes from construction sites. We have not been very good stewards of the planet, and the strain we have put on it is evident through climate change and the degradation of the natural environment. We are using up resources faster than we are replenishing them, and we need to not only reverse this trend for ourselves, but for an additional 2 billion inhabitants in the future. It is an enormous challenge. To read the entire article, click here!