Decarbonizing the Built Environment through Heritage + the COP30 Action Agenda
Engaging a whole of society response through the UN Climate Conferences (COPs)
Prior to 2015, the UNFCCC’s climate conferences (Conferences of the Parties, or COPs) focused on the commitments and negotiations between national governments, or Parties. During COP21 in Paris, the year of the pivotal Paris Agreement, Party delegates and climate activists shifted the momentum by signaling a need for climate discussions to expand beyond formal Party negotiations. They recognized that global climate action would only be successful with a whole-of-society approach, bringing together “voluntary actors”—activists, businesses, foundations, creatives, local governments, and other stakeholders — around a shared vision of action. Since then, the COP Presidency has deployed a series of evolving mechanisms to organize and engage voluntary actors alongside state actors to accelerate the global response to the climate crisis.
Accelerating Implementation with the COP30 Action Agenda
“Voluntary actions can no longer remain at the margins,” declared Ana Toni of the COP30 Presidency to the UNFCCC official gathering of Party and civil society representatives.
COP30 in Belém is being called the COP of Implementation. As such, the COP30 Presidency launched the Action Agenda, a global platform to organize and accelerate voluntary climate solutions beyond formal negotiations, bringing together stakeholders from all sectors, industries, and regions. The Action Agenda comprises six thematic “Axes,” which contain 30 “key objectives.”
The Action Agenda is powered by “Activation Groups” corresponding to each key objective, which are made up of over 400 Initiatives recognized as part of the Action Agenda by invitation of the COP30 Presidency and the Climate High Level Champions. The charge of the Activation Groups is to coordinate solutions, measure and track impacts, demonstrate proven solutions, and accelerate implementation by 2028.
Structure of the COP30 Action Agenda, courtesy of the Climate High-Level Champions
Built Buildings Lab’s role in the Action Agenda
The Climate Heritage Network’s (CHN) Decarbonizing the Built Environment through Heritage (DBTH) initiative, led by Built Buildings Lab in partnership with Architecture 2030 and the University of Lagos, is privileged to be an invited initiative of Activation Group 19, Culture, Cultural Heritage Protection, and Climate Action.
In this position, Built Buildings Lab has submitted heritage-informed decarbonization solutions to the Granary of Solutions and is the organizing initiative for one of the over 100 Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) launched at COP30. Our “Plan to Accelerate Heritage-Informed Building Decarbonization” was developed with the World Monuments Fund (WMF), International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Architecture 2030, and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. This plan aims to scale heritage solutions for climate mitigation by building capacity for policymakers to integrate heritage solutions into climate-mitigation policy in the building and construction sector by 2028.
Heritage Now! kicks off a multi-year commitment to accelerating heritage-informed decarbonization solutions
Our Plan to Accelerate Solutions extends the outcomes of the CHN DBTH project, committing our coalition to expanding the scale of dissemination, outreach, and training, and publicly tracking the project’s impact on building and construction policy over the next three years, starting with the Heritage Now! campaign.
The endorsers of Heritage Now!, which promotes five recommendations for heritage-informed building decarbonization, are demonstrating to policymakers and leaders at COP30 the need to advance heritage-informed decarbonization solutions into climate policies. But COP30 is only the beginning of this advocacy movement. With the launch of a new five-year vision for Global Climate Action Agenda, the Action Agenda will extend through 2030, keeping advocacy for heritage-informed solutions at the forefront of the formal processes of COP.
Stay tuned for our follow-up article with updates on the progress of the Action Agenda and the culture-based climate action at COP30!
