Life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies are the main tool used to measure the carbon footprints of building products at each phase of their cradle-to-grave lifespan (i.e., production, use and end of life).

With over 30 per cent of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in Canada coming from the communities and structures we build for ourselves, accurately measuring building materials' carbon footprints is key to crafting meaningful policy—from building codes to product preference—to meet carbon reduction targets. There is a clear need for us to get this right.

While LCAs are the best-available tool for evaluating the GHG (and other) performance of alternative building products and designs, policy-makers and building designers should be aware there are also limitations, challenges and uncertainties that must be considered.

Media Release: Tool for tracking GHGs in Canada’s buildings has “built in” errors: study

Emission Omissions: Carbon Accounting Gaps in the Built Environment delves into those uncertainties. The report considers:

• Limitations, challenges and uncertainties in existing LCAs, quantifying their significance to the current understanding of the relative GHG performance of buildings made alternatively of concrete, steel or wood structural elements.
• Best practices that could improve the reliability and usefulness of LCA to support effective policies to decarbonize the built environment.
• Longer-term opportunities to reduce life-cycle emissions in the built environment by supporting decarbonization efforts in the concrete, steel and forestry sectors.

The report includes three key recommendations to policy-makers looking to reduce carbon in the building sector:

• Building efficiency and longevity should be the priority for decarbonizing the built environment.
• LCA is the right approach, but more data, transparency and robust standards are needed, especially with respect to biogenic carbon.
• To address embodied GHG emissions in buildings, policy-makers and building professionals need to focus equally on material efficiency and incenting decarbonization across all material manufacturing sectors.

The report was guided and peer reviewed by a diverse Advisory Committee of:

• Keith Brooks, Environmental Defence
• Trevor Hesselink, CPAWS
• Dr. Jay Malcolm, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto
• Jamie Meil, Athena Sustainable Materials Institute
• Jean-François Ménard, International Reference Centre for the Life Cycle of Products
• Heidi Nesbitt, Local Practice Architecture + Design
• Dr. Jeff Wells, Boreal Song Bird Initiative
• Scott Demark, BuildGreen Solutions

Key Messages

• Canada's commitments under the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement or the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) do not impede sustainable public procurement. Where sustainable public procurement is interpreted as favouring certain groups within an economy, such as local suppliers, however, difficulties arise. 
• The regulatory framework is often perceived as a barrier to sustainability in the procurement process, but it is not an actual one. Increasingly, regulatory frameworks, in Canada and internationally, make reference to green or sustainable procurement. The actual barriers to sustainable procurement are the capacity of procurement agencies, financial constraints, the absence of political will and recognizing that public procurement is a strategic rather than an administrative function of government.

This paper explores the extent to which Canada's international trade obligations pose a barrier or opportunity for sustainable public procurement. It finds that green procurement is increasingly encouraged in international trade agreements. Social procurement, where attention is paid to worker's conditions across the supply chain, is neither encouraged nor prohibited under the agreements. Favouring selected groups (small and medium-sized enterprises, women-owned or Indigenous-owned enterprises) in society is discouraged and "buying local" is prohibited. 

The paper finds also that the number of Canadian entities bound by these international rules has increased with the adoption of the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Nonetheless, many procurement processes do not fall within the realm of the international trade agreements and therefore do not even have to take them into consideration.

Finally, the paper concludes that unpacking the legal framework around public procurement and its relation with sustainability is only one piece of the puzzle. Implementing sustainable procurement also means investing in the skillset of procurers, building in sustainability across the procurement cycle, and working together in a transparent manner with suppliers to ensure that public procurement is used in a strategic way and delivers the best value for money for taxpayers. A set of recommendations at the end of the paper provided input for discussion at a workshop in March 2019.

Key Messages

• The Rabat bypass in Morocco, including the iconic Mohammed VI Bridge, was built to decrease traffic and congestion in and around Rabat. SAVi assesses the financial implications of different operational risk scenarios.
• The SAVi assessment shows that the value of time saved and the costs of accidents are significant externalities related to the road project. For example, SAVi forecasts that a decrease in maintenance activities may lead to an increase up to EUR 236 million in costs of accidents.
• SAVi calculates the traditional financial indicators (NPV, IRR and debt coverage ratios) and concludes that the revenues of the project are insufficient to cover the capital and operational expenditures, under all risk scenarios.

IISD has carried out an economic and financial assessment of different risk scenarios of the contournement de Rabat, the bypass road in Morocco. The assessment also includes the valuation of different externalities related to the road project. IISD used the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) tool for this assessment.

SAVi is a simulation service that helps governments and investors value the many risks and externalities that affect the performance of infrastructure projects.

The distinctive features of SAVi are:

• Valuation: SAVi values, in financial terms, the material environmental, social and economic risks and externalities of infrastructure projects. These variables are ignored in traditional financial analyses.
• Simulation: SAVi combines the results of systems thinking and system dynamics simulation with project finance modelling. We engage with asset owners to identify the risks material to their infrastructure projects and then design appropriate simulation scenarios.
• Customization: SAVi is customized to individual infrastructure projects.

Key Messages

• Voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) can contribute indirectly to household food security and gender equality in food access through sustainable production practices that contribute to a diverse and nutritional diet, and by potentially contributing to higher incomes generated from certification.
• Financial supports provided through certification, such as pre-financing or premiums, can contribute to women’s ability to access productive inputs and credit, when producer organizations support these measures enhancing women’s rights to productive agricultures resources.
• Certification through VSSs can alleviate some of women’s domestic labour burdens through financial support for labour-saving investments, equipment and technologies.

Systemic gender inequalities and the disempowerment of women persist in agricultural production across the Global South.

For instance, rural households face significant food security concerns, and women and girls face unequal access to the calories that are available. Implementing VSSs can provide opportunities to enhance women’s economic empowerment, improve food security and achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

VSSs have the potential to make significant contributions to sustainable development due to their influence on certification criteria and implementing procedures with farmers and agricultural communities.

Our report, available in English and French, explains how VSSs can be used as a tool to meet the SDGs and targets related to gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture. It also provides recommendations for development organizations working toward that goal. Specifically, the report analyzes how VSSs:

• Can be leveraged to make positive contributions to gender equality
• Can promote gender equality depending on certain conditions
• Can exacerbate gender inequalities if not undertaken with sensitivity to local gender dynamics.

The paper summarizes available literature on the shortcomings of grey infrastructure for the provision of various ecosystem services and the advantages of natural infrastructure and green-grey (hybrid) infrastructure concerning land security, climate regulation and water security. Shortcomings, risks, roadblocks, enabling policy interventions and methodologies for performance measurement are discussed in depth for two natural infrastructure types: freshwater wetlands and green infrastructure for urban water management.

This publication serves as a technical document for the development of IISD's Sustainable Asset Valuation tool (SAVi) for natural infrastructure, a simulation tool that integrates knowledge from various disciplines and sectors for sustainable asset valuation.

“Progressing National SDG Implementation” is the third in a regular series of reports commissioned by civil society. It documents and analyses the 46 English, French, Spanish and Arabic Voluntary National Review (VNR) reports submitted in 2018 to the UN’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

The report identifies ten key pillars we believe are essential to the effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It also recognizes emerging good practice and sets out a range of conclusions and recommendations with respect to how countries can both improve their implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and use the HLPF as an opportunity for mutual peer learning, knowledge exchange and support. Importantly, the review also provides a comparative assessment of how VNR reporting is evolving over time through a comparison of analysis of the VNRs in 2016 and 2017 with findings for 2018.

Report of the meeting held August 21–23, 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa

The Secretariat of the Southern African Development Community (SADC Secretariat), in collaboration with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), hosted the SADC Workshop on Facilitating Investment for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, from August 21 to 23, 2018. Nearly 40 participants attended the workshop, including more than 30 government officials representing 13 SADC member states.

The workshop was the first meeting on the issue of investment facilitation held at the SADC regional level and, to the best knowledge of all of the participants and experts, the first meeting of developing country government representatives to actually focus on discussing the detailed issues relating to the concept and implementation of facilitating investment for sustainable development.

At the meeting, the participants undertook a detailed analysis of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Global Action Menu for Investment Facilitation.

The participants concluded that facilitating investment for sustainable development requires measures that enhance and work with, and thus primarily within, the national institutional and regulatory frameworks that are needed to achieve the public policy objectives associated with foreign direct investment.

More specifically, they rejected the need for international or regional regulatory measures in relation to facilitating investment for sustainable development. Instead, they looked for opportunities for capacity building, information sharing and cooperative processes that can enhance policies, practices and legal provisions at the national level.

Key Messages

• Natural infrastructure (NI) is being recognized as an important response to accelerating risks related to climate change, the widening infrastructure gap resulting from aging infrastructure and the growing infrastructure needs in Canada and globally. 
• The Advancing Natural Infrastructure in Canada forum provided key insights and next steps to improve the implementation of NI across Canada, including the need for dedicated funding programs, outcome evaluation and performance metrics, guidance and capacity building for planning and implementation, and communication.

In Canada and globally, there is growing use of natural infrastructure (NI)—actively managed natural systems and resources such as plants, soil and wetlands—to address increasing risks related to climate change and to meet pressing environmental and economic needs. A recent report on Combating Canada’s Rising Flood Costs by the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, IISD and the Insurance Bureau of Canada shows that NI projects across the country demonstrate value for money in providing critical benefits to local communities and broader societal needs.

On November 14, 2018, IISD, along with Insurance Bureau of Canada and ALUS Canada, convened the Advancing Natural Infrastructure in Canada forum in Winnipeg. This forum brought together experts in related fields from across the country to discuss how Canada can use NI to build more resilient cities, towns and landscapes in the face of increasing climate uncertainty.

The day-long forum was divided into three main sessions, with presentations and discussions related to: (i) understanding the importance of NI in the context of increasing infrastructure needs and the impacts of climate change; (ii) discussing existing and innovative financing for NI; and (iii) understanding opportunities and barriers to implementing NI projects in Canada.

The forum provided a number of different insights that are detailed in the report. Prominent among these is a need for: more demonstrated projects, natural assets being considered in public sector accounting, performance metrics and  guidance at the infrastructure planning and implementation levels.

At the suggestion of participants at the 11th Annual Forum of Developing Country Investment Negotiators, IISD produced a survey of developing country government officials on investment negotiations. It was conducted online in English, French and Spanish between March and May 2018.

A total of 72 respondents from 54 countries participated. This report presents the results of the survey.

Mining can be a major force for combatting poverty, which is why our work—leveraging the benefits of mining for sustainable development and environmental management— has never been more vital.

Governments join the IGF because we deal with the issues that matter to them. We help governments assess their policy frameworks to identify gaps and build on opportunities. Then, with our help, members can design a mining regime that attracts investment and ensures benefits are shared. Our workshops are designed to build capacity, so members learn how to develop and implement programs that meet their evolving needs.

Our 2018 annual report dives into our commitment to making sure mining’s benefits are not just shared but leveraged for sustainable development by our 69 member countries.