Page 55 - SAMENA Trends - December 2023

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

ARTICLE

Why Campuses Hold the Key to Accelerating a Net Zero

Future

The Net Zero Campus – Achieving Localized Sustainability

Ever since 2015, when then Deputy Secretary-General of the United
Nations, Jan Eliasson made the profound statement that “Cities
are where the battle for sustainable development will be won –
or lost if we fail.”; a greater focus has been placed on cities as a
focal point to solve key challenges. To put it into perspective Cities
only cover 2% of the world’s surface, yet they consume 78% of the
world’s energy and produce more than 60% of greenhouse gas
emissions . They are also where 80% of global GDP is created.

Throughout history people of moved to cities, primarily in search
of three things; security, prosperity and social interaction. So much
so that not only are the number of cities increasing rapidly, but so
too is their size. A mega-city is a city with a population greater than
ten million; it is anticipated that the number of mega-cities across
the world by 2030 will have grown by four times and will house a
population five times that of the 1990 level!

“Cities are where the battle for sustainable
development will be won – or lost if we
fail.”

Why campuses are key
A campus is a bitesize chunk of city. Therefore, addressing the
campus as a building block is key to helping cities transition
to a more sustainable future. Cities tend to be developed or
redeveloped in phases, often consisting of one or more city blocks,
especially when sub-developers are involved. Traditionally we may
have thought of a university, college or school, when talking about
a campus. However, a campus could be any chunk of a city ranging Safder Nazir
from a single large development to a whole district. A defining Senior VP of Public Sector
characteristic being the operational management and control Huawei, Middle East & Central Asia
of the area coming under a single administration. Therefore, we
could understand a shopping mall, factory or even a mixed-use
development as a campus.

55 DECEMBER 2023