The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), the nation’s authority on sustainable buildings, has just released their ‘Building with Nature: Prioritising Ecology and BioDiversity for Better Buildings and Cities Report’. The report presents biodiversity as a priority for minimising the impact of Australian building on the ecological settings around us.
Green Building Council of Australia’s purpose is to lead ‘the sustainable transformation of Australia’s built environment’, and in the past have tackled issues such as climate change and slashing energy emissions. The report outlines the role of biodiversity and its benefits in the building sector, also providing key principles to guide the formation of credits for biodiversity, and recommends steps to take in order to value, enhance and maintain biodiversity in the built environment. According to the document, 30 per cent of Australia’s threatened species are located in our cities.
“There are many ways that ecosystem services and green infrastructure support sustainability in the built environment. For example, ecosystem services such as wetlands, and green infrastructure such as bioswales, provide alternative solutions for the management of stormwater events,” explains Fiona Beynon from the Department of Environment and Energy.
“Biodiversity and green spaces also supports threatened species in the city scape, provides for visual amenity, improves liveability, and provides for improved mental and physical health outcomes for the people who live and work in cities,” Beynon continued.
Green Building Council of Australia has voiced that it’s the industry’s role to pave the way for Australia’s natural flora and fauna to flourish as cities grow.
Beynon has voiced that “there’s an opportunity for practitioners to find innovative ways that biodiversity can contribute to a range of improved outcomes and tangible savings for the built environment and its community”.
The Green Building Council of Australia have pointed out Brickpit Ring walk towers, a company residing 19 metres above a pond that is home to the endangered Green and Golden Bell Frog, and Sydney Olympic Park in Western Sydney, one of the city’s biggest sporting and entertainment precincts, which spans over 40 hectares of parklands as two examples of how the commercial building industry can work beneficially in conjunction with their natural surrounding environments.
Green Building Council of Australia’s Five Principles:
- Increase the amount of urban green spaces in cities.
- Increase biodiversity to ensure the healthy functioning of our ecosystem.
- Connect landscapes and environmental habitats to support biodiversity.
- Create links between natural and man-made landscapes.
- Promote responsible restoration of the environment, not just locally but in broader surrounding landscapes as well.