Integrating Housing Justice and Climate Action: COP30 and the Road Ahead

As a development professional in the housing, cities, and informality space for over a decade, there were lots of things to feel positive about at COP30. Conversations and initiatives related to cities and the built environment, including housing and informal settlements, were part of the agenda in a groundbreaking way, with multiple high level events dedicated to urbanization, buildings, and housing taking place throughout the week. 

On 11 November, a day dedicated to themes related to cities and the built environment, two high level events held the global housing crisis as a central issue: the Intergovernmental Council for Buildings and Climate (ICBC) Buildings Ministerial launched the Belém Call for Action for Sustainable and Affordable Housing, and the Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization and Climate Change included a High Level Roundtable dedicated to discussion of Housing and Transformation of Informal Settlements for a Just Urban Transition, with statements from housing ministers as well as social movements, academics, and practitioners. 

These events, the significant presence of UN-Habitat and their renewed focus on housing, and Brazil’s long and impressive track record of work dedicated to housing justice, informal settlement upgrading, and the right to the city, made it clear that we cannot continue to regard the housing and climate crises as separate issues, and that how we address urbanization in the coming decades–which is projected to continue at exponential rates, especially in Africa and the Asia Pacific–is critical if we are to reach climate goals. 

Throughout COP30, Build Change did our part to elevate and advance the role of resilient housing as the foundation and catalyst for a just, equitable, resilient future for all. This included a number of speaking engagements, and the opportunity to co-host an official UNFCCC side event titled “Financing a Resilient Built Environment: Solutions for Infrastructure, Housing & Informal Settlements,” with contributions from UN-Habitat’s ED Anaclaudia Rossbach and WorldGBC’s CEO Cristina Gamboa, and two panels, facilitated by IIED’s Alexandre Apsan-Frediani, highlighting policy and technical solutions and exploring mechanisms to finance and scale these without compromising on inclusivity, justice, affordability, or the role of communities. Not an easy task, of course, and perhaps what lies at the core of some of the concerning outcomes of COP30, despite all the progress mentioned here. 

While the Belém Call for Action mentioned earlier is certainly a noteworthy step to bring housing to the top of the climate and built environment agendas, particularly the encouragement to review flows of ODA funding spent on affordable, resilient housing, the document requires integration of  language that promotes an inclusive approach, with issues related to equity, justice, and access to housing for the most vulnerable not mentioned at all. 

Promoting housing sustainability and affordability without explicit mention of the most vulnerable generally means providing housing that remains unaffordable to the exact families and communities who are most at risk of climate change impacts and most in need of safe, adequate, resilient housing. In order to address the global housing and climate crisis in a meaningful way, issues of equity and justice must be centred in any housing and climate agenda. Otherwise, initiatives will simply feed the exclusionary systems that continue to perpetuate the problems we find ourselves with today. 

In terms of collaboration, there is also a clear opportunity for the ICBC (hosted by UNEP) and the Open Ended Intergovernmental Expert Working Group (OEWG) on Adequate Housing for All (hosted by UN-Habitat) to align efforts. Over the last 18 months, member states and observer organizations that comprise the OEWG have made headway in drafting recommendations on a number of thematic topics related to housing, ranging from sustainability to finance to informal settlement upgrading. Aligning or even combining efforts in this regard would ensure that these parallel intergovernmental processes are supporting one another to maximise impact. 

Additionally, in processes that unfortunately remain disconnected from the engagements of many at COP, negotiations related to the Global Goal on Adaptation resulted in indicators for assessing resilience of infrastructure and human settlements to climate change impacts that are not only woefully inadequate (with the least number of indicators (2) for this target), but also include language that can easily be used to, at best, prioritise new construction over incremental upgrades to existing housing, despite the significant cost and carbon savings of the latter approach, and, at worst, justify forcibly evicting people from and demolishing homes and communities in the name of climate change adaptation–a trend that is already on the rise, despite human rights violations and significant carbon emissions caused by forced evictions. 

None of this is surprising. As with most things, this work is often two steps forward and three steps back. Progress is slow. As Clare Shakya, MD of Climate at The Nature Conservancy and COP veteran said in a recent article, while “these gargantuan events are messy, frustrating and slow… this is what consensus-building looks like.” And this is what it looks like to drive and set global policy agendas. There will always be competing interests, and when the real work is about shifting power to those most vulnerable and most excluded for centuries, it is not a surprise that success is hard won. Because shifting power means that those in power have to relinquish some of theirs, and that is never an easy ask. 

The work ahead is clear: Continue to advance just, resilient housing for the most vulnerable as central to the climate agenda. Push member states to include commitments related to housing in their National Development Commitments (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs); work hand in hand with governments, practitioners, and social movements at all levels to develop housing policies and programs that build on existing solutions and expertise for resilient, affordable, housing; and take necessary steps to drive large-scale financing for housing through as many channels as possible–from ODA funding to development banks to corporate partnerships and more. 

COP30 was a groundbreaking moment for housing and climate. But there is tremendous work to be done. Let’s use this opportunity as a catalyst for future action, pushing stakeholders to walk the walk in a way that puts real meaning to the oft-used phrase “leave no one behind.”