Decades after a chilling racist massacre, Tulsa’s Greenwood district was bulldozed for I-244 – but a new plan aims to reverse its punishing effects. Twenty-five years before Don Shaw was born in Greenwood, a white mob invaded the Tulsa neighborhood and killed more than 300 people. Much of the tight-knit community was burned to the ground, including his grandfather’s pharmacy. But when Shaw was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, few people wanted to talk about the massacre – perhaps in part because much of the damage was no longer visible. He remembers walking the streets of Greenwood in his youth and seeing Black-owned businesses up and down its blocks: a hotel, dry cleaner, soul food restaurants, churches, a ballroom, dentists, pharmacies, hardware store, photo studio, the 750-seat Dreamland Theatre. It was an oasis of Black economic self-sufficiency, inside an Oklahoma city flush with oil industry wealth where the Klu Klux Klan once publicly operated.  But the area that has become known across the US as “Black Wall Street” didn’t last. In the early 1970s, Oklahoma planners plowed a new eight-lane interstate highway called I-244 right through the heart of Greenwood. The Dreamland Theatre – along with hundreds of homes and businesses – was bulldozed and covered in concrete. Greenwood’s commercial area shrank from dozens of blocks to just one. After that, the neighborhood began emptying out. That was when the parties stopped. “The atmosphere changed,” Shaw said. “The feeling of destruction set in.” The Biden administration now says it wants to repair that history. Earlier this year, it announced $185m in grants to groups across the country aiming to unravel the long legacy of Black, brown and low-income areas being the sacrifice zones for urban highways. Tulsa could be a national model of what that actually looks like. A grant worth $1.6m was awarded to the city’s North Peoria Church of Christ so it can study the feasibility of removing the section of I-244 slicing through Greenwood. Its application provided “a compelling depiction of how a historic Black neighborhood in Tulsa suffered the punishing effects of urban renewal”, noted the US Department of Transportation.....read on     https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/18/tulsa-highway-black-wall-street                  

Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, say experts. Landmark report urges overhaul of wasteful water practices around world on eve of crucial UN summit. The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit.

Governments must urgently stop subsidising the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water. Nations must start to manage water as a global common good, because most countries are highly dependent on their neighbours for water supplies, and overuse, pollution and the climate crisis threaten water supplies globally, the report’s authors say. Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and a lead author of the report, told the Guardian the world’s neglect of water resources was leading to disaster. “The scientific evidence is that we have a water crisis. We are misusing water, polluting water, and changing the whole global hydrological cycle, through what we are doing to the climate. It’s a triple crisis.” Rockstrom’s fellow Global Commission on the Economics of Water co-chair Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at University College London and also a lead author of the report, added: “We need a much more proactive, and ambitious, common good approach. We have to put justice and equity at the centre of this, it’s not just a technological or finance problem.” The report marks the first time the global water system has been scrutinised comprehensively and its value to countries – and the risks to their prosperity if water is neglected – laid out in clear terms. Like with the Stern review of the economics of the climate crisis in 2006 and the Dasgupta review of the economics of biodiversity in 2021, the report authors hope to highlight the crisis in a way that policymakers and economists can recognise.           Many governments still do not realise how interdependent they are when it comes to water. The report sets out seven key recommendations, including reshaping the global governance of water resources, scaling up investment in water management through public-private partnerships, pricing water properly and establishing “just water partnerships” to raise finance for water projects in developing and middle-income countries.....read on......   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/17/global-fresh-water-demand-outstrip-supply-by-2030    .......and.......     Collaboration in water management: the power of partnership - infographic.  Engaging a diverse group of stakeholders such as business, regulators, local authorities and conservation bodies will be vital to finding solutions to the water challenges of our time.        https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/graphic/collaboration-water-management-power-partnership-infographic

An era of massive construction is currently underway, with a new area the size of Paris being built every week. The global building floor area is expected to double by 2060, which will have a massive impact on the climate. T he production of building materials and construction activities are already responsible for 10% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. To avoid locking carbon into the system for decades, infrastructure investments have to be shifted urgently. Building materials have a heavy carbon footprint and present a concrete challenge to the climate. The “embodied carbon” in buildings comes primarily from the energy-intensive production of cement, steel, aluminum, glass and insulation materials. The production of materials like cement also involves chemical processes, releasing additional greenhouse gases (GHGs), and leads to the depletion of natural resources like sand and the erosion of ecosystems. Strategies to address embodied carbon – and ready solutions......We need to rethink the way we construct our buildings in order to reduce embodied carbon. The strategies to reduce embodied carbon already exist – from building smarter to decarbonising building materials. To shine a light on these solutions, the Programme for Energy Efficiency in Buildings (PEEB) recently published aworking paperpresenting key facts on embodied carbon, as well as practical strategies to reduce it. This videoby PEEB explains the key facts. PEEB sees three approaches: avoid embodied carbon by designing for less material use; shift to alternative building materials; and improve conventional materials by making them less carbon-intensive. On the first strategy, avoiding embodied carbon by reducing material use, resource efficiency is the basis. We can build less, build with less materials, and build longer-lasting, more resilient buildings. = Circular approaches to construction can even turn buildings into banks of valuable materials that can be reused through “urban mining.”The second and third approaches require a double strategy. We need swift action to reduce the emissions from the production of conventional building materials, mainly concrete and steel, but also aluminium, plastic and glass. At the same time, we need to increase the market share of alternative low-carbon materials such as bio-materials.........read on            https://sdg.iisd.org/commentary/guest-articles/building-materials-a-hidden-heavyweight-for-climate-action/

EMBEDDED CARBON IN BUILDINGS.......Much is made of the proposed energy efficiency of buildings once they are occupied, but so far very little attention has been paid to the carbon emitted in getting them built, and eventually dismantled – from extracting raw materials and manufacturing components, to the toxic byproducts of demolition leaking out in landfill. Architects Climate Action Network(Acan) estimates that this “embodied carbon” accounts for up to three-quarters of a building’s total emissions over its lifespan, a proportion that is only going to grow as the energy grid becomes increasingly decarbonised with the rise of renewables. With the built environment contributing about 45% of the total carbon emitted in the UK, the embodied energy of construction has become the vital element to focus on. “Government regulation is really lagging behind,” says the architect Simon Sturgis, founder of carbon consultancy Targeting Zero. “Over the next 60 to 70 years the most immediate problem will be construction emissions, and it’s something that is not even considered by the building regulations at the moment. “It is quite straightforward to address: very significant carbon reductions can be made for very little cost.” Most of the solutions described are market-ready—the result of decades of research and real-world trials. In addition to helping advance the environmental goals of concrete purchasers, these solutions offer opportunities for producers to reduce costs and establish a leadership role in a changing industry.“It’s about choosing things slightly more carefully,” says Sturgis. “Using less concrete and more timber, or specifying recycled aluminium for window frames. “It’s also crucial to understand the relationship between improving operational emissions and the carbon costs of doing so. Triple-glazed windows might reduce heating requirements, but their embodied carbon is vast.” Building professional associations have provided guidance on embodied carbon assessment, and have called on the government to intervene, recently produced a guidance document for assessing the embodied carbon of building services equipment (including heating, lighting, plumbing, etc), a crucial part of the jigsaw that has largely been ignored until now. have “When you do a retrofit project, the services equipment can represent 80% of the embodied carbon,” she says. “It’s the hidden element, which often needs upgrading over time.”  Building services and plants typically use a high proportion of steel, aluminium, plastics and copper in their construction, as well as rare earth elements for key components, such as permanent magnets in motors and phosphors for lamps. Solar panels, for examples, often contain lead, cadmium and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel, while there are difficulties in recycling the glass due to impurities. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimated there was about 250,000 tonnes of solar panel waste in the world in 2016, and has projected the amount could reach 78m tonnes by 2050......read on          https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/03/dirty-secret-fossil-fuel-free-building-embodied-carbon-building-glass-steel-blocks