GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL AUSTRALIA

The Green Building Council Australia (GBCA) was established in 2002 to develop a sustainable property industry in Australia. It promotes green building programs, technologies, design practices and processes, hoping to integrate green practices into building construction and operation. GBCA operates a national environmental rating system for buildings – Green Star. The GBCA has more than 900 member organisations, including government departments. It is a founding member of the World Green Building Council – a federation of national green building councils in 89 countries with the common goal supporting sustainable transformation of the global property industry. The GBCA has five priorities for placing Australia on a long term pathway to sustainability:

• provide visionary government leadership;
• retrofit and improve existing buildings;
• green education and healthcare facilities;
• move beyond buildings to communities and cities; and
• embed green skills across all industry training.

What they said...

The GBCA sees the built environment as critical to the future of Australia’s productive capacity, the well-being of communities and the health of natural ecosystems. They link progress to the successful adaption of our built environment and the related challenges that impact across all four MAP domains. These include issues such as population growth and demographic change, transport congestion, global competition, climate change, resource depletion, housing affordability, infrastructure deficit, access to services, biodiversity conservation, energy and water.

The GBCA drew attention to its ‘Green Star – Communities National Framework’ which was compiled after consultation with all levels of government and a wide range of industry stakeholders, and outlines five best practice principles and benchmarks, for assessing and certifying sustainable communities:

• enhance liveability;
• create opportunities for economic prosperity;
• foster environmental responsibility;
• embrace design excellence; and
• demonstrate visionary leadership and strong governance.

Cities – ‘[Our] aspiration is for Australia’s major cities and urban areas to be well administered, globally competitive, providing for a high quality of life, using fit-for-purpose infrastructure, making efficient use of resources, easily accessible, inclusive and minimising their impacts on the health of natural systems.’

Built environment – ‘Our submission... draws attention to the importance of the built environment to the future of Australia’s progress, its inter-dependency with the four key themes for national progress and the opportunity to engage with others actively working in this area at present in order to align how best to collect, apply and report on information.’