What are sustainable development risks?

Sustainable building development is the practice of creating and using more environmentally and socio-economically responsible and resource-efficient models of construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition of buildings.  For sustainable building development, green building practices are applied throughout a project's extended life cycle.

Sustainable building certification systems independently assess, verify and certify the sustainability of buildings against quantifiable criteria.  There are numerous internationally and locally recognized sustainable building certification systems, each assessing a different set of sustainability criteria against which buildings and products.

They evaluate a single aspect or cover a range of sustainable characteristics of a product or assess the building and/or project as a whole against various sustainability criteria:

• Single-attribute product certification – Assesses and verifies the sustainability of a single aspect of a product, such as energy efficiency or water usage;
• Multiple-attribute product certification – Covers the sustainability of a range of characteristics of equipment or a mechanical or building automation system; and
• Multiple-attribute building certification – Assess and verifies the sustainability of a building and/or project as a whole against a range of sustainability criteria.

The commissioning of buildings is a prerequisite for receiving green building certification.  Failure to achieve certification may result in fines, increased costs, and harm to the property developer's and operator's reputation.

Various factors are driving efforts worldwide to improve property development.  For this purpose, many jurisdictions are requiring the application of green standards and certification for property development projects.

In EU member states, national civil liability regimes cover damage to persons and property, but only rarely for damage to the environment.  The Environmental Liability Directive implements the polluter pays principle (PPP), which holds property developers and operators financially liable for remedying the environmental damage they cause.

Projects that are denied certification can sue the architect and contractors for damages and additional costs to achieve compliance.  Directors who fail to properly manage sustainability risks in their business could be held liable for breaching their duty of care and diligence.