design with the click of a button. Yes, there will be an investment and a commitment. The clients may or may not pay for this initially. But the cause will gradually become an integral part of our lexicon and part of the vocabulary of what we do. And, hopefully, we will get compensated for it in time. Even if we are not, this is an investment that we have to make. We are in an emergency.
SH: I understand that. What you are trying to say is to make the declaration purposive. But will there be criticism later on, even if there are good intentions at the start? It can become a measure of how little you have acted. You sign a declaration, then someone asks if you have you done enough?
NK: Isn’t that what makes the Declaration powerful? Accountability and peer pressure can trigger change. LCW: A month ago, Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects left the UK declaration. This became an important talking point globally. These firms were criticised for not living up to the spirit of the Declaration. Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects felt the pressure of that criticism and dropped out.
In Taiwan, we explain to our members saying that this is not a ‘do or die’ thing. We appreciate that you are doing something. In Taiwan, we are lucky that many of our projects are publicly funded. Here, we are obliged to attain Green building certification. There are some public projects that have to reach Gold or Diamond certification. Perhaps one of the things that we can do is to influence the government on policies such that they only allow companies with a certain ESG score to do certain projects. I think the government is coming up with more policies to make sure that the contractors are sustainable enough to bid for public projects. We cannot control how architects design but if it becomes a policy or regulation, everybody has to do it.
NK: In Taiwan and Singapore, Green certification is mandated by law for all new buildings. In most other countries, it is still voluntary. And so, to your point about policy, these two countries are unique in that their governments are pro-active. Elsewhere, the Green building movement has failed abysmally. Just look at the number of buildings certified; it is barely a drop in the ocean. What keeps this Declaration from turning into another Green movement? Does it have ‘teeth’? What are the mechanisms of change? HR: One of the reasons we signed on in Singapore is that while there are plenty of initiatives by the government, there is one shortcoming: a lack of action by civil society. We need to get together, make our own declarations, which we then police and implement. We can tell the government that when we see the climate targets it sets, we are ready and willing to push things forward. The beautiful thing is that in Singapore, many signed up voluntarily, without being asked. We only have one condition for the signatories: none of the signatories should personally benefit from association with the movement. It is
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