Title: SEER: Sustainability ethics, ego and risks

Biography:

Esam Elsarrag is the CEO of beGREEN Global-UK. He has more than 25 years of experience in higher education, sustainability standards development, Energy Systems and building physics, gained through his work in the Middle East and Europe. In additional to his work as a consultant, he continues to be active in scientific research in buildings and energy. He has delivered invited lectures and published papers in reputed institutions and journals. He has specialist expertise in sustainable developments, technology development, renewables, and energy modeling and building services

Abstract

The understanding, commitment and deployment of sustainability ethics are essential for sustainable built environment framework. Organizations and companies are obliged to provide their services under a set of internationally acceptable ethical guidelines and standards. Ethics ensure that sustainability framework is the right approach that addresses and solves environmental, social and economic issues. Getting recognition is human nature however; sustainability should be moved away from the ego’s destruction and individualistic tendencies towards our societies. Creating trust within societies is vital and cannot be achieved unless we maintain qualities within ourselves and commit to ethical guidelines. Destructive ego and infringement of ethical standards can lead to money drain beside high risks in sustainability deployment. It is worth noting that international accreditation of governing bodies is essential to demonstrate competence, impartiality and performance capability of evaluators, i.e. checkers should be checked. Sustainability risks in general may include: Environmental (e.g. non-compliance with the environmental laws), Governance and Corruption (e.g. failure to uphold transparency standards), Social (infringement of rights and violation), Labor (Infringement of health and safety rights) and Climate Change (aggravation of climate change) etc. In buildings practices, developers may face some degree of risk and uncertainty when deploying sustainability standards. However, risks increase when lean analysis is used. In the design phase, long-term sustainability can be achieved by conducting risk analysis by means of simulations and via the optimization of diverse scenarios. In the operation phase, resource minimization and robustness are the guidelines. This paper presents implementation examples, ethical gaps, ego’s destruction and explain why simulation and comprehensive adverse scenarios studies is the pathway for a successful implementation of sustainability frameworks