Resilient, Green, and Inclusive: Better Buildings for a Changing World

Development Challenge

As populations grow and urbanize, demand for buildings such as homes, schools, and hospitals is increasing sharply, with total building space worldwide expected to more than double by 2060. In the housing sector alone, 96,000 new housing units are required each day through 2030 in order to meet this demand. The rapid expansion threatens progress against climate change, as buildings already account for over a third of global CO2 emissions. At the same time, many existing and new structures remain highly prone to hazards like floods, storms, extreme heat, and earthquakes, putting more lives and livelihoods at risk, particularly among people with specific needs such as women and girls, the elderly, and people living with disabilities. As underscored by the 2025 World Development Report, a range of interventions, from enhancements in regulatory frameworks to strengthening compliance mechanisms, have increasingly proven effective in addressing these challenges. Nonetheless, many countries still lack the capacity and resources to adopt these solutions at scale.

World Bank Group Approach

The World Bank is at the forefront of global efforts to ensure that buildings are resilient, green, and inclusive for the long-term. First, the World Bank leverages its suite of financing instruments and mobilizes co-financing from both the public and private sectors to scale up financial support for this agenda. The types of interventions include construction and retrofitting programs for schools and hospitals, neighborhood and settlement upgrading, affordable housing programs, and resilient reconstruction of buildings after disasters and conflicts.

Second, the World Bank provides client countries with analytical and technical support, including with respect to improving relevant policies and regulations and enhancing institutional capacity to ensure compliance with those policies and regulations. Across all its engagements with countries, the World Bank also helps integrate strategies and considerations around disaster and climate resilience, green and low-carbon growth, and social and gender inclusion.

Third, the World Bank draws on its extensive experience to capture, distill, and disseminate scalable tools, knowledge, and solutions which countries across regions can adopt and standardize rapidly. The Bank has supported a global building code assessment spanning 22 countries, an Africa-wide building code assessment covering 48 countries, and regulatory guidance covering structural resilience, fire safety, green building, and universal accessibility. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) continues to support EDGE, an investment planning tool and certification standard on green buildings which has been used in 120 countries.

The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and the City Climate Finance Gap Fund are also major contributors in advancing the resilient, green, and inclusive buildings agenda. This agenda contributes directly to jobs, competitiveness, and economic development by, among others, strengthening construction markets, reducing service disruptions, enabling predictable regulatory environments, and catalyzing private sector investment in resilient and green building supply chains. All of these, in turn, generate more and better jobs while lowering long-term public costs.

Results and Outcomes

Delivering resilience, green, and inclusion benefits through integrated interventions

• Drawing on IFC's green building expertise, the Tamil Nadu Housing and Habitat Development Project (2020-25) built approximately 15,000 affordable housing units in the Indian state through public-private market interventions, including a state-sponsored investment fund. Housing units adopted a framework for resilient design and also received green building certifications. The project also contributed to a sharp rise in the share of housing units which were owned by women.
• In Romania, the Strengthening Disaster Risk Management Project (2018-present) upgraded seven fire stations, improving resilience and services for more than 1.7 million people. The upgrades ensured compliance with seismic codes, integrated renewable energy, and introduced gender-inclusive facilities for emergency personnel.
• In Türkiye, the Seismic Resilience and Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings Project (2021-present) has bolstered the resilience of 17 public buildings, including hospitals and university dormitories, serving over 17,500 people. In addition to structural strengthening measures, energy efficiency measures have also been implemented such that each of the 17 buildings now adhere to the country's minimum energy performance standards.

Strengthening regulatory frameworks for the built environment

• In Marshall Islands, the Urban Resilience Project (2022-present), which is expected to enhance the climate resilience of 25,000 people by 2030, has promoted resilient construction through a standard and permitting process introduced by the National Building Act of 2024.
• In Nepal, the Nepal Development Policy Financing with Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (DDO) (2020-2024) and Nepal Disaster Resilience Development Policy Credit with DDO (2024-present) have deepened resilience considerations in the national building code and 20 municipalities are expected to adopt digitized building permit systems by 2027.

Improving livelihoods, creating jobs

• In Pakistan, the Sindh Flood Emergency Housing Reconstruction Project (2022-present) has reconstructed nearly 300,000 homes after the 2022 floods, improving resilience for an estimated 1.7 million people. It also improved livelihoods by training nearly 20,000 masons on multi-hazard resilient construction.
• In Mozambique, the Emergency Resilient Recovery Project (2015-21) built or rehabilitated nearly 600 classrooms in cyclone- and flood-affected areas, benefitting approximately 160,000 children, and creating over 3,100 jobs during construction.

Lessons Learned

Strong government ownership is critical for ensuring the sustainability of building regulatory reforms. In Nepal, high level political commitment enabled enforcement of seismic standards despite capacity constraints, thus highlighting the importance of anchoring reforms in national priorities. As Nepal's experience also shows, pairing reforms with targeted capacity-building efforts can then help translate regulations into practice.

Experience from Nepal, Romania, and Türkiye underscore the importance of robust and context-specific assessments of existing building stocks and vulnerabilities to inform the scope and prioritization of investments. For instance, an assessment of seismic vulnerabilities of public buildings in Türkiye proved critical to the design of the Seismic Resilience and Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings Project.

Next Steps

The World Bank will focus on leveraging emerging technologies and innovations to scale impact, accelerate delivery, and generate more and better jobs. The World Bank's Safer Schools initiative has developed satellite imagery- and AI-enabled exposure assessment methodologies to analyze building portfolios and prioritize investments which are now being used in countries like the Kyrgyz Republic and Nepal. The World Bank has also been supporting efforts in Pakistan to explore the use of drones to verify compliance with resilience standards.

Another key focus will be to strengthen the World Bank's private sector engagement, including in the construction sector, with an eye toward catalyzing a further shift to green, resilient, and inclusive building practices. This will draw on a range of financing instruments, technical expertise, and partnerships with investors, insurers, and guarantors. For example, the Tamil Nadu Housing and Habitat Development Project shows how combining seed capital with technical assistance can help deliver resilient and affordable housing at scale.