Biodiversity, BREEAM and LEED

The UKGBC released a report called “Biodiversity and the built environment” on 31 March 2009. The portal was a couple of days late but was available when I checked on 3 April. I would recommend reading the full report (a quick read at 38 pages, mostly appendices). Below, I pull out the pertinent information regarding BREEAM and LEED.

Biodiversity and ecology are the areas I am least qualified to talk about under sustainable buildings, so it’s good to see some more guidance.

The report focuses on new build, rather than existing sites, but most of the advice seems suitable for both scenarios. There is a useful section on page 14 which covers UK Biodiversity Action Plans – the portal has much more information on this:

The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) has established the framework and criteria for identifying priority species and habitat types for conservation. National priorities and targets are set and action is to be taken at a local level. Today there are over 160 Local Biodiversity Action Plans (LBAPs) in England, Scotland and Wales and LBAPs are currently being set up in Northern Ireland.

The BAP system classifies priority habitats into broader habitat groupings. The most relevant broad category for the construction industry is ‘Towns, Cities and Development’. However, within this category there is currently only one priority habitat, which is ‘Open Mosaic Habitats on Previously Developed Land’ applicable to some brownfield land.

The task group recommends that further additions should be made to the broad ‘Towns, Cities and Development’ category, in order to ensure that features of the built environment are recognised as important in their own right.

The group recommends that features of the built environment that provide vital habitat to species and plants should be recognised for their importance such as living roofs and walls and other biodiversity features. This would recognise industry efforts to provide for building-reliant species in new structures where traditional roosting or nesting places would no longer be present due to the need to employ techniques to reduce carbon emissions from housing, such as swift nesting and bat roosting features incorporated into new housing projects.

Part of the report reviews existing tools, including BREEAM and LEED and assesses the quality of the biodiversity credits within each. From page 11:

Each of these tools incentivises the consideration of biodiversity in new construction, and tools are therefore a significant driver for changing industry practice.

…

In summary, the task group found:

• There is no common approach to assessment of biodiversity across the principal sustainability tools.
• Sustainability tools could be improved to assess biodiversity in a more meaningful way, which better assesses the value of habitats that are gained and lost.
• Improvements could be made to the tools which focus users on making a genuine contribution to local ecological value, rather than unintentionally encouraging a ‘tickbox’ approach.
• Sustainability tools do not encourage the industry to appropriately monitor and therefore meaningfully maintain and manage habitats created through development.

The results of the review of BREEAM and LEED is below:

A comment in Appendix 5 covers some concerns regarding the need for a professional ecologist:

During initial consultations both parties raised strong concerns over the task group’s suggestion that a professional ecologist should be appointed to the project team as a pre-requisite to achieving credit for biodiversity. The inclusion of an ecologist could potentially increase costs and not be a viable option for smaller projects.

Anyone looking at the list of letters after my name can work out I am a fan of professional qualifications. Whilst a small job may be able to ‘get away’ without an ecologist, I would agree that suitably qualified and experienced ecologists should be used on most BREEAM projects. And as I say above, it is the area I am least qualified to do myself.

It is possible to roughly map the land use and ecology credits in BREEAM to LEED in order to compare the two. This covers more than just diodiversity and ecology, with land use intrinsically linked:

The other credit in LEED which indirectly affects biodiversity is SS7.2 Heat Island Effect – Roof which has no BREEAM equivalent. This credit could encourage the use of green roofs, which will have an effect on biodiversity.

As the UKGBC note, LEED does not promote habitat and wildlife as well as BREEAM. I’m not sure why this might be, but I do expect the two schemes to continue to converge in the next few years. Perhaps LEED 3.0 will address this shortcoming.

There are plenty of opportunities to improve biodiversity in new build projects – the portal looks a great resource for finding out how. It also looks as if other topics will be added in the future.

edit: I was clearing out some old drafts when I came across this nugget of information which has relevance to the above: “From 1st October 2006, all public sector bodies, from the police to the BBC, will have to consider biodiversity in the work they do. The new duty comes under Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act.”

For further details, search on the portal.

Tagged as: biodiversity, BREEAM, guidance, LEED, UKGBC