WSDS 2026: Green and Resilient Built Environment for Viksit Bharat

India’s ambition for Viksit Bharat by 2047 implies a major expansion of the built environment, with 70–75 per cent of what is required by 2047 still to be constructed. At the same time, India’s urban footprint is set to grow, with 40–42 per cent of the population expected to live in urban locations by 2030, creating new demand across housing, commercial real estate and infrastructure.

Buildings and construction contribute 25–33 per cent of India’s total national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This includes both operational and embodied emissions. With urban built space projected to double or more over the next few decades, the demand for cement and steel will surge, driving up embodied emission totals if unaddressed. This means decisions we make today will influence decades of emissions locked into materials and construction techniques. Infrastructure is already a major demand driver, accounting for 30 per cent of cement demand, alongside rural and urban housing needs, highlighting how the scale and speed of construction will influence emissions outcomes.

Thus, addressing embodied carbon in India’s built environment is not just a technical exercise — it’s a policy and market imperative. With India’s buildings likely to dominate future emissions unless unchecked, embedding embodied carbon thinking into design, regulation, procurement, and corporate climate targets can create lasting climate benefits while enabling sustainable growth. However, there exist certain challenges and opportunities.

Against this backdrop, the proposed session will deep dive into the decarbonisation in the value chain through the lens of embodied carbon emissions from material extraction, manufacturing, transport, and construction. It will also reflect India-specific variations by region (North, South, East, West) and by typology—urban vs rural, and within urban areas, residential vs commercial—to enable more grounded discussion on where emissions sit within the value chain and how they can be addressed. The panellists will also deliberate on opportunities and challenges in driving the built environment green and resilient.

The objectives of the thematic track include bringing together industry and sector experts to examine the opportunities and challenges of delivering a green and resilient built environment at the scale required for 2047 while keeping the focus on:

- How embodied carbon is understood and managed across India’s geographies and construction typologies - What role policy instruments, especially green public procurement, can play in accelerating adoption of lower-carbon materials and practices - How emerging mechanisms such as the Indian Carbon Market / CCTS and the relevance of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement may shape incentives and accounting for emissions reductions in the built environment value chain

Key takeaways from the session will include a shared framing of carbon in construction, clarity on embodied carbon and how this plays out across regions and typologies (urban/rural; residential/commercial). Additionally, a practical view of enabling levers will be provided, exploring what green public procurement and carbon market mechanisms (including the CCTS timeline and market design direction) could mean for scaling lower-carbon construction in India.

The World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS) is the annual flagship Track II initiative organized by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Instituted in 2001, the Summit series has a legacy of over two decades for making ‘sustainable development’ a globally shared goal. The only independently convened international Summit on sustainable development and environment, based in the Global South, WSDS strives to provide long-term solutions for the benefit of global communities by assembling the world’s most enlightened leaders and thinkers on a single platform. The 25th edition of the annual flagship event of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)—the World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS)—will be held from 25-27 February 2026 in New Delhi. The deliberations of the Silver Jubilee edition of the Summit will focus on the umbrella theme of Parivartan: Transformations: Vision, Voices and Values for Sustainable Development.