This interview with Rehema Kabare, Programs Associate for Africa with the Global Buildings Performance Network, was originally published as a FORESIGHT Climate and Energy podcast. Foresight Climate and Energy does not necessarily hold the views expressed in this piece.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Urban Report. I’m your host, Sam Morgan. The built environment is an absolutely fundamental part of the energy transition, as we all know. If we fail to decarbonize it in the most sustainable way possible, our chances of overall success will be greatly diminished.
Coming up on today’s show, I’m looking beyond the conventional aspects of building decarbonisation, the insulation, the heat pumps, the better building practices, and focusing on something that affects the entire energy transition. It’s often said that the clean energy system we are in the middle of building must avoid making the mistakes of the fossil fuel-dominated system we’re trying to leave behind.
What good is a wind farm if a carbon-absorbing peatland is bulldozed to build it? Electricity pylons are counterproductive if an ancient forest has to be logged to install them, and so on. This is also true about making sure people are not left behind or excluded from the energy transition based on their race, place of origin, personal circumstances, or rank in society.
Today, I’m talking with Rehema Kabare, who is the programmes associate for Africa with the Global Buildings Performance Network. Rehema, who joined me live from Nairobi, led the development of the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Toolkit, known as JEDI. Our discussion covers the objectives of JEDI, the principles it’s trying to instil, and who could best benefit from it.
Hope you enjoy the chat.
Rehema, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the podcast. Today we’re talking all about how we can make sure that accessibility and inclusivity are really mainstreamed and woven into how we can make sure our built environment is improved and developed in the years to come.
Firstly, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. And to maybe get us started, tell us about what we’re talking about here and the toolkit that you’ve been involved with what kind of contribution it’s going to make to the topic that we’re talking about today.
Thank you, Sam, and thank you for having me. It’s very lovely. I will dive right into it. We at the Global Buildings Performance Network have developed something we’re calling the Building Fair Futures Toolkit. This is a practical assessment tool that provides guidance for embedding JEDI. JEDI stands for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity.
It addresses how to embed these principles within work in the built environment, and this is for projects across the world when it comes to developing decarbonization roadmaps. It helps teams ensure that real decisions can be made and not just talked about.
I also have to mention that this is not a compliance toolkit, but rather a guiding one. We’re not saying you have to use it in one strict way or another, but it is there to guide decision-making.
In other parts of the energy transition and building renovations, 2026 is considered to be a really crucial year. We need to start doing things now to meet our targets. Is 2026 crucial for what we’re talking about here as well?
Yeah. I must mention that because we’re scaling climate action very, very fast, we also have to talk about who is benefiting. And who benefits is not just about access to adequate housing, but also who is getting access to the new green jobs coming up within the sustainable buildings industry, who is gaining access to economic growth, and who is benefiting from capacity-building initiatives.
At this point, decarbonization is not just an engineering solution. It also needs to be a social one, right? Because the cost of exclusion is very, very high. We do not want to lock ourselves into future inequality, because reversing that is going to cost a lot of time and money—or maybe never be reversed at all.
Avoiding bad practices
Maybe talk to us about some of the bad practices and negative approaches that are currently happening, and that JEDI hopes to address and rectify.
There are many. I’ll only speak about a few.
One is box-ticking. This means looking compliant or appearing to satisfy regulations, and many projects and companies do this very often.
The other is name-dropping, especially at the end of projects, to make the work sound “inclusive”. It looks and sounds good, but in reality it is not meaningful.
Then there is tokenism, where people are showcased within a project but their voices are not actually heard. This is very common where vulnerable voices are exploited but not meaningfully included in working projects.
There are many more examples, but these are some of the most prevalent across the sector, not just in Africa but globally.
Governance, procurement, and community engagement
Those are some of the bad things we want to avoid, but tell us about the positives that JEDI wants to mainstream and the key concepts involved.
Within the toolkit we highlight several things.
One is how governance and planning play a key role in decision-making. Who is making these decisions? How are they making them? And who is affected by them?
The other is procurement. We’re looking at how finance and budgeting play a key role in ensuring JEDI principles are actively embedded within a project. That means looking at where money is allocated, how it is spent, and how it is reported back at the end of the day.
Then there is community engagement. I talked earlier about some of the bad practices, so we ask: who is engaged within a project? How are they engaged? Are their voices actually coming through, or does it all sound generic?
Finally, there is how data is used to monitor and learn. Measuring impact is extremely important because it is the only way we can scale good work—by monitoring and learning from good practice.
From local projects to global application
At what level do you see JEDI’s principles being most effective? Is it local, national, regional, or company level?
It’s really anywhere. As long as you have work happening, you definitely need some JEDI principles within your project.
I’ll explain how we developed the toolkit. It was informed by a local-level project in Kenya, but it is intended for a global audience. Based on how we work at GBPN, we have a bottom-up theory of change, where local actions should influence global ones.
So the work done at the local level has informed a toolkit that can be used at any level. If you’re in local government, subnational government, or a national institution developing a roadmap, you should be able to use this toolkit and ensure JEDI is embedded within your project.
The same applies if you’re working within a non-governmental organization and developing a roadmap or similar initiative. Beyond roadmaps, you can also use it within projects or within your company to assess how well—or how badly—you are doing.
So it can be used in local contexts, at national or regional levels, and really anywhere in the world, especially for roadmap development.
The resources needed for implementation
Maybe talk to us about the kind of resources needed to effectively implement JEDI. Are there financial requirements? Time resources? What level of commitment is needed?
First and foremost is intentionality. Intentionality is the biggest resource required. The company or project actually has to want to make this work.
The second is investment, both in people and staffing, and also financially. Where money goes is very important. If we can finance decarbonisation projects and major government or non-government pipelines, then we can definitely allocate some of that funding towards JEDI implementation.
It’s all about making existing climate investment work better for more people.
The toolkit is just a starting point to help users understand why they need to allocate more resources, and how and where to make the maximum impact. Talking about inclusion is one thing, but being able to see a plan based on an assessment is very different, because then you know exactly where to allocate resources.
For example, you might need labour resources to ensure implementation is working. You might need financial resources to address challenges within a project that relate to JEDI. So yes, a number of resources are needed, but it’s not actually as complicated as people may think.
The risks of exclusion
What are the risks if we don’t get this right? How could wider climate action be affected if JEDI principles are not mainstreamed properly?
Most definitely the biggest risk is that we will not achieve the climate goals we are working so hard towards. If half the population is excluded from decision-making, then how do we expect the solutions we create to work for them?
There’s a statistic I often refer to. The building industry or construction sector has roughly between three and 15 percent women, which is a very low figure compared to the number of women affected by the solutions being developed—almost 55 percent.
And this is only one category: women and gender. There are many others—people with disabilities, young people, and more.
If these groups are excluded from decision-making and practical action on the ground, then we risk locking in an unequal future. And correcting that later is going to be very difficult and very expensive.
These are also the people who disproportionately suffer from climate disruption. If they are not part of the solution, then we cannot make real-world solutions actually work for them.
The next phase of the work
Finally, what is the next big milestone for JEDI? What do you see as the next important moment for these principles to be more widely accepted and mainstreamed?
I’ll actually talk about what we’re currently doing at GBPN, which is very exciting. We are focusing on implementation because having a plan is only the first step. Making it work on the ground is what really matters.
We recently launched an initiative called She Builds Sustainably. It’s a global initiative that supports the transition towards inclusive, healthy and affordable buildings by strengthening women’s participation, both at leadership level and at practical local level.
The initiative currently runs in two regions. In Africa, it is operating in Kenya, where the project focuses on capacity-building and closing the skills gap. In Indonesia, it aims to strengthen female leadership across both the energy and building sectors. These are the biggest gaps we identified through our work in the two regions.
The other major milestone is momentum. Developing a plan is only the first step. We need to scale this work and make it meaningful for a much bigger audience.
So we are currently working on knowledge-sharing across our different programmes and global networks to identify and scale what really works, and to turn that into global momentum for gender action.
Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Rehema, to talk about your really important work. I think what you said about getting this right now—before we bake in bad practices and leave too many people behind—is incredibly important.
We’ll link to all of your work in the show notes so listeners can learn more about what you’re doing. Thank you so much for joining me and giving your time to talk about this.
Thank you so much, Sam, for having me. It was lovely. Thank you.
Closing reflections
My personal view is that the energy transition has all the ingredients needed to make the world a better place—not just by eliminating climate-wrecking emissions and health-damaging air pollution, but by including more people in the very functioning of society.
Hopefully, all of the principles Rehema outlined will receive the attention and resources needed to mainstream them, not just into building decarbonisation programmes, but into the wider energy transition and the energy system itself.
Many thanks for joining me for this edition of The Urban Report. I’ll link to GBPN’s work in the show notes so you can explore it further. Join me next time for another look at our built environment and how it is enabling the energy transition.