Press release

Bouygues Construction and WWF France
sign a partnership agreement on sustainable cities

13-01-2015

WWF France and Bouygues Construction have signed a three-year partnership agreement in the framework of WWF’s “Reinventing the City” initiative, which seeks to bring together businesses and local authorities in the quest to establish more sustainable urban lifestyles.

Cities are among the highest emitters of greenhouse gas. By 2050, the world’s cities will have to accommodate more than 6 billion people, roughly double the number of city-dwellers today, which is estimated at 3 billion.

Faced with this global challenge, cities will need to reinvent themselves if they are to reduce their energy and water consumption, set up a circular economy, improve their transport management, construct increasingly connected buildings, and integrate nature in the city to provide inhabitants with a better quality of living.

This partnership will make it possible to carry out a forward-looking international research on issues such as these, which are essential for our common future. A leading French construction company will be associated with the work on these topics currently being undertaken by WWF platforms in Sweden and China.

Functioning along similar lines to the links already in place between WWF France and the Lyon Confluence eco-neighbourhood, the purpose of the partnership with Bouygues Construction is to develop demonstrators of sustainable neighbourhoods in France and to communicate a vision of sustainable cities around the world. 

The partnership is part of the positive solutions agenda for the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015, which is supported by WWF France. It is designed to enable WWF and Bouygues Construction to pool their efforts and research findings on new urban lifestyles, which combine energy conservation, shared services, efficient management of environmental services such as water and waste, local and circular economies, sustainable and responsible new technology applications, incorporating and enhancing nature in the city, the fight against urban sprawl, the well-being of residents, etc.

Meanwhile, Bouygues Construction is renewing its membership of WWF’s Global Forest & Trade Network, which aims to eliminate illegal logging and to improve the management of forests. By encouraging trade links between companies committed to responsible forestry management, the Forest and Trade Network creates market conditions that are favourable to the conservation of threatened forests around the world while providing economic and social benefits for the businesses and people that depend on them.