In 1994, the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) held an international green building conference in London, UK. As a part of the international Green Building Challenge process, now operated by the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE), an international conference on green building was held in Vancouver in 1998. Following these initial ground-breaking events, CIB and iiSBE joined forces to co-sponsor international conferences on sustainable building in Maastricht in 2000, in September 2002 in Oslo. The next conference in the series is to be held in Tokyo in September 2005.
In each of these conferences, one or more local organizations have taken financial and organizational responsibility, while the GBC countries (now represented by iiSBE) and CIB have been co-sponsors. In this role, iiSBE and CIB have given organizational advice and have used their networks to ensure a large audience for the events. This role has been effective, as evidenced by an attendance of more than 600 in Vancouver, some 850 in Maastricht, and 1,100 in Oslo. SB05 organizers expect more than 1,500 delegates to attend that event.
In 200,3 the Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), became a third co-sponsor for the next round in this series of events.
In 2004, the three-co-sponsors assisted in the organization of several regional sustainable building conferences, which took place in Brazil (July 2004), South Africa (September 2004), China (September 2004), Poland (October 2004), and will take place in Egypt (December 2004), Malaysia (April 2005) and Greece (June 2005). All of these regional events have been designed to elucidate sustainable building issues in these regions, and to create a strong link with the global event in Tokyo in September 2005, chiefly through the tabling of regional SB strategy documents, including agendas for research and action programmes. The relevance for this proposal call is that we hope to sponsor a similar series of regional SB conferences in 2007, with links to the 2008 conference. The process for establishing the SB07 Regional events will be announced soon after Tokyo SB05.
iiSBE, CIB and UNEP now invite Expressions of Interest for organizations to be named as hosts of the next conference in the series, to be held during October or November of 2008. We invite you to submit an electronic Expression of Interest of not more than 12 pages, plus any necessary appendices, to Nils Larsson of iiSBE no later than 12:00 Ottawa time, Wednesday, June 01, 2005. Kindly register your interest in applying to larsson@iisbe.org so that a list can be constructed for any future announcements concerning this RFP. Answers to requests for clarifications will be made available to all applicants on the list.
A decision on the selected location will be made by a Committee consisting of representatives of the three co-sponsors, plus a representative of the previous conference host. The decision will be announced at SB05 in Tokyo during the period September 25-27, 2005. The Committee will issue a public rationale for its decision after the process is completed. Additional information can be found at the following: www.sb05.com, www.cibworld.nl, www.iisbe.org and www.uneptie.org.