Legal Regulation of Green Buildings and Sustainable Infrastructure: Challenges for Implementation

Abstract

Green buildings and sustainable infrastructure have been placed at the centre of environmental governance and climate policy due to the pursuit of sustainable development in the world. The construction sector contributes to a significant portion of the energy used worldwide, as well as greenhouse gas emissions, making the regulatory intervention of the construction industry and infrastructure development one of the most important elements of climate control measures. To this end, jurisdictions throughout the world have implemented a plethora of legal tools, such as building regulations, environmental legislation and laws dealing with energy-efficiency and the provision of certification programs and financial incentives, to encourage sustainable construction methods. Although these legal frameworks are becoming more sophisticated, their practical application is unequal and often short of stipulated policy aims. The paper provides a critical analysis of legal control of green buildings and sustainable infrastructure and focuses on the ongoing gap between regulatory purpose and ground-level performance. The study uses a doctrinal and comparative method of analysis to map regulatory frameworks that are in operation at international, national, and local levels, using the case of the United States, the European Union, India, China, Australia, and Singapore. It assesses the relationship between legal binding requirements and soft-law devices like voluntary certification systems and marks their growing importance as de-facto regulative resources.

In the paper, the regulatory fragmentation, lack of coordination across levels of governance, technical complexity, lack of capacity, economic and financial barriers, poor enforcement mechanisms, institutional resistance, measurement and verification gaps, and social equity, concerns have been identified as the main elements of implementation. All these difficulties undermine the effectiveness of regulation and the ability of the green-building laws to achieve the desired environmental and social impact. By comparing the two countries, the research proves that successful regulatory outcomes are based not just on designs of laws but on institutional capacity, credibility of enforcement, economic congruence or alignment, and stakeholder participation. Finally, the paper recommendations on the avenues of improving implementation with a focus on regulatory harmonisation, enhanced enforcement and accountability, lifecycle-performance-monitoring integration, the use of specific financial instruments, and reactive regulatory strategies. The research has made contributions to interdisciplinary research and provided a practical contribution to the policymaker, legal practitioner, and any other stakeholders of the infrastructure who want to support sustainable development in built environment by bridging legal analysis with the perspectives of civil and environmental engineering.