Three-quarters of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has yet to be built, creating a critical opportunity to reduce emissions and advance the 1.5°C climate target. This session explores how industry commitments, aligned whole-life carbon measurement, and infrastructure certification can accelerate decarbonization, strengthen sustainable procurement, and mobilize investment in low-carbon infrastructure worldwide.  

Blue Zone: Side Event Room 03

Host Organizations: Architecture 2030 (lead), Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation (GIB), Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)

Partners: UNOPS, Bentley Systems, FIDIC 

Moderator: Yasemin Kologlu, Architecture 2030/HKS

Bentley Speaker: Rodrigo Fernandes, Global Director of Sustainability, Bentley Systems

Event agenda: https://seors.unfccc.int/reports/events_list.html 

Live broadcasting: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIfPYX_kMpQ 

How can infrastructure decarbonization move from ambition to delivery? This session explores two practical pathways: accelerating renewable energy deployment through digital engineering and reducing construction emissions with AI-powered workflows. Discover how real-time embodied carbon analysis helps teams compare design alternatives, balance carbon and cost, and make more sustainable decisions from the earliest project stages. 

Blue Zone: Denmark Pavilion

Host Organizations: Bentley Systems (lead organizer)

Partners: One Click LCA

Moderator: Savina Carluccio, International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI)

Bentley Speaker: Rodrigo Fernandes, Global Director of Sustainability, Bentley Systems

Event agenda: Programme: Denmark at COP31 | State of Green

As businesses face an increasingly interconnected landscape of climate, geopolitical, and systemic risks, resilience must go beyond risk management. This roundtable brings together business leaders, investors, researchers, and policymakers to explore how resilience science can inform business strategy, investment, and governance. The discussion will focus on practical ways for organisations to cope with disruption, adapt to change, and transform while strengthening the wider systems and value chains on which long-term value creation depends. 

Blue Zone: Swedish Pavilion 

Bentley Speaker: Rodrigo Fernandes, Global Director of Sustainability, Bentley Systems 

Infrastructure can withstand a shock while the essential services it supports fail. Grounded in the Resilience Science Must-Knows and drawing on the Global Resilience Partnership –Bentley learning collaboration, this session explores how systems thinking changes what infrastructure gets planned, designed and financed. Bringing together science, engineering and finance perspectives, it uses a circular economy case to examine resource dependencies, adaptive capacity and who benefits from investment. The discussion will identify how financing, incentives and governance can protect essential services, strengthen local capabilities and enable lasting systems change for people, economies and nature. 

Blue Zone: Zero Waste Forum Pavilion 

Co-hosts: Stockholm Resilience Centre, Global Green Growth Institute, Global Resilience Partnership 

Bentley Speaker: Edita Kemzuraite, Sustainability Program Manager, Bentley Systems 

Event agenda: https://cop.sifiratikvakfi.org/en/cop31-programme/  

The session brings together twelve UN Global Compact Country Networks, including the COP31 host country Türkiye and negotiations presidency Australia, alongside other networks with mature just transition debates in energy, infrastructure and finance. It will provide a coordinated, cross-regional business perspective on translating just transition commitments into action. 

Blue Zone: UN Türkiye Pavilion 

Host Organizations: UN Global Compact Country Network Türkiye, United Kingdom, South Africa, Portugal, Germany, Greece, France, Spain, Netherlands, Georgia, Ukraine, Australia 

Bentley Speaker: Diogo Arezes, Sustainability Technology Manager, Bentley Systems  instead of TBD

The discussion will bring together business representatives from different sectors to explore practical approaches to accelerating the green transition, strengthening climate resilience and addressing key challenges, including the role of policy, investment and collaboration. Bentley Systems’ perspective is particularly welcomed on how digital technologies and innovation can contribute to these efforts, drawing on its experience and expertise. 

Blue Zone: Greek Pavilion 

Host Organization: UN Global Compact Network Greece 

Bentley Speaker: Diogo Arezes, Sustainability Technology Manager, Bentley Systems 

Cities experience climate change through water (too little, too much and too dirty), yet the innovations that can help them respond are still too often piloted in isolation and too rarely scaled. Closing the Urban Water Resilience and Locally Led Climate Action Day, this session brings together UN, national government, infrastructure resilience, engineering, standards and digital technology partners to examine proven and emerging solutions, from leakage reduction and water reuse to flood forecasting, digital twins and decentralised treatment, and to ask what it takes to scale them. Treating technology as an enabler rather than an end in itself, the discussion will focus on the standards, data, skills, governance and finance conditions that turn climate commitments into resilient water infrastructure and services delivered on the ground. 

Blue Zone: Water for Climate Pavilion 

Host Organization: Bentley Systems, UN-Habitat, ASTM International and CDRI – Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure 

Bentley Moderator: Rodrigo Fernandes, Global Director of Sustainability, Bentley Systems 

Event Agenda: https://waterforclimate.net/events/innovation-for-the-urban-water-challenge-too-little-too-much-and-too-dirty/  

This closed meeting will engage the private sector and other organizations to discuss water resilience related topics. 

Blue Zone: UNFCCC Meeting Rooms 

Bentley Speaker: Rodrigo Fernandes, Global Director of Sustainability, Bentley Systems 

The session explores how to translate national water-related climate commitments into localized action. Organized around the preliminary findings of UN-Habitat's report, the event examines four key implementation pillars: finance, capacity development, technology transfer and innovation and multi-level governance to empower local authorities and water utilities on the frontline of climate resilience. 

Blue Zone: UN-Habitat Pavilion: Cities, Buildings and Cooling 

Host Organization: UN-Habitat 

Moderator: Hezekiah Pireh, Water and Sanitation Team Leader, Urban Basic Services Section, UN-Habitat 

Bentley Speaker: Amelia Burnett, Digital Financial Strategies Director, Bentley Systems 

Climate ambition must now translate into implementation. This session explores how governments, infrastructure owners, MDBs, financiers and industry can finance, procure, contract, deliver and scale climate-resilient infrastructure through collaboration, quality-led procurement and leadership. 

Blue Zone: Side Event Room 6 - KATİP ÇELEBİ

Host Organizations: Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils (FIDIC), Atlantic Council, ECOWAS Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE), ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI)

Bentley Speaker: Amelia Burnett, Digital Financial Strategies Director, Bentley Systems 

Event agenda: https://seors.unfccc.int/reports/events_list.html