Today, buildings still account for almost half of the global energy consumption and carbon emission. This highlights the necessity to increase energy efficiency requirements worldwide in a common effort to reduce the construction sector's impacts on the environment. The current energy policies are driving toward a design that relies on airtight and highly insulated envelopes. As a consequence, energy efficient houses are found to have insufficient indoor air change rates, impacting on the indoor air quality and resulting in higher latent loads.

Ecosystem-based adaptation (Eba) uses biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of a larger adaptation strategy to climate change. While the conservation and sustainable development community considers EbA to be a strong method of addressing climate change and its associated challenges, there is still a tendency for policy makers to implement traditional engineering solutions for adaptation, rather than investing in EbA.