Who we are
The Concrete Futures Network is a global network of civil society organizations, think tanks, technical and policy experts, climate-finance specialists, and community and climate-justice advocates working to decarbonize cement and concrete.
The Network binds no one. Every participating organization stays fully independent in its own advocacy, research, funding relationships, and public positions. What we share is a purpose, a set of principles, and a common voice where needed.
Why the Network exists
Cement accounts for roughly 8% of global CO₂ emissions, and close to 90% of the world’s projected production and consumption of concrete by 2050 will be in the Global South. Yet the agenda on cement decarbonization is set largely by industry and by Global North institutions. Civil society effort has been fragmented, under-resourced, and absent from the rooms where standards, procurement rules, and finance criteria are decided.
Cement is made in more than 2,600 plants across over 160 countries, and a handful of multinational producers shape much of the market. The people who live with its pollution, and who will build with most of the world’s future concrete, have had the least say in how it changes.
The Network exists to change that: to connect the local organizations closest to cement’s impacts, to give them a shared platform and a common voice where needed, and to place Global South leadership at the centre of the sector’s transition rather than at its margin.
The Network is led by its participants, with Global South organizations at the center, not as contributors to someone else’s agenda, but as the people setting it.
Members come together regularly, form working groups around shared priorities, and build national and regional efforts where local organizations lead on the questions that matter most in their own countries.
Industrious Labs convenes and supports the Network. It hosts the gatherings, carries the communications and knowledge products, and helps raise resources, but the Network’s positions belong to its members, and Industrious Labs does not speak in its name.
