As leaders gather for the UN Climate Change conference, read our introduction to how landscape provides unique integrated solutions to the climate and biodiversity emergencies.
2024 has seen devastating flooding in the US and Europe, fire in the Amazon, and drought in Southern Africa. It is also expected to be the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record set in 2023.
As leaders gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29, the need for climate action has never been greater.
Landscape solutions
For communities around the world, a landscape-led approach provides unique, integrated solutions to the dual emergencies in climate change and biodiversity loss, benefitting people, place and nature:
- Reducing and sequestering carbon by prioritising nature-based solutions in the development and management of land
- Enhancing nature to build adaption and resilience and promote good health in vulnerable communities
- Taking a landscape perspective to manage land as a finite, multi-functional resource and component of natural and cultural heritage
Read more about how a landscape-led approach can respond to the climate emergency in Landscape 2030, which the LI published in the run up to COP 26 in Glasgow.
Read more about how landscape-led approaches contribute to the UN SDGs in IFLA’s ‘A Landscape Architectural Guide to the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals’.
Landscape and Carbon
Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced at COP29 on Tuesday 12 November that the UK has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 81% below 1990 levels by 2025.
The target has been set by the UK’s new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement, details of which were published in a statement by Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Milliband, as Starmer took the stage in Baku.
Mandated for all COP nations, NDCs determine how each country will reduce its national emissions. The UK’s targets have been set on advice from the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), and put clean energy as a vehicle for growth at the heart of the UK’s proposed net zero transition.
Belinda Gordon, Director of Policy & Public Affairs, Landscape Institute, said:
“The Landscape Institute welcomes the scaling up of the UK’s climate targets and new energy infrastructure is vital if we are to address climate change.
In developing it, the essential role of landscapes in achieving climate resilience must be recognised, and those with landscape skills used to ensure multiple benefits can be delivered.
Planned strategically, new energy infrastructure can help to connect green infrastructure and support nature recovery networks, boosting biodiversity and climate resilience alongside net zero targets.
Planning policy will play an essential role, and as well as promoting renewable energy, reforms to the planning system must focus on reducing energy demand and decarbonising the built environment to support net zero ambitions.
Landscape design and management can and must play a vital role in achieving these goals, and our pioneering programme, Landscape and Carbon, is progressing important action on this.”
Read more about a landscape-led approach to energy and infrastructure development in our response to ‘Proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework’.
With the built environment sector contributing 25% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, its decarbonisation must be considered an essential component in the UK’s route to net zero.
A landscape-led approach reduces carbon by prioritising nature-based solutions in the development and management of land, while simultaneously delivering a range of integrated solutions in climate resilience, biodiversity, and public health.
‘Landscape and Carbon’ is the pioneering programme by the LI and BALI set up to drive decarbonisation in the landscape sector. Since launching in March 2024, a Steering Group has been formed and agreed the next phase of work, and the LI has met with key international stakeholders including the American Society of Landscape Architects, Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, and the International Federation of Landscape Architects.
To meet the challenges presented by the climate and biodiversity emergencies, international collaboration and knowledge sharing is essential. The LI will be monitoring the implications of COP29 closely, and will continue to work with partners across the built environment in the UK and beyond to drive landscape-led solutions to climate challenges, and progress towards net zero by 2050.
Adaption and resilience
The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, driven by climate change, underlines the essential need to build adaption and resilience.
Last year at COP28 in UAE, Parties adopted the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, which works towards;
“Reducing vulnerability and enhancing adaptive capacity and resilience, as well as the collective well-being of all people, the protection of livelihoods and economies, and the preservation and regeneration of nature, for current and future generations.”
This is the work of landscape professionals around the world.
By harnessing landscape-led, nature-based solutions to both adaption and resilience, they can be integrated into any type of land use change or development, and help to reduce the impact of flooding, wildfire, drought, and extreme heat.
In the run up to COP29, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) and UN-Habitat to address key challenges in global sustainable urbanisation.
This marked a vital step towards more landscape-led development, but more progress at COP29 is essential: We need to see targets for financial support for adaption both met and working in sync with National Adaption Plans (NAPs).
To this end, a workshop being run by ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) in the blue zone this year will show delegates how their countries can leverage landscape-led, nature-based solutions as part of their NAPs.
Landscape solutions at COP29
This year at COP, a workshop focusing on landscape solutions will be held in the blue zone (where official negotiations take place) for the first time.
Hosted by ASLA, an observer to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the workshop will provide delegates an opportunity to learn about the unique potential of landscape to drive climate action alongside a range of other positive benefits.
The session will be led by Pamela Conrad (Founder, Climate Positive Design) and Kotchakorn Voraakhom (Founder Landprocess), both of whom are members of the IFLA Climate and Biodiversity Working Group.
“We’re excited to lead an event where notable country leaders and technical experts will present success stories and lessons learned throughout the world. Together, we will explore pathways to scaling up nature-based solutions,” said Conrad.
Watch out for Working with Nature: Landscape Action in National Adaptation Plans in the blue zone schedule.
