The Landscape Institute (LI) has announced how it, its members and the wider landscape sector can best tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis.
The science has been abundantly clear: we need to take immediate action. This plan builds on the work of leaders and members, staff, and an expert climate and biodiversity response panel. It has been a priority area for the LI since June 2019, when the LI board declared a climate and biological diversity emergency.
“Landscape professionals are uniquely positioned to tackle this crisis head-on,” explained LI President Adam White FLI. “For years we’ve worked with nature, designed green infrastructure, and enhanced communities, respecting the past while thinking of the future. We have the power to design, plan and manage resilient places and restore natural habitats – and be low carbon when we do so.”
Since the declaration last year, the LI has already begun to enact many of the recommendations outlined in the plan:
- Equipping the profession to provide solutions
- Regulating and monitoring the sector to encourage greater sustainability
- Advocating with governments and industry for measures to address the crisis
- Leading through our own sustainable business operations
Major commitments outlined in the plan include:
- Reducing the LI’s corporate carbon footprint to net zero by 2029, the year of our centenary.
- Policy, influencing and practice: New policy development on issues such as Environmental Net Gain and acceleration of technical guidance on issues such as embodied carbon in hard and soft landscape materials.
- Professional Standards: New draft Global Ethical Principles for the Landscape Profession and a new draft LI Code of Practice (to be consulted on later this year), both referencing sustainability and the climate and biodiversity emergencies.
- CPD: Our new CPD policy takes effect on 1 July 2020, requiring professional members to dedicate at least five out of 25 hours’ CPD activity to skills related to climate resilience, sustainability and biodiversity.
- New entry requirements: We are now consulting on entry standards for future LI members that include a range of biodiversity, climate, resilience and sustainability-related skill sets.
- Celebrating the profession’s contribution: New LI Award 2020 categories include the Sir David Attenborough Award for Enhancing Biodiversity and the Excellence in Tackling Climate Change New judging criteria that include sustainability have been introduced.
- Training and support: A new programme of CPD days, webinars and local branch events will increase focus on key climate and biodiversity topics.
“Our plan is a commitment to collaboration across our sector,” said LI Honorary Secretary Romy Rawlings. “We hope to influence others to move more quickly on climate and biodiversity action, just as we are – by supporting our members in delivering high-quality sustainable, biodiverse and climate-resilient projects.”
Read the action plan in full here.
