In Summer 2021, the Construction Industry Council (CIC) Climate Change Committee published ‘Carbon Zero: the professional institutions’ climate action plan‘. As one of the plan’s 40 signatories and 11 delivery partners, the Landscape Institute (LI) is helping the CIC take real action in the face of the climate and biodiversity emergencies.
At the heart of the plan are ten Workstreams that reflect the main target areas for built environment professionals. The Landscape Institute (LI) is leading Workstream 8, which explores the three main themes of water, biodiversity and urban heat, which play a pivotal role in climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation.
Workstream 8’s continuing focus is on knowledge discovery and sharing, making sense of the body of work on adaptation and resilience, which has already been done, spotting gaps in information and identifying opportunities for further research. In all this, we look to highlight activity and evidence which is most practical and useful to members of supporting professional institutions. In this way, we can usefully seek to establish a baseline of awareness, knowledge and understanding.
Workstream 8 has brought together leading industry experts on key themes around climate adaptation and resilience to produce a series of free one-hour webinars.
A changing climate disrupts water patterns, leading to increased risk of flooding, drought, and coastal erosion. This multidisciplinary webinar explores innovative strategies for navigating this complex challenge.
Rising heat levels across our environments, driven by climate change and growing urbanisation, are resulting in increased frequency, intensity and duration of extreme heat events. This issue is complex, extending beyond temperature. To understand it, we need to look at a broad range of microclimate interactions – humidity, air and water patterns, vegetation and water networks.
Balancing optimism with reality is essential for empowering collective actions to restore biodiversity loss and recover nature, our primary resource. Adopting a holistic understanding of nature and climate is also critical, as a changing climate disrupts ecosystems and natural processes, placing stresses and vulnerabilities upon landscapes, habitats and species.
