Professional Practice
Climate and Biodiversity Action Event Planning Guide
Event Goals
- Address key climate change issues most pressing for each region:
- Existing and predicted
- Unique to your region, or shared with other regions
- Identify key strategies or policies that are in place or needed to address issues.
- Create a broader network of expertise and connect practitioners who can share resources, best practices, and policies.
- Understand and facilitate relationships between university programs and practitioners.
- Understand what students are focused on - scale and ambition of projects.
- Understand federal, state, and local legislation and how to advocate for landscape architecture in those bills (existing and proposed):
- Case studies that can be presented / shared with legislators
- Subject matter experts who can advocate
- Showcase how landscape architects can contribute to policy discussions / action
- Showcase how policy can fund work of landscape architects - making the connection is key
Planning Questions
- What regional climate change issues do you want to focus on?
- What are landscape architects doing to address these issues?
- Who are the climate leaders / subject matter expert members within your chapter on these issues?
- What is an example of a local or regional project or community that has implemented successful climate adaptation or mitigation strategies or policies?
- What is the role of a landscape architect in advancing environmental justice and climate justice?
Event Framework
- Begin discussion by identifying key climate change issues (identified by chapters members in advance) - open discussion
- Subject matter experts to deliver short presentation highlighting community impacts of climate change issues
- Discussion facilitators: subject matter experts, university faculty, ASLA Chapter Climate Action Committee Chair or ASLA Climate Action Network Representative, elected government officials, non-profit organization leaders, ASLA Climate Action Committee members, ASLA Chapter President, participants.
- Consider audience participation - How many people might participate in each event?
- Are breakouts going to be necessary to allow everyone to be heard?
- Target 1.0 hours - panel discussion and Q&A
- Audiences
- ASLA members / landscape architects
- Allied professionals
- Community / collaborators
- Elected officials
Content Framework
Content framework could include:
- Why (brief intro)
- Immediate emergency - our future
- How we as landscape architects can contribute (adaptation, mitigation, communication)
- What you can do + how to do it (adaptation and mitigation) (examples, lessons learned + tools)
- Water - sea level rise, flood, drought
- Wildfire
- Carbon reduction / sequestration
- Extreme heat
- Climate justice
- Communication
- What we can advocate for, how, and for whom - briefly discuss, share resources
- Who you can work with - briefly discuss, link to shared resources
- Collaborators / allied professions / legislators
- How landscape architects can lead
Guiding Questions During Event
- How are landscape architects and other professions addressing these issues in their work?
- How do we build transdisciplinary teams? How do we create a unity of understanding across disciplines? Who should be on these teams to address regional issues?
- What policies are in place to help address issues?
- What policies are needed?
Resources (provide 3-5 links for background to educate event attendees)
ASLA
Climate Action Plan
Climate Action Field Guide for ASLA Members
Resource Guides
Other organizations
Outcomes
- Record webinar for on-demand viewing.
- Begin to collect resources to share among your region in the following topics:
- Communications - How to promote landscape architects’ role in climate and biodiversity, so we will be called upon to be a part of all aspects of climate and biodiversity action work.
- Advocacy - Strategies on how to Influence local and state, climate and biodiversity policies and regulations
- Practice - Planned or built work and tools that address climate and biodiversity issues specific to your region that others can learn from.
- Research - Action research by academics, firms, or other organizations that can inform practice and advance innovative tools and techniques.
- Finance - Public and private funding opportunities for local climate and biodiversity projects.
If you have additional questions, please reach out to propractice@asla.org.