Climate change

Human civilization is entering a new era. Most social and economic decisions throughout our history have been taken with little concern for the use of finite natural resources. We must provide for the needs of future generations as well as our own present needs. We must change the way we use natural resources both globally and locally to become truly sustainable and to avoid threatening the survival of humankind and other world ecosystems.

Climate change threatens our survival. Recent studies have shown that we have about 5 to 7 years to change our ways before accelerating trends in environmental degradation lead to irreversible and chaotic impacts. Environmental and economic changes threaten the well-being of communities, families and individuals. Social changes on a global scale will unavoidably lead to increasing social and economic polarity worldwide.

Professional response

“Planning to Live with Climate Change” introduces the challenge posed by delivering sustainable responses to climate change as an over-arching priority into the original “New Vision for Planning”. It revisits the key issues of sustainable development, spatial planning, value-driven planning and action-orientated planning and it then develops the original agenda for change into an action plan focussed on professional leadership, vision and delivery to promote fundamental shifts in practice in response to climate change.

The RTPI suggests that measures to mitigate climate change should have priority over the conventional balance between economic, social and environmental factors in planning for sustainable development in areas where there is a challenge to the survival of human civilisations and natural ecosystems. This challenge might, for example, be defined in relation to targets for reducing the carbon and related greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming.

Refreshing the “New Vision”

The RTPI has used its 2009 member engagement on the “New Vision for Planning” to develop the way in which we and our partners will respond to climate change and to develop an action plan in a professional challenge to planning practitioners. The original principles of the new vision remain fully relevant.  Spatial planning should be ...

• Spatial - dealing with the unique needs and characteristics of places
• Sustainable - looking at the short, medium and long term consideration of social, economic and environmental effects
• Integrative - in terms of the knowledge, objectives and actions involved
• Inclusive - recognising the wide range of people involved in planning
• Value-driven - concerned with identifying, understanding and mediating conflicting sets of values
• Action-oriented - driven by the twin activities of mediating space and making of place.

However, in terms of the outcomes it delivers, spatial planning should be... 

• Responsive to Climate Change - ensuring that as a matter of priority, planning policies are made and decisions taking in the interests of mitigating and managing climate change processes in a manner that ensures sustainable development

Click on these links to be taken to a fuller description of each principle as set out in the 2001 New Vision, together with our ongoing actions on climate change.

Why refresh our Vision?

The 2001 New Vision was an excellent document.  Much of its thinking went on to shape the way in governments and practitioners think about and carry out planning.  However, discussions by members during the review suggested that the RTPI needs to demonstrate not only how we should plan, but why we should plan.  

In setting out why we should plan, members agreed that: 

The highest priority for planning action should be to help humanity, at the global and local scales, to deliver sustainable development, to live with and successfully manage and adapt to the climate change processes we have inherited and to mitigate and control the potential for additional and adverse climate change.

The Professional challenge:
What can we do about Climate Change? 

The RTPI is developing a living and continuously improved action plan, taking forward its work with partners and services for members in this priority area.

• Click here to visit our action plan
• Click here to visit more pages, explaining the thinking that underlies our engagement of members and the development of our plan
• Click here to access links to sources of further information and case studies.
• Click here to access the RTPI networks climate change activities.
• Click here to view the RTPI responses to climate change consultations.
• Click here to read about climate change research developments.

Author:

Rynd Smith

Publisher:

The Royal Town Planning Institute

Date:

29-Jan-09

Sections:

What Planning Does

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