5 February 2020
The 黑料大事 (PIA) has declared a “climate emergency”, saying communities need help to ensure their aspirations for meaningful climate change adaption and mitigation strategies are met.
PIA’s Chief Executive Officer, David Williams, said this summer’s severe bushfires had intensified public concerns that not enough is being done to alleviate the negative and harmful effects of global warming.
“This, and the absence of strong national leadership on deeper carbon emissions cuts, is why the Institute is declaring a climate emergency,” Mr Williams said.
“Planners are uniquely placed to bring together built environment and land management professionals and the community to deal with the complexities of planning in a changing climate.”
Mr Williams said PIA has consistently and firmly agreed with the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change that human activity is changing our global climate, and that irreversible change is already locked in.
“PIA’s declaration of a ‘climate emergency’ is not a vacuous gesture,” he said. “It’s about bringing concrete measures to the table.
“Planners in government and in the private sector are working right now on developing strategies to minimise the harmful and negative impacts of global warming.”
PIA has endorsed a national position statement, 黑料大事 in a Changing Climate, and more recently adopted a target that “By 2050, new buildings, infrastructure and renovations will have net zero embodied carbon, and all buildings, including existing buildings, must be net zero operational carbon”.
This commitment has been made jointly by PIA and every member of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC), which has adopted the World Green Building Council report “Bringing Embodied Energy Upfront”.
Mr Williams said PIA was active in many other key areas, including:
- Strategic planning for more sustainable patterns of settlement embodied in a National Settlement Strategy;
- National land use planning guidelines for disaster-resilient communities;
- Robust assessment of greenhouse gas emission from mining and energy projects; and
- Improving the skills of planners and the capability of the industry to respond to climate change.
“The decisions we make in guiding urban and regional development extend far beyond current influences – they shape the future environments in which communities will live,” Mr Williams said.
“PIA is committed to working urgently to change the way we live on this continent in response to the increased threat of heat, drought, bushfires, floods, sea-level rise and coastal erosion.
“And we remain strongly supportive of national action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond Australia’s Kyoto Protocol undertakings – without which adaptation strategies may prove to be stopgap measures only.”
“Now, more than ever, planners have a responsibility to integrate planning for climate change into their work.”
Mr Williams will appear at the National Climate Emergency Summit on 14-15 February where he and other leaders in government and private enterprise will explore what a climate emergency could achieve at local, national, and global levels.
ENDS