Yu is founder of the Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and founder and principal designer of Turenscape. His firm, which has a staff of more than 400, plans and designs landscapes that “combat flooding while repairing ecological damage.”
“The award means that no matter our differences among peoples and nations, there is one common ground we have to hold together: taking care of planet Earth. We have to get together to heal this ill planet,” Yu said.
He also sees the award as a win for developing countries like China. “It is a huge encouragement for those who are working hard to establish themselves from the grassroots; for those who made their career in underdeveloped regions, in the most difficult parts of the world.”
In an interview, Yu offered his thoughts on future opportunities and challenges for landscape architects. He outlined his design philosophy and how it can serve as a roadmap for leadership on nature-based solutions and climate and biodiversity action.
Yu foresees an explosion in demand for landscape architects in China and other developing countries. “I am expecting revolutionary development of the profession of landscape architecture in the developing world where landscape architects are badly needed.”
ASLA 2014 Professional General Design Honor Award. Slow Down: Liupanshui Minghu Wetland Park. Liupanshui, Guizhou Province, China. TURENSCAPE
“I believe landscape architects are coming into a golden era. We are positioning ourselves at the forefront in the battle for climate adaptation and planetary healing, particularly in China, India, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa, where climate change is mingled with issues of urbanization, industrialization, and food security.”
“But there are also many obstacles that landscape architects need to overcome,” he added.
“The top obstacle is our lack of capacity. We need to breakthrough the boundaries of professional and disciplinary stratification. This will involve restructuring institutions, changing school programs, and redefining landscape architecture at a much larger scope, toward the art of survival.”
Yu founded his China-based firm Turenscape in 1998 with an ambitious goal — “nature, man, and spirits as one.”
“Tu-Ren is two characters in Chinese. Tu means dirt, earth, or the land, while Ren means people, man, or human being. Once these two characters come together, Tu-ren, it means ‘Earth Man,’ a relationship between land and people. The firm’s philosophy is to recreate the harmony between land and people and create sustainable environments for the future. We act in the name of the Heaven (Nature) and as messengers of the spirits of our native forebears,” he explained.
ASLA 2010 Professional General Design Award of Excellence. Shanghai Houtan Park: Landscape as a Living System. Shanghai, China. TURENSCAPE
Yu brings that philosophy to his work planning and designing nature-based solutions that integrate wetlands, mangroves, and forests.
“Any sustainable landscape is nature-based. Landscape is a synonym for nature when one discusses landscape architecture in the context of its sister professions such as architecture and urban planning. Landscape architecture is about using knowledge and skills related to adaptation, transformation, and the management of nature to harness ecosystem services — such as provision, regulation, life support, beauty, and spiritual benefit — for humanity’s long-term and short-term needs. This is the essential core of nature-based solutions.”
ASLA 2020 Professional General Design Honor Award. Deep Form of Designed Nature: Sanya Mangrove Park. Sanya City, Hainan Province, China. TURENSCAPE
And he also shared some news about how his combined practice and academic work are advancing these goals. “The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Peking University to establish a joint research program at our campus focusing on nature-based solution best practices. This is largely the landscape planning, design, and management work of Turenscape.”
Yu believes landscape architects’ ability to bring together multiple disciplines and leverage science and engineering will help solve the climate crisis.
“Landscape architects play a key role in addressing climate change, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, particularly the latter. Landscape architecture is the cornerstone of the intellectual mansion of arts, sciences, and engineering that jointly stand together to address climate change. That is why I am so glad to see landscape architecture recently listed as a STEM discipline in the U.S.”
He envisions landscape architects leading the way, pulling together a range of professions to form enduring solutions.
“Ian McHarg defined a landscape architect as a conductor, who orchestrates disciplines and professionals and integrates all abiotic and biotic processes into a harmoniously performing ecosystem through the skill of designing in the physical medium of landscape.”
ASLA 2010 Professional General Design Honor Award. The Red Ribbon – Tanghe River Park, Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, China. TURENSCAPE and Peking University Graduate School of Landscape Architecture
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Sackett vs EPA that ended federal protections of some kinds of wetlands and tributaries under the U.S. Clean Water Act.
Like many organizations, ASLA released a statement condemning the decision. ASLA found the ruling “short-sighted” because it “ignores science and the well-documented hydrological understanding of the interconnection of water sources.”
This statement was rooted in ASLA’s long-held, science-based policy positions on the waters of the United States and wetlands, and a legacy of comments sent to administrations, including the Biden-Harris administration during its last rule making process in 2022. ASLA’s positions were crafted from feedback from members who found recent definitions of waters of the U.S. and policies unclear and not grounded in hydrological or climate science.
According to a national poll issued by The New York Times, 72 percent of Americans also disagreed with the recent Supreme Court decision and believe the “Clean Water Act should be read broadly and include things like wetlands.”
And as landscape architects and ecologists know, “what is a wetland isn’t as black and white as the Supreme Court defined,” said Steven Spears, FASLA, project principal with Momark Development and GroundWork.
“The Supreme Court decision was wrong for a number of reasons,” said Keith Bowers, FASLA, president and founder of Biohabitats and a professional wetland scientist. “The decision was not based on science.”
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the recent Supreme Court ruling defines waters of the U.S. as “relatively permanent bodies of water connected to traditional navigable waters.”
It defined some wetlands as waters of the U.S. if they have a “continuous surface connection to other jurisdictional waters, so that there is no clear demarcation between the bodies.” But the decision excludes other wetlands that are “neighboring waters but are separated by natural or artificial barriers.”
“The ruling interpreted wetland adjacency differently. The Supreme Court said a wetland needs to have a surface nexus with a stream, river, or navigable water to be federally protected. But we know wetlands are connected to other water bodies through both groundwater and surface flows, which may be continuous or not,” Bowers said.
“There is a lot to unpack with the Supreme Court ruling and more clarity will come in time,” Spears said. But the Supreme Court decision “just sees wetlands on a black and white basis. It also fails to account for wetland quality.”
The Sacketts sued the EPA in 2008 because it classified wetlands on their property in Idaho as waters of the U.S. The wetlands were near a ditch that fed into a creek, which then fed into Priest Lake, a navigable, intrastate lake.
In its recent decision, the Supreme Court essentially found that “the wetlands were not waters of the U.S. because they were separated from the lake by a road – even though they were connected to the lake under that road by a culvert,” Spears said.
Spears thinks it’s possible the wetlands in question were low-quality and that filling them in had little impact on the broader water quality of the lake. But it’s hard to tell because the ecosystem services of the particular wetlands weren’t measured.
“The Supreme Court decision is frustrating because it just states a wetland is either a wetland or not, regardless of the performance of the wetland and what ecosystem services it provides.”
At Austin Green in Austin, Texas, Spears and his firm, GroundWork, led a redevelopment of a former sandy gravel mine that was created before the Clean Water Act went into effect in 1972.
The brownfield site included both high-quality wetlands and other low-quality wetlands that happened to form out of the dredging process. The 2,100-acre redevelopment preserves and enhances more than 850 acres of high-performing wetlands and other ecological assets as part of a public park along the Colorado River.
Austin Green development / Lionheart Places, courtesy of GroundWork
The team – which included landscape architects at Lionheart Places and ecologists at ACI Consulting – used the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Ft. Worth District’s Texas Rapid Assessment Model (TRAM) to score the ecological service quality of the wetlands on the site and win approval of the project.
“We used the tool to conduct a land suitability analysis and planning process.This process informed the landscape architecture-led planning and design team as to which environmental systems were most desirable for protection and enhancement.”
“The model was used to identify high-quality wetlands that scored a 70 out of 100. We focused on how to raise their quality level to an 80 or 90. The redevelopment plan and park and open space network were curated around these ecological assets. There were also low-quality wetlands that scored a 1 out of 100, and some of those were filled in. What’s important to figure out is how a wetland performs, what is their worth. And if you need to fill in a wetland, mitigate or offset that elsewhere.”
While he doesn’t support the Supreme Court ruling, “now that it is the law of the land, how do we move forward?”
Spears wants to see a tool like the Army Corps’ TRAM as a national approach, with adjustments for important regional wetland and geomorphological differences. He noted that some Army Corps districts have wetland scoring tools and some don’t.
“Landscape architects can lean in and help establish the criteria for a new wetland scoring system. That will help us get away from ‘this is a wetland and that is not.’ We need to influence and help create a new wetland modeling process.”
Bowers thinks the ruling will open up lots of land and wetlands that were historically regulated to new development that will not be subject to federal approvals.
He thinks this is bad news for watersheds overall. “If you impact a river at its mouth, it won’t impact the system. But if you impact the wetlands – the headwaters – the water system can collapse. Wetlands are where you establish the ecological processes and then they migrate down the ecosystem.”
“I think all wetlands should be protected, as some wetlands that are low-quality today may not have been historically. As landscape architects, we should not impact any wetland if it’s in our power. With the climate and biodiversity crises, we need wetlands to sequester carbon and provide habitat. We need to do everything to minimize or mitigate impacts.”
For him, tools like TRAM can be useful in prioritizing which wetlands to save and restore. But he thinks the evaluation of any particular wetland’s quality should be rooted in a broader understanding of the watershed in which the wetland exists. He said the Supreme Court decision will increase the importance of watershed planning and the role of landscape architects in comprehensive planning for water resources.
The ruling also muddies the waters, so to speak, about how ephemeral waters will be considered in the future, potentially opening up future litigation.
According to CRS, “the majority opinion does not explicitly address ephemeral waters, which flow only in response to precipitation, or intermittent waters, which flow continuously during certain times of year, such as when snow pack melts. At a minimum, the majority’s interpretation would appear to exclude ephemeral waters.”
But a majority of Supreme Court justices also recognized that “‘temporary interruptions in surface connection’ – such as from low tides or dry spells” – happen in wetlands. “It is not clear how temporary such an interruption must be in order to preserve a wetland’s jurisdictional status.”
Hearing this, Spears seemed exasperated. In Texas, this lack of clarity on seasonal waters may impact how ephemeral streams and agricultural stock tanks are considered. “The Supreme Court seemed to create more problems than they solved.”
As regulations are rewritten, he sees opportunities for landscape architects to offer their deep expertise in designing with water and creating innovative approaches. He wants landscape architects to shape the next generation of water policy. “The reaction to Sackett vs EPA that is coming can help solve our water problems over the long-term.”
For Bowers, it’s important for landscape architects to be strong advocates for the preservation and restoration of wetlands through their projects and in their communities. “Try to insert policy standards and push for updates to zoning regulations.” And landscape architects can reach out to their Congressional representatives. “Legislators need to further clarify the definition of waters of the U.S.”
Since 1972, the Clean Water Act has protected the country’s aquatic environments from pollution. It was created by Congress to keep water bodies safe for wildlife and fishing and swimming. It has also protected communities’ drinking water supplies.
After the Act established federal jurisdiction over navigable waters, there have been a number of rulings by the Supreme Court. This is because the Clean Water Act never clearly defined what waters of the U.S. meant and instead authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and EPA to create that definition through regulations.
Legislators understood that it comprised “all the relevant parts of an aquatic ecosystem, including streams, wetlands, and small ponds—things that aren’t necessarily connected to the tributary system on the surface, but that still bear all kinds of ecological relationships to that system and to one another.”
And up until the 2000s, NRDC says, that inclusive definition of the waters of the U.S. was largely upheld through court cases.
The Supreme Court ruling in May came after multiple lawsuits filed in opposition to the Biden-Harris administration waters of the U.S. definition, which went into effect March 20, 2023. Those lawsuits halted implementation of the use of the definition in 27 states.
After the Sackett vs EPA decision, new guidance on the waters of the U.S. is being developed by the EPA and will be released in September.
The EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will also need to revise or amend a slew of regulations to be compliant with the Supreme Court decision.
To be specific, the ruling impacts many EPA regulations and programs that rely on a definition of waters of the U.S., including:
Water quality standards and total maximum daily loads
Oil spill prevention and preparedness programs
State and tribal certification under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act
Pollutant discharge permits
Dredged and fill material permits
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates in close collaboration with the EPA, will also need to update or revise its approach to military and civil engineering projects and permits that involve non-tidal and tidal wetlands.
Changes to these federal regulations and programs will also lead to cascading revisions of state regulations.
The Clean Water Act requires that state regulations adhere to its minimum requirements. It also allows states to go beyond the Clean Water Act and issue more stringent regulations. Some states have surpassed the federal level of water protection, while others have passed laws stating that only the bare federal minimum will be followed.
Left: Dr. Daniella Hirschfeld, Utah State University / Bronson Teichert, Utah State University; Right: Dr. Sohyun Park, ASLA, University of Connecticut
Focus is on Extreme Heat and Biodiversity Loss Solutions Designed by Landscape Architects
The grant awardees will produce research that outlines evidence of the benefits of landscape architecture solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. The research will be published on ASLA.org and openly accessible in spring 2024.
Dr. Daniella Hirschfeld, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Utah State University
Dr. Hirshfeld will explore landscape architecture- and nature-based solutions that are effective at reducing temperatures. Dr. Hirshfeld will identify design strategies that have demonstrated temperature reduction benefits while also sequestering carbon, protecting and increasing biodiversity, and reducing climate risks.
Dr. Sohyun Park, ASLA, PhD, SITES AP, Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut
Dr. Park will explore landscape architecture- and nature-based solutions that address the biodiversity crisis. Dr. Park will identify design strategies that offer proven biodiversity and ecological gains while also sequestering carbon, improving water quality and management, and reducing climate risks.
“While we were developing our Climate Action Plan, landscape architects told us what they needed most was authoritative evidence that demonstrates all the great benefits of their work. We are thrilled to work with Sohyun and Daniella on moving this critically important research forward,” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen.
“This research will help all of us in the landscape architecture community make the strongest case possible with policymakers, community groups, allied professionals, and the public,” said ASLA President Emily O’Mahoney, FASLA. “We’ll have the best science and performance data on hand.”
The goals of the research reviews are to:
Understand and summarize the current state of knowledge.
Synthesize the research literature and provide insights, leveraging key data- and science-based evidence.
Create an accessible executive summary for policymakers, community advocates, and practicing landscape architects.
About the Grant Awardees
Dr. Daniella Hirschfeld
“Well-designed places, such as parks with large shade trees, can alleviate the experience of extreme heat caused by the climate crisis. To make these designs a reality, we need to understand their effectiveness and the multiple benefits they can provide,” Dr. Hirshfeld said.
Dr. Daniella Hirschfeld, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University. Daniella received her PhD in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from University of California, Berkeley. Her PhD was funded by the McQuown Fellowship at UC Berkeley and the State of California’s Ocean Protection Council. She received her master’s degree in environmental management from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and her bachelor’s degree in psychology and philosophy at Dartmouth College. Daniella also has professional experience in coastal zone management, sustainability planning, and urban planning.
Daniella is currently working with teams of collaborators on projects related to urban heat islands. She is working on an urban heat island mapping campaign funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – Urban Heat Island Mapping Program, focused on understanding the inequities in the distribution of urban heat experiences in Salt Lake City. She is collaborating with climate scientists at Utah State University; non-profits; departments in Salt Lake City’s government; and science groups, including the Utah Climate Center, the Tracy Aviary, and the Natural History Museum of Utah.
Daniella is also working on “the injustice in the void spaces,” which surfaces the hidden inequities of poorly distributed climate science services. Her team has investigated the information and resources needed to design cities resilient to urban heat. She is collaborating with a team at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – Applied Science Program and the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) on this research.
Dr. Sohyun Park
“As stewards of the land, we have the ability and privilege to restore and revitalize spaces that benefit both humans and non-human species. The biodiversity crisis is often not readily perceptible in our daily lives, so I hope the results of this research will provoke deep contemplation about the alarming state of biodiversity loss, foster a sense of global interconnectedness, and inspire greater action,” said Dr. Park.
Dr. Sohyun Park, ASLA, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at the University of Connecticut. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Environmental Design and Planning from Arizona State University, a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from Seoul National University, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology from Sookmyung Women’s University. She is a SITES Accredited Professional.
Sohyun’s research focuses on the intricate interplay between natural and human systems, with a particular focus on sustainability, resilience, and the health of ecosystems and communities. Her research aims to advance our understanding of how urban morphology, functions, and changes influence ecosystem services, as well as their interactions with human well-being. Her research centers around urban biodiversity, seeking solutions to address the biodiversity crisis.
Sohyun has secured grants from the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Her work has been featured in the journals Nature Scientific Report, Landscape and Urban Planning, and Applied Geography. She has delivered plenary presentations at major international conferences, including the 2022 International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) World Congress, the 2022 International Symposium of Landscape Architecture, and the 2022 International Garden Symposium.
Sohyun holds several leadership roles, including Co-Chair of the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture NE1962 National Multi-State Research Group; Chair of the ASLA Ecology and Restoration Professional Practice Network; and Vice President of the Global Landscape Architecture Network. She was Chair of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) conference tracks (2016-2022).
About the Grant Process
The national competitive grant for biodiversity loss received seven research proposals from academics at U.S. universities. The national competitive grant for extreme heat received nine proposals.
ASLA wishes to thank the selection and review panels for their contributions selecting the grant awardees and peer-reviewing the research:
Dr. James A. LaGro, Jr., PhD, Professor, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, College of Letters & Sciences, University of Wisconsin – Madison, and Editor-in-Chief, Landscape Journal
Nina-Marie Lister, Hon. ASLA, Professor, Director, Ecological Design Lab, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Toronto Metropolitan University; Founding Principal, PLANDFORM.
Ebru Özer, ASLA, Associate Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental and Urban Design, Florida International University, and ASLA Vice President of Education
Dr. Susan Sherrod, PhD, Senior Ecologist, Professional Wetland Scientist, and Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner, Biohabitats
Dr. Wenwen Cheng, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, College of Letters & Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. James A. LaGro, Jr., PhD, Professor, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, College of Letters & Sciences, University of Wisconsin – Madison, and Editor-in-Chief, Landscape Journal
Ebru Özer, ASLA, Associate Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental and Urban Design, Florida International University, and ASLA Vice President of Education
Fire Map, June 8. 2023 / Canadian Natural Resources
Canada’s Minister of Emergency Preparedness said that 9.4 million acres of forests have already burned in Canada, 15 times higher than the 10-year average. And, unfortunately, this is just the start of the summer wildfire season. The Canadian government points to climate change as the culprit.
Wildfires are common in Canada, but “it is unusual for blazes to be burning simultaneously in the east and west,” Reuters reported. There have been more than 2,300 wildfires just this year. Many of the worst fires have occurred in the Eastern province of Quebec, where 11,000 people have been evacuated. Five Canadian provinces, covering a broad swath of the country, have been impacted.
Climate change is causing abnormal weather patterns, increased temperatures, and droughts, leading to drier forests. When combined with growing forest fuels — which include combustible pine needles, twigs, shrubs, and dead trees — wildfire risks significantly increase.
In additional to abnormally dry conditions, extreme heat has been cited as a cause of the early, widespread conflagrations this year. The Washington Post reports that the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Quebec have “experienced record heat.” Areas in Alberta recorded temperatures more than 12.6 F hotter than in a typical May.
Parts of Canada have experienced a “heat dome,” a high-pressure system, which spurred on early fires in its prairie region. Florida-based meteorologist Jeffery Berardelli told The Guardian, “a ‘heat dome’ like this is a very rare occurrence in this part of the world this time of year. Historically and statistically speaking, it is rarer than a 1-in-1,000-year event.” With climate change, heat domes are expected to occur earlier and more often, putting greater pressure on Canadian and other forests.
In the United States, smoke from the wildfires has blanketed the Midwest, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and is heading towards the South and Southeast. An interactive map from BlueSky Canada shows the extent and movement of the smoke in near real-time. Air quality in New York City and other Northeastern cities have been the worst on record.
Interactive Smoke Map / Blue Sky Canada
So far this year, Americans on the East Coast have inhaled more wildlife smoke than those on the West Coast, argues Heatmap. Wildfires have significantly increased air pollution in Western states for many years, but now it’s a national issue. In The New York Times, David Wallace-Wells writes: “Across the country, the number of people exposed to what are sometimes called extreme smoke days has grown 27-fold in just a decade, and exposure to even-more-extreme smoke events has grown 11,000-fold.”
ASLA 2021 Professional Analysis and Planning Honor Award. Recreation at the Intersection of Resilience – Advancing Planning and Design in the Face of Wildfire. Mariposa County, California. Design Workshop, Inc.
In a post from 2020, Rob Ribe, FASLA, PhD, professor and director of the master’s of landscape architecture program at the University of Oregon, told us: “Fuels reduction is the only known option to increase forests’ resilience. Prescribed portions of young or smaller trees, dead wood, and shrubs could be reduced in hundreds of millions of acres in the American West, and again, later on, in the forests of the eastern states. This is happening at a growing pace, but piecemeal, wherever funding and political support coalesce. It’s not enough to meet the larger challenge.”
With climate change, Canada’s national, provincial, and territorial governments also clearly need more resources to reduce forest fuels, including through controlled burns, and restore forests. The number of out-of-control fires continues to grow.
ASLA 2022 West Pond: Living Shoreline. Brooklyn and Queens, New York, United States Dirtworks Landscape Architecture P.C / Jean Schwarzwalder/DEP
The American Society of Landscape Architects Calls on National Governments to Commit to 30 x 2030 and the Global Goal for Nature: Nature Positive by 2030
ASLA urges national governments at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15 in Montréal, Canada, to commit to far more ambitious global conservation and biodiversity goals, including protecting at least 30 percent of terrestrial, coastal, and marine ecosystems by 2030 (30 x 2030).
In advance of the CBD COP15, ASLA has also joined 340 organizations worldwide in signing the Global Goal for Nature: Nature Positive by 2030. The Call to Action makes an appeal for “improving the state of nature by 2030; ensuring rights-based approaches to nature-based solutions and to conserving effectively and equitably 30 percent of land, freshwater, and seas by 2030; and directly tackling the drivers of nature loss,” among other goals.
“In our recently released Climate Action Plan, ASLA identified the connections between climate change and biodiversity loss. We made a clear commitment to advance 30 x 2030. We also called on all landscape architecture projects to restore ecosystems and protect biodiversity on a global scale by 2040 – and we call on national governments to be equally as bold,” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen.
ASLA 2020 Professional General Design Honor Award. Deep Form of Designed Nature: Sanya Mangrove Park. Sanya City, Hainan Province, China. TURENSCAPE
“In Montréal, now is the time for a global agreement to address the biodiversity crisis and increase protections for nature. Biodiversity underpins all natural systems on Earth. Protecting our remaining biodiversity and bolstering and restoring ecosystems are critical to our long-term survival,” said ASLA President Emily O’Mahoney, FASLA.
According to the United Nations, one-million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, and seventy-five percent of the Earth’s ice-free land surface and two-thirds of the oceans have been significantly altered by humanity.
ASLA and its members understand there is both a biodiversity crisis and a climate crisis, and they are interconnected:
A changing climate is resulting in sea level rise, extreme heat, increased flooding, and drought, which impacts both communities and non-human species.
Biodiversity loss is largely driven by unsustainable agricultural practices, sprawl, and habitat fragmentation, but climate change is accelerating the alteration of habitats and species migration, which increases extinction risks.
Biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation undermine the natural systems humanity relies on to provide a range of critical ecosystem functions, including nature-based approaches to sequestering carbon and adapting to climate impacts.
“Landscape architects are uniquely qualified to plan denser communities and protect natural areas, combating the sprawl that threatens remaining ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots. We can also increase biodiversity through the incorporation of native tree and plant species, planning and designing habitat connections and corridors, and restoring degraded ecosystems – all of which have important climate benefits as well,” said O’Mahoney.
ASLA 2020 Professional General Design Honor Award. The Native Plant Garden at The New York Botanical Garden. Bronx, New York. OEHME, VAN SWEDEN | OvS / Ivo Vermeulen
Given the failure of the global community to meet the 2020 Aichi biodiversity targets, ASLA calls on national governments to significantly increase investment and support for conservation, habitat defragmentation and connection, and ecosystem restoration over the next decade.
In global discussions, ASLA also urges national governments to increasingly connect the climate and biodiversity crises, to not address them in a siloed manner. An integrated approach can increase the focus on nature-based solutions, including ecosystem-based mitigation and adaptation approaches, that address the climate and biodiversity crises together.
ASLA 2016 Professional Residential Honor Award. The Restoring of a Montane Landscape. Rocky Mountains, Colorado. Design Workshop, Inc.
In future COPs of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), nature-based solutions must be elevated and seen as integral to reducing emissions and increasing resilience.
Through advocacy, planning, and design efforts with urban, suburban, and rural communities, landscape architects can work with nature to help address both biodiversity and climate impacts. Landscape architects also support the rights and leadership of indigenous communities in conservation efforts worldwide.
ASLA notes that the Convention, which entered into force in 1993, has been ratified by 196 countries. The United States remains the only UN member country that has signed but not yet ratified the multilateral treaty. This has put the U.S. government and U.S. based organizations advocating for biodiversity at a disadvantage in global negotiations.
ASLA 2019 Professional General Design Honor Award. Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park Phase II: A New Urban Ecology. Long Island City, NY. SWA/BALSLEY and WEISS/MANFREDI with ARUP / copyright Vecerka/ESTO, courtesy SWA/BALSLEY and WEISS/MANFREDI
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Announces New Industry-wide Benchmarks to Address Climate Change and Biodiversity Crises
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) announced today that it has set new goals for the profession. Together the ASLA Climate Action Plan and the Climate Action Field Guide for ASLA Members chart a pathway for landscape architects to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions in their projects and operations and increase carbon sequestration by 2040.
The Climate Action Plan was developed by a high-profile Task Force of five landscape architects chaired by Pamela Conrad, ASLA, founder of Climate Positive Design, and a 17-member Advisory Group. It outlines a bold vision for 2040 and a set of 71 actions to be taken by 2025.
By 2040, all landscape architecture projects will simultaneously:
Achieve zero embodied and operational emissions and increase carbon sequestration
Provide significant economic benefits in the form of measurable ecosystem services, health co-benefits, sequestration, and green jobs
Address climate injustices, empower communities, and increase equitable distribution of climate investments
Restore ecosystems and increase and protect biodiversity
“Landscape architects are already helping communities achieve this vision. As we increasingly experience the impacts of the climate and biodiversity crises, we know we need to act faster. We are the only design professionals who bring all the pieces together to plan and design what communities need to prepare themselves for a changing world,” said ASLA President Eugenia Martin, FASLA.
“ASLA has developed its first Climate Action Plan in the spirit of great optimism. We envision communities becoming healthier and economically stronger because they have committed to drawing down carbon, restoring ecosystems and increasing biodiversity, and reducing reliance on vehicles – all while ensuring everyone in their community has equitable access to these benefits,” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen.
The ASLA Climate Action Plan is based in science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found humanity can only put a maximum of 340 more gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere if we want a good chance of only increasing temperatures by 1.5° C (2.7° Fahrenheit), instead of 2° C (3.6° Fahrenheit). To advance the goal of keeping warming to 1.5° C, ASLA signed on to the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Climate Action Commitment in 2021. The commitment was presented at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland and is supported by 70,000 landscape architects in 77 countries.
The ASLA Climate Action Plan is rooted in the three goals (practice, equity, and advocacy) and six initiatives of IFLA Climate Action Commitment.
The ASLA plan will direct all ASLA programs and investments through 2025. Goals will be advanced through 21 objectives and 71 actions. Goals and actions will be revisited and updated in 2025 and every five years until 2040 and beyond.
To accomplish the plan, ASLA, as a mission-driven association, has also committed to achieving zero emissions in its operations by 2040. ASLA is calculating baseline Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for its 2022 Conference on Landscape Architecture in San Francisco and headquarters operations in Washington, D.C. and has committed to reducing its overall emissions by 20% by 2024. ASLA will use its own journey to zero as a learning opportunity for its members, EXPO exhibitors, and partner organizations.
A companion to the plan – the Climate Action Field Guide for ASLA Members – provides best practice guidance, toolkits, and resources for ASLA members and their firms and organizations, along with corporate partners, to achieve the 2040 vision.
ASLA 2016 Professional Residential Design Honor Award. The Restoring of a Montane Landscape. Rocky Mountains, Colorado. Design Workshop, Inc. / D.A. Horchner, Design Workshop, Inc.
The Field Guide features six toolkits covering 18 strategies, with guidance on how to:
Design Climate Positive Landscapes
Design Pedestrian, Cyclist, and Public Transit-Centric Communities
Reduce Energy Use and Support Renewables
Help Communities Adapt to Climate Impacts
Explore Pathways to Financial Sustainability with Communities
Protect and Increase Biodiversity
Learn from Indigenous Communities Through Collaboration
Build Climate Coalitions
“Landscape architects are uniquely qualified to understand and manage complex, multi-disciplinary challenges and design sustainable, world-changing solutions. We are committed to following the science, and through this Climate Action Plan we will rapidly scale up Climate- and Biodiversity-positive solutions in the U.S. and, through our partnership with IFLA, the world,” said Pamela Conrad, ASLA, Chair of the Climate Action Plan Task Force.
Conrad will represent ASLA and highlight the vision and goals of the ASLA Climate Action Plan at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
ASLA 2022 Professional General Design Award of Excellence. Palm Springs Downtown Park, Palm Springs, California. RIOS / Millicent Harvey
Twenty-eight Professional Award winners represent the highest level of achievement in the landscape architecture profession
By Lisa Hardaway
ASLA has announced its 2022 Professional Awards. Twenty-eight Professional Award winners represent the highest level of achievement in the landscape architecture profession. All winners and their locations are listed below.
Jury panels representing a broad cross-section of the profession, from the public and private sectors, and academia, select winners each year. The 28 winners were chosen out of 506 entries.
The Professional Awards jury also selects a Landmark Award each year; this year’s Landmark Award celebrates “Crissy Field: An Enduring Transformation” by Hargreaves Jones for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Crissy Field, in San Francisco’s famed Presidio, features restored coastal habitat, recreational amenities and historical interpretation.
ASLA 2022 Landmark Award. Crissy Field: An Enduring Transformation. San Francisco, California. Hargreaves Jones / Hargreaves Jones
“ASLA Professional Awards for decades have recognized the most significant achievements by landscape architects nationwide, and we congratulate this year’s winners for their extraordinary contributions to their communities and the profession,” said ASLA President Eugenia Martin, FASLA. “Many of this year’s winning projects were focused on reconnecting communities to landscapes, illustrating the important role landscape architects play in creating places for communities to live, work, and play.”
ASLA 2022 Professional Residential Design Award of Excellence. Edwin M. Lee Apartments. San Francisco, CA. GLS Landscape | Architecture / Patrik Argast
“These award winners underscore how landscape architects are problem- solving some of the biggest challenges facing communities around the globe,” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen. “From equitable community gathering spaces to addressing climate change, these winners represent the cutting edge of our industry.”
ASLA 2022 Professional Urban Design Honor Award. Denny Regrade Campus. Seattle, Washington. Site Workshop / Stuart Issett
According to the panel, designing with nature helps communities become more resilient to climate change. Living Breakwaters and the Tottenville Shoreline Protection Project in Staten Island, New York City, demonstrate how coastal communities can adapt to rising seas and increasingly intense storms. These innovative projects, led by landscape architects, work in tandem to reduce wave action and beach erosion, create wildlife habitat, and enhance public recreation.
Living Breakwaters, Staten Island, NYC / SCAPE Landscape Architecture
The built environment not only includes buildings and concrete infrastructure, but also landscapes, which are increasingly critical for adapting to climate change. Landscape architects are responsible for planning and designing these nature-based solutions that bring maximum benefits to communities.
The two projects in Staten Island grew out of New York City’s response to Superstorm Sandy, which struck in October 2012. The storm was a wake-up call for the city to better prepare for the impacts of climate change.
Sandy’s impact is understood to have been intensified by climate change — higher ocean temperatures and sea levels may have contributed to the heavy rainfall and the stronger storm surge, which inundated parts of Staten Island and led to the death of several residents and billions of dollars in damage.
Living Breakwaters is currently being constructed in the Raritan Bay. The Tottenville Shoreline Protection Project will be built on the shore itself. The landscape architects leading these projects will explain why we need to re-imagine our coastlines for climate change and future superstorms and how to do it.
Over her forty years of practicing landscape architecture, Solano has continuously looked to Olmsted’s works and writings for inspiration.
“Olmsted believed that landscape architects don’t make nature, but provide the circumstances for nature to take hold. He viewed landscapes as therefore enduring and endurable.”
Riverside Park, New York / istockphoto.com, Terraxplorer
Some of his other key principles:
“Landscapes are interconnected constructed natural systems that must work on multiple levels.”
“Nature is democratic.” Given the opportunity, it will find space in cities to thrive and therefore urban nature can be restored.
“Landscape architecture is a public health intervention.”
Solano invited Anjelyque Easley DeLuca, a landscape architect and planner based in greater Pittsburgh, to explain her approach and how it relates to Olmsted.
“I look at the layers of the landscape from the ground up,” she said, observing how people use the space, where vegetation grows, how wildlife lives on the land. She explores the connections between human and ecological systems. “Olmsted knew that people share the landscape, and we can create interactions with nature.”
Bryce Donner, Student Affil. ASLA, a landscape architect and graduate student at the University of Florida, also approaches landscape as systems, like Olmsted did.
“Landscape architecture is about bringing together systems — hydrology, geology, wildlife, and people. Even a 1,500 square foot garden is an opportunity to reconnect with larger systems and support the food web, which is the infrastructure we all rely on.”
Donner starts every project with a series of questions in order to understand the systems at work: “What would happen if we did nothing? What would happen to the people, animals, water, and plants? Where would water go?”
Solano said Olmsted’s genius is he understood the underlying systems of landscape as well — engineering and drainage. “So much is hidden in landscape architecture.”
General Plan of Riverside, Illinois. Olmsted, Vaux & Co. Landscape Architects, 1869 / The Frederick Law Olmsted Society of Riverside
Olmsted also designed and advocated for democratic public spaces — places where “all classes and creeds could see and be seen,” Solano argued.
But since then, “landscape architects have made some mistakes. They haven’t created landscapes with a sense of place that appeals to entire communities.” To overcome past errors, how can landscape architects recognize people who have been erased and forgotten?
Jorge “Coco” Alarcon, a Peruvian landscape architect and architect pursuing a Ph.D in public health at the University of Washington, said that participatory design processes are key. “There is not a recipe for doing this. The approach needs to be customized for each community.”
For example, with indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon, Alarcon found typical planning and design workshops don’t work. “You don’t get straight answers.” Instead, encouraging communities to draw their ideas has yielded more meaningful participation.
This is about “meeting people where they are,” Solano said.
As she researched post-enslaved Black communities and post-WWII Jewish landscapes and communities, Easley DeLuca has learned to listen in order to empower communities.
“I am interested in finding out what happened, the whole story, and how that is reflected in the design of landscapes. It’s important to speak with people instead of at them, seeing how they react to sharing information that will provide you, the designer, with personal benefits, which may eventually provide them with benefits.”
Many of the sites she visited throughout Europe now recognize past atrocities. There are often contemporary markers for the Jewish cemeteries that were destroyed. But she said the same recognition hasn’t happened for Black cemeteries and other important sites in the U.S., which in too many communities have been paved over and forgotten.
“Preserving Black cemeteries is about who has right to the land and telling stories. Olmsted was also interested in telling stories through the landscape by either visual means or a mixture of elements that guide interaction with spaces.”
Olmsted also believed parks and green spaces were critical to public health. He understood the physical and mental health benefits of nature. His values were never more important that during the pandemic, Solano argued.
Ocean Parkway connected Prospect Park’s southern boundary with the waterfront at Brighton Beach / New York City Parks and Recreation
He may have been influenced by psychologist William James, a contemporary who came up with the concept of “soft fascination,” which is what humans experience in nature, a kind of indirect, non-taxing form of attention. This fascination allows the mind to wander in a way that restores our cognition and mood. “That was unfortunately lost in the pandemic, as we were frightened and stayed indoors.”
During the pandemic, public space became even more crucial to a “healthy body, mind, and soul,” Donner said. “Landscapes provided the ability to say to hi to someone you know safely. Parks and playgrounds enabled interaction or to go solo. They were critical to maintaining spiritual, mental, and physical health and well-being.”
For many communities, landscape also provided more than physical and mental health benefits but also a means of survival. Alarcon noted that during the height of the pandemic, when transportation systems and markets ceased to function, rural Peruvian communities he partnered with increased production of food through their gardens. This enabled them to trade or buy other food.
Another Amazonian community used large gazebos they co-designed with architects and landscape architects as Covid-safe meeting spaces to share health information. “Landscapes became a platform for mediating issues. They were never more important.”
Lastly, Solano asked: What can young designers learn from Olmsted today?
For Easley DeLuca, Olmsted teaches the importance of “being observant. You are not the only person interacting with a landscape; hundreds or thousands are. It’s important to verbalize what you are seeing to discover if others have the same opinions or interests.”
“Olmsted saw landscapes as an entire system.” Applying this approach is “what makes someone a landscape architect,” Donner argued.
“Olmsted teaches you that zooming in and zooming out are both necessary. Zooming out is needed even more these days” to understand the broader social forces that shape a landscape, Alarcon said.
Richard J. Weller, ASLA, is the Meyerson Chair of Urbanism and Professor and Chair of landscape architecture and Executive Director of the McHarg Center at The University of Pennsylvania. He is author of seven books, including the forthcoming The Landscape Project, a collection of essays by the faculty at the Weitzman School of Design. He is also the creative director of LA+, the interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture. In 2017 and 2018, Weller was voted by the Design Intelligence survey as one of North America’s most admired teachers, and his research has been published by Scientific American and National Geographic and exhibited in major museums around the world.
Later this year, the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will meet in China to finalize what is being called a “Paris Agreement for Nature.” The agreement will outline global goals for ecosystem conservation and restoration for the next decade, which may include preserving 30 percent of lands, coastal areas, and oceans by 2030. Goals could also include restoring one-fifth of the world’s degraded ecosystems and cutting billions in subsidies that hurt the environment. What are the top three things planning and design professions can do to help local, state, and national governments worldwide achieve these goals?
Design, Design, and Design!
There are now legions of policy people and bureaucrats, even accountants at the World Bank, all preaching green infrastructure and nature-based solutions. But the one thing all these recent converts to landscape architecture cannot do is design places. They cannot give form to the values they all now routinely espouse.
But design is not easy, especially if it’s seeking to work seriously with biodiversity, let alone decarbonization and social justice. Design has to show how biodiversity— from microbes to mammals— can be integrated into the site scale, then connected with and nested into the district scale, the regional, the national, and, ultimately, the planetary scale. And then it has to situate the human in that network – not just as voyeurs in photoshop, but as active agents in ecosystem construction and reconstruction.
Of course, wherever we can gain influence, this is a matter of planning — green space here, development there. But it’s also an aesthetic issue of creating places and experiences from which the human is, respectfully, now decentered, and the plenitude of other life forms foregrounded.
It’s as if on the occasion of the sixth extinction, we need a new language of design that is not just about optimizing landscape as a machine, or a pretty picture, but that engenders deeper empathy for all living things and the precarious nature of our interdependence.
In 2010, the CBD set 20 ambitious targets, including preserving 17 percent of terrestrial and inland waters and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Of these targets, only 6 have been partially met. On the other hand, almost every week, we hear about billions being spent by coalitions of foundations or wealthy individuals to buy and protect vast swathes of land in perpetuity. And the protection of nature and leveraging “nature-based solutions” is increasingly a global priority. Are you positive or negative about the future of conservation?
In 1962, there were about 9,000 protected areas. Today, there are over 265,000 and counting. If our yardstick is humans setting aside land for things other than their own consumption, then there is reason to be optimistic.
In 2021, the total protected area sits at 16.6 percent the Earth’s terrestrial ice-free surface, not quite 17 percent, but close. The missing 0.4 percent is not nothing – it’s about 150,000 Central Parks and over the last few years my research has been motivated by wondering where exactly those parks should be.
The World’s current protected areas. Image by Rob Levinthal, courtesy Richard Weller
The fact that humans would give up almost a fifth of the Earth during such a historical growth period is remarkable in and of itself. While targets are useful political tools, the question is one of quality not just quantity. And that’s where pessimism can and should set in. Protected areas, especially in parts of the world where they are most needed, arise from messy, not to say corrupt, political processes. They are not always a rational overlay on where the world’s most threatened biodiversity is or what those species really need.
The percentages of protected areas around the world are also very uneven across the 193 nations who are party to the Convention. Some nations, like say New Zealand, exceed the 17 percent target, while others, like Brazil fall way short – and they don’t want people making maps showing the fact. Protected areas also have a history of poor management, and they have, in some cases, evicted, excluded, or patronized indigenous peoples.
Protected areas are also highly fragmented, which is really not good for species now trying to find pathways to adapt to climate change and urbanization and industrialization. The global conservation community is keenly aware of all this but again, while they are good on the science and the politics, they need help creating spatial strategies that can serve multiple, competing constituencies. Under the Convention, all nations must produce national biodiversity plans, and these should go down to the city scale, but these so-called plans are often just wordy documents full of UN speak. There is a major opportunity here for landscape architects to step up.
So, the pessimist’s map of the world shows the relentless, parasitical spread of human expansion and a fragmented and depleted archipelago of protected areas. The optimist’s map on the other hand shows over 160 projects around the world today where communities, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are reconstructing ecosystems at an epic landscape scale.
Rob Levinthal, a PhD candidate at Penn and I call these Mega-Eco Projects. As indicators of the shift from the old-school engineering of megastructures towards green infrastructure on a planetary scale, they are profoundly optimistic.
Mega-Eco Projects taking place in the world today. Image by Rob Levinthal, courtesy Richard Weller
We don’t call these projects Nature Based Solutions. The reason being that “nature” comes with way too much baggage and “solution” makes designing ecosystems sound like a simple fix. These two words reinforce a dualistic and instrumentalist approach, things which arguably got us into the mess we find ourselves in today.
By placing the Mega-Eco Projects within the tradition of 20th century megaprojects — many of which failed socially and environmentally, if not economically, we are taking a critical approach to their emergence, which is important to working out what really makes for best practice as opposed to just greenwashing.
The Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative. Drawing by Oliver Atwood. Courtesy Richard WellerThe Great Green Wall. Drawing by Oliver Atwood. Courtesy Richard Weller
Whereas the definition of old school megaprojects was always financial — say over a billion dollars — our working definition of Mega-Eco Projects is not numerical. Rather, it is that they are “complex, multifunctional, landscape-scale environmental restoration and construction endeavors that aim to help biodiversity and communities adapt to climate change.”
Furthermore, unlike the old concrete megaprojects, Mega-Eco Projects use living materials; they cross multiple site boundaries, they change over time, and they are as much bottom up as top down. The project narratives are also different, whereas megaprojects were always couched in terms of modern progress and nation building, the Mega-Ecos are about resilience, sustainability, and a sense of planetary accountability.
There are four categories of Mega-Ecos. The first are large-scale conservation projects; the second are projects that seek to resist desertification; the third are watershed plans; and the fourth are green infrastructure projects in cities either dealing with retrofitting existing urbanity or urban growth.
As you would expect, landscape architects tend to be involved with this fourth category, but there is a bigger future for the field in the other three, which is part of our motivation for studying them.
By our current assessment, there are about 40 Mega-Eco Projects taking place in metropolitan areas around the world today. These tend to be in the global north and China, notably the Sponge Cities initiative, where so far over $12 billion has been spent in 30 trial cities. We have not yet conducted a comparative analysis of these projects, nor are many of them advanced enough to yet know if they are, or will be, successful.
With specific regard to urban biodiversity, I don’t think there is yet a city in the world that really stands out and has taken a substantial city-wide approach that has resulted in design innovation. It will happen. As they do with culture, cities will soon compete to be the most biodiverse. The conception that cities are ecosystems, and that cities could be incubators for more than human life is a major shift in thinking, and while landscape architecture has a strong history of working with people and plants, it has almost completely overlooked the animal as a subject of design. That said, we shouldn’t romanticize the city as an Ark or a Garden of Eden. The city is primarily a human ecology, and the real problem of biodiversity lies well beyond the city’s built form. Where cities impact biodiversity is through their planetary supply chains, so they need to be brought within the purview of design.
Singapore is a case in point. Because it developed the Biodiversity Index, Singapore has been able to tally its improvements with regard to urban biodiversity and tout itself as a leader in this area. Many other cities are adopting this tool and this is good.
But this is also where things get tricky, because whatever gains Singapore can afford to make in its urban biodiversity need to be seen in light of the nation’s massive ecological footprint.
I mean, Singapore can make itself into a garden because the farm and the mine are always somewhere else. I would call Singapore a case of Gucci biodiversity, a distraction from the fact that they bankroll palm oil plantations in Kalimantan, the last of the world’s great rainforests.
That said, every city is shot through with contradictions. The question then is to what degree do the designers play along or whether they can make these contradictions the subject of their work, as opposed to its dirty little secret. The Gardens by the Bay project, for example, is a brilliant case of creating a spectacle and keeping tourists in town for an extra day, but it’s got nothing to do with biodiversity beyond the boundary of the project.
Gardens by the Bay, Singapore / istockphoto.com
The late E.O. Wilson and other biologists and ecologists have also called for protecting half the Earth’s lands and oceans. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) split the difference in their recent report, calling for 30-50 percent to be protected. What are the extra benefits to protecting 50 percent? What does this mean for the planning and design of existing and future human settlements?
I’d trust E.O. Wilson or better still, James Lovelock, with the calculation for a healthy planet, but the dualism of humans here and biodiversity over there that tends to come with Wilson’s notoriously puritanical position is problematic.
The world is a novel, highly integrated, human dominated ecosystem, and design has to work at improving the symbiotic nature of that condition. Each site needs to be assessed on its own biological and cultural terms as to what can be more deeply integrated or what should be separated out; what has to be actively curated and what can be left to its own devices. As Sean Burkholder and others have pointed out, this means designing time as well as space.
The thing with Wilson is where exactly would his 50 percent be? He never really explained it in spatially explicit terms. Half Earth means another 34.5 percent on top of what we currently have protected. As a priority, it would have to comprise any unprotected forest or other areas of remnant vegetation and whatever can be clawed back in the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
The World’s 36 biological hotspots. Image by Rob Levinthal. Courtesy Richard Weller
But the numbers don’t really add up. About 40 percent of the Earth’s ice-free earth is currently used for food production, 30 percent is desert, and 30 percent is forest – although “forest” is a loose term, and some of that already overlaps with protected areas. Given that the global foodscape is and will probably continue expanding, 30 percent total protected area seems more reasonable than 50. It is my belief that design, if given the chance, can weave viable biodiversity through the contemporary agricultural landscape whilst maintaining overall yield.
Even 30 seems a stretch, because if you project the expansion of crop land by 21st century population growth, we need most of the planet to feed people, so something has to give. Either we massively increase yields from the current agricultural footprint or biodiversity gets pushed further into the mountains. Or billions starve. The prospect of us reducing the planet to a monoculture is very real and very scary on every level.
To your question, the benefits would be that by more or less doubling the current conservation estate, we could create larger patches in the hotspots and seek to achieve connectivity between the existing fragments of protected areas. As landscape ecology teaches, it is only with larger patches and substantial connectivity that we can create a truly resilient and healthy landscape. The problem is of course that the patches and corridors have to be reverse engineered into hostile territory. Human settlements and agriculture have to make way for larger patches and greater connectivity and planned around it. To turn the whole thing on its head, human settlements and human land uses have to protect the global conservation estate. Easy to say.
Biodiversity loss is often considered a result of the climate crisis. But there are other issues also driving increased biodiversity loss and extinction rates worldwide, such as increased development in natural areas, the spread of transportation systems, and pesticide and chemical use. How do explain the relationship between climate change and biodiversity loss?
When people hear “biodiversity” they almost invariably think of charismatic megafauna, but as you indicate, the problem runs deeper and at a much finer grain. Of course, we are now obsessed with chasing every carbon molecule, but for life on and in the land and its waters, the problem is also excess manufactured nitrogen along with other toxins. Ironically, despite ultimately killing microorganisms upon which soil health depends, industrialized fertilizers have slowed the rate of deforestation that would have occurred had the world tried to feed itself without industrial fertilizers because they have, at least in the short term, increased yields.
The main problem from a spatial planning and land use perspective is that species increasingly need to migrate so as to adapt to a changing climate but they find themselves trapped in isolated fragments of protected areas or stranded in unprotected scraps of remnant habit.
There is another part of this though, and that is that the entire discourse and politics of environmentalism is couched in terms of loss. But a truer picture perhaps is that as ever in the chaos of evolution, there will be winners as well as losers. I don’t think we know what is really happening or what will happen, so in that sense we need to design landscapes as insurance policies, as expressions of the precautionary principle where we just try to maximize the potential of life to evolve. In this regard landscape architectural research and design becomes less about finished projects, and more about conducting experiments based on both scientific and cultural questions related to biodiversity.
The Metatron at the Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station in Moulis, France is a good example. The Metatron is an experimental field of 48 enclosures in which species composition, temperature, light and humidity can be controlled. Each enclosure is connected to the others via small passages that can also be controlled. In this way, the Metatron is a simulator of landscape dynamics, a model microcosm in which each enclosure is understood as a “patch” and each connector a small simulation of a landscape “corridor.” Since 2015, given the limitations of its size, experiments have focused on studying how small species like butterflies and lizards move through the system, but many more species could be studied using a similar system at larger scales. In essence, the Metratron is learner’s kit, helping us understand how best to reconstruct landscapes at scale.
The Metatron. Drawing by Oliver Atwood. Courtesy Richard Weller
Your own research, including the ASLA-award winning Atlas for the End of the World, documents how areas at the edge of sprawling cities around the world are increasingly colliding with biodiversity hotspots, which are defined as highly valuable reservoirs of diverse and endemic species. What are the implications of your research?
By conducting an audit of land use and urban growth with regards to CBD targets in the world’s biodiversity hotspots, the Atlas set the scene for my two current research projects.
The first is the Hotspot Cities Project and the second is the World Park Project. A hotspot city is a growing city in a biodiversity hotspot – the 36 regions on Earth where endemic biodiversity is most diverse and most threatened. We’ve identified which of these cities —over 90 percent— are sprawling on direct collision courses with remnant habitat harboring endangered species.
Hotspot Cities: Each yellow dot represents a city growing in direct conflict with endangered species. Image by Chieh Huang. Courtesy Richard WellerLos Angeles in the California Floristic Province biodiversity hotspot. Red areas indicate conflict between growth projected to 2050 and the range lands of endangered species. Image by Nanxi Dong. Courtesy Richard Weller
In our mapping we identify the conflict zones between development and biodiversity and then we conduct design case studies as to how the conflict could be mitigated. The argument is that destructive sprawl is not a fait accompli, and designers—especially landscape architects skilled in urban design— can create credible alternatives by taking a holistic, city-wide perspective. This research especially draws attention to peri-urban landscapes that are largely overlooked by the profession, because the design dollar has mainly been invested in city centers.
The World Park Project is a big vision for a new form of conservation landscape, one that actively involves humans in its construction. It’s an answer to the question of where those 150,000 Central Parks should be, as I mentioned earlier.
The idea of the World Park begins with the creation of three recreational trails: the first from Australia to Morocco, the second from Turkey to Namibia, and the third from Alaska to Patagonia.
Passing through 55 nations, these trails are routed to string together as many fragments of protected areas in as many hotspots as possible. The trails are catalysts for bringing people together to work on restoring the ecological health of over 160,000 square kilometers of degraded land in between existing protected areas.
In this way, the Park is about building a coherent and contiguous global network of protected area. It addresses the two biggest challenges facing global conservation today: ensuring adequate representation of biodiversity in protected areas and connectivity between those areas. It sounds crazy, but forging connectivity at this scale is just what we do for every other form of global infrastructure. Humans build networks, and it’s high time to build a green one.
The World Park Project: 3 trails through biodiversity hotspots at a planetary scale. Image by Madeleine Ghillany-Lehar
I was expecting derision from design academics about World Park, because “going big” is generally seen as neo-colonial or megalomaniacal. I was also expecting world weary eye-rolling from the conservationists or outright rejection of the idea because it would suck the oxygen out of their own efforts, but generally the reaction has been very positive.
Most people, particularly in the NGOs, have reacted like “wow – this is exactly what we need right now.” They know they can’t just keep adding more fenced-off fragments of protected area to meet UN targets. There are now so many conservation efforts going on but they are all disconnected from one another. A World Park could galvanize these efforts into something that is greater than just the sum of its parts.
In any event, my research team (Alice Bell, Oliver Atwood and Elliot Bullen) have completed the mapping of the Park’s territory. Now I’m talking with UNESCO about how we might move the idea to a proper feasibility study. Realistically, nothing will happen unless the major NGOs adopt it, along with some philanthropic champions and the relevant ministers in those nations whose sovereign territory is involved.
Only half-jokingly, I think Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson should bring their toys back to earth and take this on. Musk could fund the African trail, Bezos the Americas, and Branson would pick up the Australia to Morocco piece. At current landscape restoration rates, I worked it out at about $7 billion.
That’s an expensive park, but the better question to ask is not what it costs but what is it worth? For a mere $7 billion a World Park could provide investment in impoverished landscapes. It could provide meaningful experiences and jobs for lots of people. Above all, it would be a profound sign of hope that humanity can work together to be a constructive force of nature instead of its executioner.
Lastly, how can landscape architecture academics and practitioners better partner to address the twinned biodiversity and climate crises? What additional research is needed to better weave biodiversity considerations into broader climate solutions?
Well, as someone who has spent a lifetime in both the academy and practice, I would really like to take this opportunity to attest to the value of both. I think it’s a problem that the academy demands young faculty have PhDs but not necessarily any practice experience. Just as I think it’s a problem that certain elements of the profession become anti-intellectual over time and associate this with being savvy professionals.
Academics have the luxury of formulating research questions and methods, whereas practitioners are generally making it up on the run and learning by doing. These are both entirely valid ways of forming knowledge, and they actually need each other.
My work over the last decade has been very big picture, but it means nothing unless it can translate into design. So I think there are two forms of design needed right now with regard to biodiversity and they both bring academics and practitioners together.
The first is taking on a whole-of-city scale and considering the city as an incubator and protectorate for biodiversity and offer plausible scenarios as to how the city’s growth can be best managed to minimize negative impact on existing biodiversity. Until city authorities pay properly for this work, the academics have to act as the start-ups. They can form interdisciplinary teams to find research funding to do this work, preparing the way, as it were, for practitioners to come in and realize specific projects.
Which brings us to the second form of design — the project scale. Take any project at any scale and ask how to approach it if your client was every living thing, not just humans, and then work as if your life really depended on serving all of them – which, incidentally, it does! To answer this takes both time and levels of knowledge beyond landscape architects irrespective of whether they are in the academy or in practice. We are very accomplished at designing for humans but still have everything to learn if we consider biodiversity as our client.
In terms of both professional and academic practice, the role of the landscape architect, now more than ever, is to bring the world of development and the world of conservation together over the same maps and serve as a negotiator.
It sounds like a platitude, but it goes to the core of our job description, and it’s never been more important. There has never been more at stake.
