What people in the built environment can do to make a difference to climate change!

Following the release of the latest IPCC climate report, I thought I would take some time to really take a minute and talk about climate change, as many other Architects and Designers are beginning to report this as a “call to arms”.

We as Architects and designers of the modern world have a responsibility to every single person that we design spaces for. This responsibility goes so much further than to ensure the stability, longevity, and perfect version of design. We have to wake up and realise that this issue that we as people have been blind to for so long is real and the impact on the planet that we as people have all contributed to is going to have exponential detrimental impacts on us, our children, and our children’s’ children.

I’ve been reading increasingly concerning articles from the Architects Climate Action Network, and other UK climate pressure groups urging designers to “make changes to the way they design”, and “act as a propellant to their efforts to decarbonise.”

Really this should seriously make designers completely rethink our idea of what success is.

If anybody is yet to read the COP26 summit report, I strongly urge you do so. Even if you are not involved within design.

The Paris Agreement at COP 21 was a landmark summit back in 2015 and proposed a threshold for limiting global warming to well below two, preferably one-point-five degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. In the latest COP26 summit, it was found out that this would be near impossible. The built environment is responsible for around forty percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

This means that every single tonne of carbon dioxide emissions that we can prevent will help to lessen the impact of human-induced climate change, and the extreme weather events that it causes. I really hope that this motivates architects to genuinely make changes to the way they design. Everything we draw, every choice we make matters.

Design needs to be regenerative, carbon-negative and disaster resistant. That one-point-five degree of warming will bring irreversible changes. Carbon removal could present a solution.

Joshua Jones, Pacha Studio