“The world faces two existential crises, developing with terrifying speed: climate breakdown and ecological breakdown. Neither is being addressed with the urgency needed to prevent our life-support systems from spiralling into collapse”.

So starts an open letter, initiated by George Monbiot and signed by a raft of influential climate, ecology and sustainability thinkers.

Natural Climate Solutions is a new initiative (website) calling on governments to back natural climate solution measures and “to create a better world for wildlife and a better world for people”. It should also be a call to us all in built environment sectors.

“We are championing a thrilling but neglected approach to averting climate chaos while defending the living world: natural climate solutions. Defending the living world and defending the climate are, in many cases, one and the same.”

Signatures to the letter and the Natural Climate Solutions include:
– school strikes activist Greta Thunberg,
– climate scientist Prof Michael Mann,
– writers Margaret Atwood, Naomi Klein and Philip Pullman
– campaigners Bill McKibben, David Suzuki and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
– former archbishop of Canterbury, former president of the Maldives, musician Brian Eno
– advocacy group directors John Sauven, Greenpeace UK, Craig Bennett, Friends of the Earth,Ruth Davis, RSPB, Rebecca Wrigley, Rewilding Britain

Recent research indicates that about a third of the greenhouse gas reductions needed by 2030 can be provided by the restoration of natural habitats, but such solutions have attracted just 2.5% of the funding for tackling emissions.

This is a huge issue for the built environment sector, where costing of approaches for technical carbon reduction solutions far outweigh costing of drawdown of carbon through living systems associated with our buildings and cities. If natural living systems are even considered as carbon solutions that is, to meet our Construction Vision target of carbon reduction by 50% by 2025.

We still see carbon as the enemy, through our too often one sided approach of reduce, reduce, reduce … So, given that, according to the IPCC, we have 12 years to avoid irreversible climate breakdown here are four actions we should embrace today:

• Ecologists and Landscape Architects now, urgently need to become project leads.(1)
• Locked in carbon should be the reported key carbon performance indicator and driver, not just the (scope1 and 2) carbon footprint
• Lets start talking about upfront carbon and not embodied carbon. What matters is the carbon that is being emitted today, and the carbon that is being locked away today .(2)
• Zero carbon is not enough, we can do better and go beyond zero, we don’t have time just to reduce carbon to zero.

How this aligns with my thinking, keynotes, advocacy and support for built environment client, design, contstruction, fm and academic organisations …

• Rethinking Carbon – our need to focus on durable and living systems, not just fugitive carbon (3)

• We need to move from the Eco phase we are currently locked into – to a Seva mindset, where we see buildings as part of nature, the natural ecosystem, not apart from it. (4)

• Attendees at my 2018 keynotes and workshops will be familiar with the brilliant George Monbiot narrated Yellowstone Wolf (How Wolves Change Rivers) rewilding video used to illustrate eco systems and draw out relevance to our sector.

• FutuREstorative, published in 2016, explores natural and rewilding solutions enable the built environment to address climate breakdown

• Advocacy, client and project through Living Building Challenge that drives for an ecologically robust future with imperatives such as habitat exchange, urban agriculture and more.

• Exploring rewilding and regenerative agriculture thinking and its relationship with the built environment.

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1. this was the topic of a Specifi Think Tank in 2018 and received favourable agreement
2. thanks to the TreeHugger ‘Upfront Carbon’ article by Lloyd Alter (et al) for this
3. Carbon is not the Enemy
4. A key outcome in the EU Cost Action RESTORE working group 1

Natural Climate Solutions … a small group of people working voluntarily to raise awareness of natural climate solutions and champion the work of organisations working in this field. who encourage you to support local projects, campaigns and initiatives near you and help ensure that this crucial and exciting answer our global crises receives the attention it deserves.

Blog post based on the Guardian, D Carrington, Article 030418