Member Check-In on Climate Action and Climate Justice
By Lori Ferriss, AIA
“The Committee on the Environment (COTE) is an AIA Knowledge Community (KC) working for architects, allied professionals, and the public to achieve climate action and climate justice through design.” This is the first sentence of COTE’s mission, and while we have made tremendous strides in implementing climate action through architecture, now is the time to elevate our knowledge and impact on climate justice to the same level.
This year, COTE formed a subcommittee to determine our KC’s role in climate action and climate justice (CA-CJ) and to understand what we need to do to make sure that we are enacting our mission. We jumpstarted the work of the subcommittee with a climate action – climate justice sprint that asked five questions:
- What do we mean by climate action – climate justice, and what principles of climate action and climate justice does COTE want to promote?
- Who is providing thought leadership, advocacy, education, and guidance around this topic?
- What are current leading practices that achieve climate justice and climate action?
- Who is not part of the conversation around CA-CJ who should be, specifically within COTE’s work?
- What resources are available to architects, and what resources are still needed?
To answer these questions, members of the subcommittee undertook a landscape mapping exercise. We surveyed dozens of leading organizations in this area to understand their positioning, their audiences, and their outputs on climate action and climate justice. We looked internally at the many entities and efforts within the AIA that are working on these topics. This exercise has helped us understand what work is already completed or underway, as well as what remains to be done for COTE to enact our mission of achieving climate action and climate justice through design.
We also worked toward a foundational framing of how COTE views climate and climate action justice as it directly relates to our work. This exercise has led us to the conclusion that climate action and climate justice are, in fact, a single, inextricably linked concept, which we define as follows:
climate action and climate justice (in architecture) is engagement, advocacy, planning, and design that
draws down emissions; builds resilience and capacity; supports human, cultural, and ecological health; and protects all communities in the context of climate change.
While this framing is not comprehensive, nor does it entail a detailed action plan, it is a starting point to align the COTE community around a common understanding as we claim our agency and work toward action on climate action and climate justice.
At the A’22 COTE Open Forum, at which nearly 200 members gathered, we had the chance to learn about where people are, what tools they are using, and what the most significant hurdles are in achieving climate action and climate justice. It is clear from those conversations that we have a lot to do to educate ourselves, establish processes and metrics, and build relationships within the design team and outside the profession with communities, public officials, and others to accelerate our progress.
The work of the climate action – climate justice subcommittee is ongoing. As we embark on engagement within the AIA and externally and plan the next steps to align our programs with our mission and represent the leading edge of practice on these topics, we wanted to share a sampling of the resources available to practitioners and chapters now to help build literacy on these topics and take action with your work.
External Resources:
AIA Resources: / GATHER LINKS
Tools:
To re-pose the questions Billie Faircloth shared in the July/August chair letter: What is our role in climate justice, and what resources do architects need to do this work? How should the Framework for Design Excellence evolve to engage the fullness of this working definition? Are you engaging in this work or organizing a forum in your local community? If you have insight and feedback, or if you would like to learn about opportunities to volunteer on our climate action – climate justice subcommittee, please reach out to us via cote@aia.org.
The COTE Climate Action/Climate Justice subcommittee includes: Lori Ferriss (co-leader), Christiana Moss (co-leader) , Elaine Gallagher Adams, Billie Faircloth, Gabriela Fiorentino, Carlos Augusto Garcia, Kira Gould, Keya Joshi, Alissa Kingsley, Ellen Mitchell Kozack , Ganesh Nayak, Lindsey Perez, Daniel Stine, Kristy Walson, and Helena Zambrano.