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A joint commitment has been made between architectural institutes from around the world to deliver a 15 point ‘Call for Action’ at COP 15 in December. The RIBA has joined forces with the Australian Institute of Architects, Architecture Canada, and the Commonwealth Association of Architects.

The ’Joint Call for Action’ stresses the importance that  architecture and the built environment can play in combatting climate change and is intended to motivate governments and architecture professionals worldwide to step up their initiatives in this area with measures such as an international standard for carbon emission accountability, incentives to drive innovation in sustainable design and ways of planning for the unavoidable impacts of existing climate change.

The call for action outlines 10 main guiding principles:

1. Recognition of the fundamental importance of the built environment as central to the international climate change mitigation and adaptation agenda.
2. Binding emissions targets and a carbon price to drive market change - a price on carbon reflecting the true consequences of its use and complementary government policies and incentives facilitating the competiveness of sustainable design.
3. Credible and verified measurement of built environment emissions, being an international standard of accounting for carbon emissions.
4. Innovative and pre-emptive design and adaptation of the built environment in response to unavoidable impacts of climate change.
5. Partnerships between developing and developed economies to share information regarding sustainable design and technologies.
6. Enabling policy - whether market mechanisms, government policy, private sector initiatives or voluntary action.
7. Incentives to drive innovation and reward greater sustainability in the built environment.
8. Investment in pilot projects to trial and demonstrate innovative approaches to built environment models.
9. Risk management in the face of climate uncertainties - future scenarios, including the threat of peak oil and sea level rise, should be factored into the way built environments are conceived and planned.
10. A concerted program to improve existing building stock to encourage positive change, including energy efficient refurbishment and retrofitting, as well sustainable design for new buildings.

There are also five guiding principles directly aimed at the architecture profession:

1. Support emissions reduction targets to achieve per capita emissions of less than 2 tonnes CO₂ by 2050.
2. Support requiring the majority of all new buildings in developed countries to be designed to be carbon neutral in energy use by 2020.
3. Help to establish an international mechanism for the building sector to offset emissions from the use of energy in the built environment particularly from existing stock.
4. Design to reduce the emissions generated by existing buildings in developed countries by 30 per cent by 2020.
5. Assist the transfer of knowledge and technologies to developing economies.

The lobby acknowledged Sunand Prasad, Immediate Past President of the RIBA, as a significant contributor to the final statement. He will be representing the RIBA in Copenhagen as the institute’s Vice-President leading on Climate Change.

Prasad will also be attending and speaking at events throughout December, including the Culture Futures Conference on the 9th and the Danish Architecture Centre on the 10th.

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