Re-Posted from The Sustainable Settlements Institute

The urgent requirement for education to address ecology and biodiversity

Our cities and towns need to be adapted to deal with the cur­rent and future pres­sures of cli­mate change. This requires a new level of expertise. One essential element in this the education of the professionals who must deal with climate change adaptation in the design, planning and development of our urban spaces. Green wash, which is the current standard, is no longer acceptable.

In order to achieve a higher level of climate change adaptation, pro­grams in archi­tec­ture, urban design, and land­scape archi­tec­ture should be required to pro­vide far more than just an optional min­i­mum level of edu­ca­tion about the fun­da­men­tals of ecol­ogy and bio­di­ver­sity and how it applies within cities.

From the view-point of nat­ural resources, includ­ing ecol­ogy and bio­di­ver­sity, uni­ver­sity pro­grams in archi­tec­ture, urban design, land­scape archi­tec­ture, and urban plan­ning must recog­nise that their grad­u­ates will have to be pro­fes­sion­als who:

• Con­tribute to the design and cre­ation of urban places that min­i­mize the inter­rup­tion of cycles of nat­ural resources.
• Enhance and main­tain a high level of green infrastructure.
• Plan, design and cre­ate cities sus­tain­able set­tle­ments where res­i­dents rec­og­nize their inter-dependence on nat­ural resources and the impor­tance of sus­tain­abil­ity of the cycles of nat­ural resources.
• Plan, design and cre­ate cities sus­tain­able set­tle­ments where ecol­ogy and bio­di­ver­sity are fun­da­men­tal con­trib­u­tors to the health of the urban areas and the residents.

this topic has been cross posted from our other blog – The Sustainable Settlements Institute – click on this link for the full posting

—————————————————–

Paul Costigan, 14 January 2014