The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and ASLA Fund Announce New Industry-wide Plan to Address Climate and Biodiversity Crises

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and ASLA Fund have released a new plan to address the climate and biodiversity crises together. Landscape Architecture 2040: Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan charts a pathway for landscape architects to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions in their projects and operations, increase carbon sequestration, and protect and restore biodiversity in an equitable way by 2040. It is a significant update of ASLA’s first plan, which was released in 2022.

The new Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan was developed by a high-profile Task Force of five landscape architects and educators, chaired by Meg Calkins, FASLA, professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at North Carolina State University.

• Meg Calkins, FASLA, Chair
• Diane Jones Allen, FASLA, Equity Lead
• Jennifer Dowdell, ASLA, Biodiversity Lead
• Mariana Ricker, ASLA, Climate Lead
• Andrew Wickham, ASLA, Advocacy Lead

The task force worked with a 34-member Advisory Group of climate, biodiversity, equity, and advocacy experts.

The plan outlines a bold vision. By 2040, all landscape architecture projects will simultaneously:

• Achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions and double carbon sequestration from business as usual.
• Protect, conserve, restore, enhance, and manage biodiversity.
• Provide significant economic benefits in the form of measurable ecosystem services, co-benefits, and livelihoods.
• Address climate and biodiversity injustices, amplify the power of communities, and increase the equitable distribution of climate and biodiversity investments.

“Our new plan represents a major shift. We know that the problems and solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises are intertwined. So, we have developed an ambitious plan for addressing both crises – through landscape architecture,” said ASLA President Kona Gray, FASLA, PLA. “This approach builds on decades of work by landscape architects on climate and biodiversity. The new plan unifies the nature-based planning and design strategies that best address both challenges at the same time. We also seek to ensure communities benefit from these solutions in an equitable way and see real economic gains.”

“Landscape architects can help communities undo the rapid loss of ecosystems and biodiversity. We can speed up our work to achieve global biodiversity goals – protecting and restoring at least 30 percent of terrestrial, coastal, and marine ecosystems by 2030 (30 x 30),” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen, Hon. ASLA. “At the same time, we will continue to help communities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, sequester more carbon, and address worsening climate impacts, like extreme heat, flooding, drought, sea level rise, wildfire, and air and water pollution.”

Landscape Architecture 2040: Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan is organized into two volumes – one for ASLA members, which include landscape architects and designers, educators and students, product manufacturers and material suppliers, and one for ASLA and ASLA Chapters.

Both volumes are organized around four key goals:

• Climate: Scale up climate positive approaches
• Biodiversity: Protect, conserve, restore, enhance and manage
• Equity: Amplify the power of people and communities
• Advocacy: Advance climate and biodiversity action through leadership and engagement

The new plan is designed to act as a resource and guide the climate and biodiversity work of landscape architecture firms and organizations of all sizes. It will also direct all ASLA climate and biodiversity programs and investments from 2026 to 2030. Collective goals and actions will be revisited and updated in 2030 and every five years until 2040 and beyond.

“Climate change and biodiversity loss are impacting the health, safety, and welfare of our communities. Landscape architects are the only professionals who are uniquely qualified to address climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity in our work. We improve health outcomes, provide ecosystem services, and create strong economic outcomes,” said Meg Calkins, FASLA, Chair of the Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan Task Force.

Calkins will represent ASLA and highlight the vision and goals of the Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP30 in Belém, Brazil. ASLA has been an official non-governmental organization observer of the COP process since 2022.

When designing landscapes to increase biodiversity, it’s important to refer to local, native “proxy” habitats. This is the “reference ecosystem design approach.”

In an online discussion organized by the ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Committee, Chris Cosma, PhD, ecologist with the Conservation Biology Institute, explained that the goal with this approach is to restore the complexity of ecological networks.

“The more complex an ecological network is the more scalable and resilient it is,” he said. Ecological networks describe the many interactions between entire communities of species in a habitat.

Restoring these nodes is vital work. With increased development, climate change, agricultural expansion, and habitat fragmentation, “we have been erasing nodes from networks.” This has led to a global decline in insects, birds, and a range of other species.

In the U.S. alone, there is now 40 million acres of turf grass lawns, which is larger than the state of Colorado. The chemicals used to maintain those lawns help to create ecological wastelands. We instead need to be designing diverse, healthy habitats that turn ecological nodes back on.

“Landscape architects have a key role to play here.” If they use at least 70 percent native plants in their designs, there will be real biodiversity benefits. Designing for “host plant specialists,” native insects that rely on particular plants, also supports those nodes.

Landscapes also need to include keystone species, which support the stability of ecosystems. “The identity of the keystone species changes based on the eco-region.”

“Diversity is key: plant species diversity; structural diversity — providing plants of different sizes and heights supports insect life cycles; and phenological diversity, or diversity in bloom times, which ensures that something is blooming at all times of the year.”

In addition to designing for native plants, keystone species, and a range of diversity, landscape architects can also “build beautiful habitat” by implementing a few best practices:

• Avoid pesticides
• Reduce unnecessary light
• Limit intense maintenance
• Leave leaf litter, branches, etc

Cosma said designing for biodiversity “improves other ecosystem services, including air and water quality, carbon sequestration, and health and well-being.”

John Hart Asher, principal and senior environmental designer, Blackland Collaborative, said for ecosystem restoration to work, landscape architects need to understand the underlying ecosystems, the reference points they are trying to model.

He focuses on grasslands, prairie ecosystems that range from Mexico to Canada. “There are grasses all over the U.S. that are formed by biotic and abiotic conditions.”

For example, he explained how the Rocky Mountains forms a “rain shadow,” creating wet and dry areas. The middle swath of the U.S. is also prone to drought. These factors make it challenging for woody species to grow in places. But prairies have evolved to take advantage of those conditions, developing root systems that can go up to 17-20 feet deep, enabling them to weather droughts.

Wildfires, prairie dogs, and bison also create “random instances of disturbance” that help maintain the ecosystems. Prairie dogs prevent the growth of trees; they cut them down so they can better see predators. Wildfires also remove trees.

As wildfires were increasingly controlled and bison nearly eradicated, there was a significant loss of prairie ecosystems across the U.S. Asher said “we now need to become the bison” — the disturbance these ecosystems need to thrive.

At the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, Asher’s team worked with landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates to develop the 15-acre Native Texas Park, featuring native Blackland shortgrass prairie, Post Oak Savannah, and Cross Timbers Forest, modeled on native ecosystems of the region. The library notes that today Blackland prairie occupies just 1 percent of its historic range in Texas.

In these challenging urban conditions, restoring the prairie meant creating a new water management system, including swales, irrigation systems, and cisterns. Mrs. Bush wanted a “big prairie bloom” every year, so the water system was key to supporting that.

Asher said the Bush library landscape has evolved over time. When working with prairies and other ecosystems, it’s important to “embrace change.” Native volunteer species are a sign of success. “Restoration is a trajectory, not an intervention.”

At the landscape architecture, architecture, and urban planning firm Sasaki, Kelly Farrell, ASLA, a landscape designer and ecologist, uses a “template habitat approach.” She said projects of all sizes in urban, suburban, and rural areas are opportunities for biodiversity. “Little projects can make a difference.”

Landscapes are highly variable. They can have different elevations, hydrology, slopes, aspects, geology, and soil conditions. They have different histories and ecological disturbances. So, given all the diversity, how do you choose a template habitat?

Farrell said it’s important to look for analogous reference sites, whether they are coastal, urban, and have water or not. First, “work with the soils you have.” Another guiding principle: “Choose the right plant for the right place.”

For a new campus building and landscape project at the University of Rhode Island, Sasaki found a stream impacted with invasive plants. To design a new landscape around a restored brook, they used a swamp area a few miles away as a reference ecosystem, planting the same species in the campus wetland.

Farrell added that it’s important to use native plants but also local genotypes as much as possible. These are plants with genetic traits adapted to specific areas. “More genes, more resilience.”

“No space is too small to make an impact.”

Free 25-page overview introduces how to address the biodiversity crisis

ASLA and the ASLA Fund have released a free resource on how to design for biodiversity – Biodiversity Primer for Landscape Architects: Essential Knowledge to Inform Meaningful Action.

The resource was developed by the ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Committee (CBAC), a group of landscape architects charged with implementing key aspects of the upcoming ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan. Landscape architects play an important role in designing nature-based solutions that protect and increase biodiversity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and sequester carbon, enhance community resilience, and create economic opportunities.

“Having just returned from the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ conference spotlights for me how important it is that we share information and resources to achieve our mutual responsibility to our planet and each other. This primer brings together the latest global policy goals, science, and design best practices in one place,” said Kona A. Gray, FASLA, PLA, ASLA President. “It provides landscape architects with the baseline information needed to take action on the biodiversity crisis – the challenges we need to prioritize; the most effective ways to design solutions with ecologists, biologists, and others; how to measure our impact; and how to steward landscapes into the future.”

“The loss of biodiversity worldwide continues to accelerate. We need to rapidly shift to better ways of designing and managing landscapes and do our part to achieve global 2030 goals,” said Aida Curtis, FASLA, PLA, Chair, ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Committee and president, Curtis + Rogers Design Studio in Miami, Florida. “The primer introduces the real, concrete steps we can take on every project to protect, conserve, enhance, or restore healthy, enduring habitats for more species.”

The primer was edited by Betsy Peterson Sanford, ASLA, August Design Collaborative and co-chair of the CBAC Subcommittee on Biodiversity.

A team of CBAC biodiversity experts reviewed and contributed to the resource:

• Keith Bowers, FASLA, PLA, Biohabitats
• Lisa Casey, ASLA, StudioOutside
• David Cutter, FASLA, PLA, Cornell University
• Jennifer Dowdell, ASLA, Biohabitats
• MaFe Gonzalez, Assoc. ASLA, BASE Landscape Architecture
• Weston Henry, ASLA, SWA
• Maria Landoni, ASLA, Sur Landscape Architecture
• Meghan Mick, ASLA, PLA, Florida State University
• Christian Runge, ASLA, Mithun
• Grant Thompson, ASLA, PhD, PLA, RDG Planning & Design

The primer offers direction on how to mitigate the biodiversity crisis through design and planning work. It provides landscape architects with baseline information needed to support biodiversity through projects at all scales. It introduces foundational information that enables meaningful collaboration with allied fields, such as ecologists and biologists, during planning, design, and management phases.

The primer introduces a range of biodiversity topics, including:

• The state of the biodiversity crisis
• Global 2030 goals
• The five key biodiversity priorities
• How to design with landscape ecology principles
• How to design for biodiversity across scales
• How to measure impact, and
• How to steward a site for biodiversity

This resource supports the implementation of the ASLA Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan (2026-2030). It will be updated periodically to reflect the shifting state of nature, evolving global priorities, and the latest research.

Beavers Restored to Tribal Lands in California Benefit Ecosystems, Mongabay, September 15
In 2023, California partnered with two Indigenous communities — the Tule River Tribe and Mountain Maidu people — to relocate seven beavers to Indigenous lands in northern California. “The Mountain Maidu consider beaver — hi-chi-hi-nem — to be family.” Two years later, the colony has built a 328-foot dam at the edge of a pond. A recent report found that the beavers increased water coverage in the meadow by more than 22 percent.

How Climate Risks Are Putting Home Insurance Out of Reach, Yale Environment 360, September 15 
Insurance analysts have found that the average cost of homeowner’s insurance nationwide has risen 30 to 40 percent in the last five years, with more increases expected. The cost of insurance from the federally-funded National Flood Insurance Program is also expected to double over the next five years. Elevating property is a key way to reduce homeowners’ flood risk, but in many communities remains too expensive.

Rising Seas Will Threaten 1.5 Million Australians by 2050 – Report, BBC News, September 14
Australia has released its first National Climate Risk Assessment, which predicts more frequent and damaging floods, wildfires, droughts, cyclones, and heatwaves. It anticipates heat deaths rising by 400 percent in Sydney alone. The 72-page report also predicts further biodiversity loss from bleaching events at the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef. The assessment is expected to result in more ambitious Australian greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for 2035.

An Arctic Researcher Explains Yedoma, the Permafrost Keeping the Planet Livable, Inside Climate News, September 13
The arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, increasing the risk of wildfire in northern boreal forests. Wildfire in turn can lead to the release of greenhouse gases stored in permafrost, a layer of frozen organic matter. One type of ancient permafrost — yedoma — can go hundreds of meters deep and stores more than twice the amount of carbon that has been released by humanity to date.

California’s First Solar-covered Canal Is Now Fully Online, Grist, September 13
The $20 million pilot project, funded by the state of California, is only the second canal-based solar array in the U.S. Researchers are exploring whether the canal water will keep the panels cooler, increasing their efficiency, and shade from the panels can reduce water loss from evaporation and limit algae growth. Impacts on biodiversity should also be studied.

Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina, the New Plan for New Orleans’s City Park Focuses on Resilience, The Architect’s Newspaper, September 3
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ninety-five percent of City Park remained underwater for weeks, leading to the loss of thousands of trees. Now two decades later, the City Park Conservancy, City Park Improvement Association, and landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) have released City Park 2050, a new master plan that “attempts to look past recovery toward endurance.” The new plan is the result of nearly 30,000 comments from the public.

For the fourth year, the ASLA New York Chapter has organized an event for Climate Week NYC, one of the world’s largest climate gatherings.

The free, immersive workshop — Combating Coastal Flooding Through Green & Hybrid Infrastructure — is co-organized by the University of Miami Center for Urban and Community Design, ASLA New York, landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Jones, Waterfront Alliance, and engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol.

The workshop will be held on Wednesday, September 24 from 4-6 PM at 30 Broad Street, New York City. It will be followed by a happy hour presented by Kind Designs.

The co-organizers state that two major coastal cities — New York City and Miami — are on “the front lines of climate change, facing rising sea levels, stronger hurricanes, extreme heat, and increased flooding.” For both cities, “addressing coastal flooding is essential to long-term resilience.”

While nature-based infrastructure offers a powerful solution, its adoption remains limited. The goal of the workshop is to convene “key stakeholders to identify barriers to implementing green infrastructure and explore strategies to accelerate its expansion within today’s regulatory and economic landscape.”

“Climate Week NYC is an opportunity to unite leaders and tackle some of the most pressing climate challenges we face,” said landscape architect Annie Phaosawasdi, ASLA, PLA, Chapter President, ASLA New York Chapter, and associate principal, Hargreaves Jones.

“As designers of outdoor spaces, landscape architects play a crucial role in cities’ resilience — managing stormwater, mitigating urban heat, and restoring ecosystems. This workshop provides a platform for experts in nature-based solutions to highlight these solutions’ strengths, discuss the obstacles, and brainstorm solutions.”

“Landscape architects bring unique technical expertise for tackling challenges of flooding caused by climate change,” said Thomas Klein, director, Center for Urban and Community Design, University of Miami.

Through the workshop, “we will share this knowledge with a diverse coalition of experts from city agencies, NGOs, climate finance, and other design practitioners, with the goal of fostering unique collaborations and charting a path towards broader adoption of green and hybrid infrastructure in our communities.”

Register today