Research on climate change, biodiversity loss, and systemic inequities is being undermined. But there are still “crevices, nooks, and crannies” where important independent research is being conducted. “We need to nurture, protect, and enable these ‘petri dishes,’ no matter how small,” said Lucinda Sanders, FASLA, CEO of OLIN, during the kick-off of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF)’s latest Leadership and Innovation Symposium.
“We need to super-commit and do the hard work. We need to be action-oriented and advocates for healing. Respect, dignity, and love are foundational to our survival.”
Sanders introduced the latest class of six LAF Leadership and Innovation Fellows. They outlined the result of their year-long research, envisioning positive new futures in the areas of infrastructure, policy, public engagement, and agriculture:
“We are losing the cultural war on climate change because of a lack of effective communications,” argued David Buckley Borden, senior advisor of creative practice and innovation, Center for the Future of Forests and Society, Oregon State University, and associate research professor, University of Oregon College of Design. “Landscape architects can better engage the scientific community to close the science-communications gap. Landscape architects can contribute to expanding public eco-literacy.”
Site-based learning about climate change and biodiversity exists only in the margins, in “bougie garden festivals,” Borden said. Most designed landscapes are “not communicating environmental science,” even though they may be informed by science. He pointed to Teardrop Park in Battery Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, as a positive example of how to communicate earth sciences through design.
He said landscape architects can go beyond simply transferring scientific information to the public, instead using strategies that convey, contribute, contextualize, and criticize. He called for bringing in the visual arts, humor, pop culture, and applying a collaborative design process to scientific communications.
His own work integrates a design studio with scientific labs and networks, helping to reframe landscapes as “hybrid collective space.”
What do landscape architects have to do with farming and ranching? “Agriculture is the largest land use on Earth,” said Forbes Lipschitz, associate professor of landscape architecture, The Ohio State University. The agricultural sector shapes ecosystems and communities across the planet. So landscape architects need to get involved in “reframing and reshaping” the sector.
A climate justice strategy is needed to “break free” from current industrial, extractive agricultural practices and shift towards a more just and sustainable food system. For Lipschitz, elevating Indigenous approaches to food is key to this climate justice strategy.
She spent months traveling, exploring how the industrial food systems of the U.S. works. “It is not a single coordinated spatial arrangement.” There are more than 33 million cows, 124 million hogs, and 9 billion chickens, who produce more than 96 billion eggs per year. She calculated that shifting to a more plant-based diet would free up massive amounts of land, significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enable “climate repair on a planetary scale.” She envisions a model like the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program, which restores parts of the ecosystems of farms, but now also enabling greater Indigenous stewardship.
“Native communities have the vision and knowledge” of how to manage and harvest lands in a more sustainable, ecological way.
Agroforestry is a significant untapped opportunity, argued Amy Whitesides, design critic, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The approach involves combining trees and plants with crops or livestock. A type of agroforestry is silvopasture, which just focuses on integrating forest and livestock grazing. Today, just two percent of U.S. farms are agroforests.
Billions of dollars were allocated for agroforestry, alley cropping, soil restoration, and other “climate-smart” agricultural practices as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. This support for farmers to increase carbon sequestration through the land was put on hold through an executive order, Whitesides said. Allocated funding is expected to be cut.
Agroforestry is a way to increase ecological restoration and carbon sequestration on farmland, Whitesides explained. She proposed a national agroforestry plan, focusing on degraded farms, former mines and military sites, and areas surrounding rivers. These marginal landscapes, which have experienced pollution and extraction, can be restored, with some grazing that adds value. Agroforesty can also be incorporated into floodplains, providing a nature-based solution to flooding.
She envisions the benefits from “productive, collective commons” in new agroforested areas over the long-term.
