Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Northern Ireland -
Planning to Live with Climate Change

Consultation Report : February 2009

Human civilization is entering a new era. Most social and economic decisions throughout our history have been taken with little concern for the use of finite natural resources. We have now reached a point when we must provide for the needs of future generations as well as our own present needs. We must change the way we use natural resources both globally and locally to become truly sustainable and to avoid threatening the survival of humankind and other world ecosystems. Traditional growth and development models now need to be reconsidered at every level to ensure sustainable development. Sound analysis demonstrates that urgent action is needed to tackle climate change and can secure economic as well as social and environmental benefits.

This review of The New Vision for Planning suggests how everyone engaged in spatial planning should adapt their professional approach to plan for living with climate change, to advise and work in partnership with others and to campaign for fundamental change to shape a sustainable new future for humankind. It points the way ahead for the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) in extending a culture change in our approach to sustainable development, both nationally and internationally.

The Challenge

Climate change threatens our survival. Recent studies have shown that we have about 5 to 7 years - the timescale of this document - to change our ways before accelerating trends in environmental degradation lead to irreversible and chaotic change that could challenge the very basis of our way of life and ability to plan. Global warming would hit us at home as well as abroad. Consequential economic change threatens our security both locally and globally. Environmental and economic changes threaten the well-being of communities, families and individuals. Social changes on a global scale will unavoidably lead to increasing deprivation amongst poorer communities and increasing social and economic polarity worldwide.

Options for the Future

“Planning to Live with Climate Change” introduces the challenges of climate change to our vision for planning as an over-arching priority. It revisits the key issues of sustainable development, spatial planning, value-driven planning and action-orientated planning at the heart of the RTPI’s original “New Vision for Planning”. It then develops the original agenda for change into an Action Plan that seeks to realign the responsibilities for planning, improve the capabilities of planning, focus on the role of the 21 st Century professional and identify the actions that the RTPI must take to tackle what is emerging as a new world order. This document challenges you, the spatial planner, to propose individual and collective actions that you can take over the period 2009 – 2014 that will make a difference and asks how the RTPI and its partners should contribute towards effective delivery.

Climate change

Conventional approaches to planning for sustainable development have tended to balance a range of competing considerations, in ways that sometimes assume they are of equivalent weight. Our need to respond to climate change suggests that these approaches cannot continue. Where there is a challenge to the survival of human civilisations and/or ecosystems, measures to mitigate climate change should have priority over the balance that is conventionally sought between economic, social and environmental factors in planning for the specific needs and circumstances of a particular area. The challenge to survival might, for example, be defined in relation to international and national targets for reducing the carbon and related greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming.

Sustainable development

The ‘New Vision for Planning’ called for clear planning frameworks to engage people and integrate action to achieve sustainable development. The ‘ UK Sustainable Development Strategy’ has focused on living within environmental limits, ensuring a strong, healthy and just society, achieving a sustainable economy, promoting good governance and using sound science responsibly to achieve sustainable development. Spatial planning aims to balance economic, social and environmental issues and link them with integrated transport systems, community governance and new technology. Whilst government priorities may change over the lifetime of this document, these objectives are likely to endure.

Spatial planning

The new vision proposed that planning should be spatial, sustainable, integrated and inclusive. The RTPI’s 2007 report ‘Effective Practice in Spatial Planning’ found an evolving understanding of spatial planning that involves “place shaping and delivery at the local and regional levels”. Spatial planning should aim to enable a vision for the future of regions and places that is based on evidence, local distinctiveness and community derived objectives and translate this vision into a set of policies, priorities, programmes and land allocations together with the resources to deliver them.

Value-driven planning

The RTPI Education Commission aimed to develop education, skills and life-long learning to raise standards of professional competence. There is now a need to extend the continuing culture change in planning to promote change in the management of governments, councils, companies and agencies that are involved in spatial planning. There is an increasing clash of values about the social, economic and environmental issues raised by development and their spatial implications, particularly as between the challenge posed by climate change and the challenges posed by economic growth and social polarity.

Action-orientated planning

The Agenda for Action in the New Vision should be extended to promote sustainable development, to tackle climate change and to secure global survival. The RTPI should establish itself as the voice on spatial planning and become a “campaigning profession”. It should strengthen its commitment to community engagement, particularly through Planning Aid, and its programme of consultation across a wide range of public, private and voluntary partners. It should also consolidate its position as the primary professional and academic accreditation body for a wide range of practitioners .

Action Plan

The role of partners

The Action Plan for “Planning to Live with Climate Change” is built on the New Vision for Planning and is focussed on professional leadership, vision and delivery to promote fundamental shifts in practice in response to local and global change.The RTPI is uniquely placed to support civic leadership and establish professional competence, technical capabilities and inclusive processes.

Key shifts in the practice of spatial planning amongst all the partners involved in promoting sustainable development should include:

• Realigning the responsibilities for planning. This should resolve conflicts within sustainable development and realign the powers and responsibilities of the professionals, governments, community organisations, public sector agencies, the private sector developers and operators and the local and global companies involved in spatial planning. Action is required to undertake planning at the right scale and to secure a new accountability for central agencies so that decisions are taken at the lowest possible level consistent with good outcomes. Action is also required to align the agenda of the private sector with the agenda of the public sector so that investment decisions can be effectively integrated to achieve commonly agreed objectives.

• Improving the capabilities of planning. This should address the increasing complexity of urban and rural development at all levels and the need to realign the responsibilities for planning. The RTPI has a lead role to influence government and to support individual planners in developing their own competencies in spatial planning. Action is required to promote research and to manage knowledge for spatial planning at all levels. Action is also required to advance effective practice in spatial planning to work with associated professions and practitioners by c onsolidating the on-going shift from ”blueprint” regulatory models towards more flexible “outcome focused” models of spatial planning.

• Fostering the 21 st Century professional. This should encourage professionals in spatial planning to be multi-disciplinary, globally responsible, socially ethical and, above all, progressively campaigning. The RTPI should become a campaigning profession and support planners in extending the current “culture change” in planning. It will need to approach this leadership role at both the strategic and the operational levels with public, private and voluntary sectors and with companies, local communities and individual people. Planners are good at managing change, at finding synergy amidst competing demands and at synthesising complex situations into integrated policies and programmes of action.

The role of the RTPI

The RTPI will need to translate the Action Plan for “Planning to Live with Climate Change” into its Corporate Plan and annual Business Plan to complement the actions that will be required by professional planners, central and local government, public and voluntary sector agencies and the private sector. It will need to adapt its organisation and operation to promote spatial planning and engage its members and partners in tackling global economic, social and environmental issues. It will also need to engage the commitment of its members and partners to deliver practical action.

The RTPI should set its own action plan to achieve its wider objectives including:

• Action to promote international planning to facilitate the major contribution that spatial planning can make to address issues that are essential to the survival of civilisations and ecosystems such as climate change, economic stability and urban and rural poverty.

• Action to achieve planning at the right scale to advocate decision-making at the appropriate level for each decision which may be at the international, national, regional, subregional or local level of spatial planning.

• Action to secure a new accountability for central agencies to counter the increasing responsibility which is being given to non‑elected agencies and to private service monopolies that combine to separate communities from decision-making processes.

• Action to align the agenda of the private sector to encourage companies to align their agendas to wider economic social, environmental goals as part of their commitments to sustainability and corporate responsibility.

• Action to strengthen checks and balances within the voluntary sector to ensure that the expertise and values of voluntary sector interest groups are not undermined and to strengthen and promote the role and value of Planning Aid.

• Action to re‑empower local governance to support policies to strengthen effective spatial planning and to secure accountability and long-term commitment to each particular locality.

• Action to re‑engage local communities to advocate the importance of planning local communities as a key means of re-energising local democracy.

• Action to adapt and improve the skills and ethics of spatial planning to face the challenges of climate change and sustainable development in exercising the RTPI’s role as the custodian and developer of initial professional training, life long learning, skills and professional standards.

Conclusion

The RTPI must promote a debate about the fundamental shift that is needed to put climate change at the heart of sustainable development. “Planning to Live with Climate Change” advocates a “climate change priority” to change the conventional approach to planning for sustainable development where there is a challenge to the survival of civilisations and/or ecosystems. Measures to mitigate climate change should have priority over the conventional balance between economic, social and environmental factors in planning for a particular area where it is essential to achieve targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that threaten global survival.

The Action Plan for “Planning to Live with Climate Change” advocates a new focus on professional leadership, vision and delivery to promote change in response to the challenge of climate change and the threat to global survival. It is built on a review of the original proposals for realigning the responsibilities for planning and improving the capabilities of planners in the New Vision for Planning. It develops fresh ideas about the new professionalism that will be needed to tackle climate change and promote spatial planning. It identifies the action the RTPI must take to achieve them but, above all, it challenges the spatial planning profession to consider it must act to deliver critically important change to tackle the challenge of climate change.