Regenerative Urbanism is Key to Climate Solution 1
The IPCC Working Group 2’s contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report yesterday, Feb. 28, 2022, found that . . . ,
“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet.”
“Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future.”
In particular,
“Cities are hotspots of impacts and risks, but are also a crucial part of the solution”
“There is a narrowing window for action.”
“Safeguarding and strengthening nature is key to securing a livable future”
“Urgent action is required . . . .”
“The report clearly states that Climate Resilient Development [mitigation solution] is already challenging at current warming levels [that is, hard and limited]. It will become more limited if global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F). In some regions it will be impossible if global warming exceeds 2°C (3.6°F). This key finding underlines the urgency for climate action . . . .”
The summary report omits the fact that the world’s present climate mitigation trajectory (its best effort to date) will increase to nearly six degrees of warming over the next 78 years, by centuries end, a catastrophe unless we become more effective. Scientists view three degrees of warming as catastrophic and unrecoverable. In the 1990s and 200s, they viewed one degree of warming as the maximum, red-line safe limit. Since then, with the slow mitigation response, the world has moved the bar to 1.5 degrees, with some even talking about 2 degrees, which was the beginning of irreversible changes on the way to socio-economic systems collapse.
Unfortunately, humanity has yet to figure out how to decouple the human economy from fossil fuels quickly enough to continue economic production and development while fully mitigating climate change in time. This is the predicament.
In addition, climate change is only the visible front-line of a larger challenge: that of our accelerating unsustainability, which arises from humanity’s linear, take-make-waste approach to material use, production, consumption, and waste. Not only do we need to solve the climate problem, but unsustainability too.
With the efficacy of our current approach to sustainability appearing increasingly uncertain, especially for responding quickly enough, we are fortunate to have a promising new approach to sustainability emerging from innovation across our plan, design, build, and sustainability practices. That approach is regenerative systems sustainability and urbanism (see the White Paper, Regenerative Urbanism—A Synopsis).
This approach has the potential to simultaneously solve the twin challenges of climate change and unsustainability. The added bonus of shifting to a regenerative systems sustainability approach is that it would solve both problems for the price of one.
Curiously, its key characteristics reflect two of the substantive findings of Working Group 2: strengthening nature with biosystemsmimicry by planning to regenerative systems imperatives and embedding them at the center of the human economy. Using systems modeling GIS and systems simulation tools to shift planning practice to urban and regional regenerative systems sustainability. In brief, applied to cities, regenerative systems sustainability becomes regenerative urbanism. As a result, limited, linear production and material use is replaced by circular flows, shifting the economy from limited to unlimited prosperity.
The choice is ours. Will we make it? The Regenerative Sustainability 2030 Institute is advancing this approach. Please view current resources and services on this web site, particularly the Regenerative Region Demonstration Project, and e-mail Scott Edmondson for more information.
Source: IPCC Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Feb. 28, 2022