The Landscape Declaration

 “What we do to our landscapes we ultimately do to ourselves.” – ‘The New Landscape Declaration’

Our lecturer provided us with a task a few weeks ago, and to be honest this is the only chance I have had to do it. With a dissertation, getting back to university, group projects and the pandemic I have been a little preoccupied.

The task was to read material from the book ‘The New Landscape Declaration’, which includes both the 1966 original and new declaration. I wish I would have read this sooner. It makes you question so much about the landscape profession and makes you realise just how important this profession actually is. It has created a new excitement for my future within landscape architecture.

 

A Declaration of Concern

In 1966 a declaration of concern was drafted by a small group of landscape architects, who highlighted the growing concern for the natural environment. No one knows who really wrote the declaration or what the process was leading up to its publication, but the declaration's emphasis on understanding the landscape through its biophysical layers would suggest that Ian McHarg was the writer. There is no evidence that the declaration made any impact within the media, but the substance of the declaration explored the impact of human development and discussed the concerns the group had.

“We are concerned over the misuse of the environment and development, which has lost all contact with the basic processes of nature.”

The group explained that there is no single solution to help resolve these environmental issues but groups of solutions that are related to one another. They identified that the key to solving “the environmental crisis comes from the field of landscape architecture, a profession dealing with the interdependence of environmental processes.”

However, the 1966 Declaration of concern had its limits, as stated in the new declaration, it was  authored by five white men and focused primarily on North America, with no mention of equity, extinction, or climate change.

 

The New Landscape Declaration

“After centuries of mistakenly believing we could exploit nature without consequence, we have now entered an age of extreme climate change marked by rising seas, resource depletion, desertification, and unprecedented rates of species extinction.”

The new landscape declaration was published in 2016, with over 700 landscape architects who shared the same concern for the future. Inspired by the 1966 ‘Declaration of Concern’ the group created the new declaration as a call to action. Expanding and building upon the original declaration, the book features 32 inspirational essays from designers which discuss the role of landscape architects in addressing our current issues such as climate change. There are three main topics that emerge within each declaration: Climate change, urbanization, and the profession’s identity in the twenty-first century.

 

Climate change

When the 1966 Declaration of Concern was drafted climate change was known but did not gain popular currency until the two significant events: in 1979 when a National Academy of Sciences committee forecast temperature rises, and in 1988 when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed.

As stated in the new declaration, the climate has always been changing, so technically climate change is nothing new, but anthropogenic climate change is different. Our current situation means that we have no irrevocably altered natural history on a planetary scale, and whilst mankind has always made an impact on the world, we have never before altered the fundamental workings of the earth system as a whole.

This chapter poses so many questions for me. We as individuals cannot do anything that will reverse climate change, I myself am vegan, I try to walk or take public transport if I can, and recycle. All the things we are told to do, however, will make no impact. As the 1966 declaration for concern says, there is no single solution that one single person can do to solve climate change, but more groups of solutions that large corporations, as well as the public, could start to help the issue. I always wonder whether it will work though. This book has reminded me of the David Attenborough documentary ‘A Life on Our Planet’. The concepts and timelines within this documentary scared me, will we be able to make these changes and ensure that the planet will still be habitable by 2100. I understand what I need to do as a landscape architect, and I hope that throughout my career I do not lose my passion for improving the planet and that each design I create is sustainable. But again, I am one person, we need to make a change together. 

Urbanization

Over the last 50 years, humanity has altered the surface of the planet with urbanization and its related infrastructure, and as world population moves into double-digit billions this is likely to continue for the majority of the twenty-first century. We can assume that if birth rates and migration from rural to urban areas continues to increase, then an additional three billion people will become urbanized between now and 2100.

“Landscape architects have the opportunity to direct the growth, interweaving it with agricultural lands and remnant habitat.”

Within the new landscape declaration, it is explained that cities are becoming reconceptualized as something that could be continuous with, instead of resistant to, ecological flows. Therefore, converting cities from industrial machines, into ecological systems. This concept would not be simple, but as ecologists, engineers, architects, planners, developers, and the general public, start to think of cities as a new kind of nature rather than something opposed to nature, then landscape architects would be leading this urban transformation.

Professional Identity

The issue for the profession is that these pressures are shaping territory where landscape architecture has very little capacity. To take the large-scale landscape issues of the Anthropocene seriously, an expansion of landscape architecture’s professional and educational capacity would be a necessity. Something which was suggested in the 1966 Declaration of Concern, over 50 years ago.

“How can landscape architecture build capacity around the world rather than just export commercial services? How can work be created rather than just received? What knowledge is needed? What methods are most suitable? Whose interests will the results really serve?”

We need to reflect on what the profession says it can do, and what it can actually provide. As well as communicate the professions global potential.