Next steps for Landscape and Carbon

Member schemes such as Cator Park by HTA Design, which reused 30,000m3 of demolition material to shape the landscape, are leading the way on material reuse. © HTA Design

Introducing the next phase of the Landscape Institute’s pioneering programme on reducing carbon in landscape projects.

Although the built environment sector contributes almost 25% of our greenhouse gas emissions, to date the focus has mainly been on decarbonising buildings. The spaces between buildings remain a significant blind spot and many barriers exist for landscape practitioners in understanding, calculating and communicating the carbon impact of our schemes.

In March 2024, the Landscape Institute (LI) and British Association of Landscape Industries launched the well-received report ’Landscape and Carbon’. Highlighting the integral role of landscape in reducing embodied and whole-life carbon emissions, the report provided valuable insights for practitioners.

Building on the eight recommendations the report set out, the LI has now established a Steering Group and three Task & Finish groups (introduced below) to deliver practical outputs that will empower and inspire practitioners to develop their own embodied carbon reduction strategies and methodologies and accelerate our collective progress towards net zero development.

Landscape and Carbon report

©Landscape Institute

Underpinning each group is our focus on producing accessible, freely available, practical resources, or building on existing ones for aligned sectors. Such resources would inform and add value to the landscape sector, raising its profile within the wider built environment. To date, groups have focused on developing topic scopes for the next 12 months, with the possibility of fresh goals and further targets beyond 2025. Our next steps involve granular project planning within each group and detailing the key tasks that will deliver benefits to target audiences.

We’re in the midst of a climate and ecological emergency, and it’s precisely the time to be engaged in the design and delivery of landscapes to address these crises. We must position ourselves at the top table, catching up with other built environment professions, taking responsibility for our carbon impacts, and leading the conversation around climate resilience and adaptation.

Andrew Rylah is Policy & Public Affairs Manager at the Landscape Institute

We greatly appreciate the contributions of our expert volunteers and are keen to attract a variety of professionals across sectors to advance key topics. If you are interested in finding out more or participating in this vital work, please get in touch at policy@ landscapeinstitute.org.

Mayfield Park, Manchester, by Studio Egret West, has taken a climate-aware approach to delivery. Inputting metrics into the Pathfinder tool, the team established that it will take 39 years for the project to absorb its embodied carbon, and argue that clients, developers, local authorities and other designers need to be more transparent about carbon. Read more in Landscape Autumn 2023: Pioneering the park of the future.

Project Carbon Assessment, Processes and Tools

This group is working to agree and recommend a freely available, standardised, whole-life carbon assessment process for self-regulated use by practitioners of landscape-related work.

Key themes include:

Practitioner-friendly outputs: Developing resources that add value, allow for incremental accuracy improvements and are adaptable for future review and development.

– Tool and standard integration: Impartially identifying existing tools and standards (e.g. PAS 2080 and BS EN 15978), recognising their strengths, limitations and potential application throughout the RIBA stages and project process.

– Carbon reduction guidance: Producing and sharing guidelines for carbon reduction, setting carbon baselining processes and developing incremental reduction targets towards net zero.

We’re keen to collaborate with other professional bodies and organisations to ensure our outputs are aligned with existing methods and standards. Outputs will consider the diverse types and scales of landscape projects, from urban to rural.

Suppliers, Data & Materials

This group focuses on encouraging the use of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) so they become common practice among UK suppliers and across industry sectors. We want to develop and promote leading practice around EPDs that is aligned to existing industry tools, is accessible to practitioners, informs decision-making, and facilitates commercial and professional benefits. This work involves liaison with third-party accreditors and engagement with organisations that host EPD databanks.

The group will target hardscape sectors, especially those where the impact of EPD guidance and support on carbon emissions may have greatest effect. We also recognise the important challenges around soils and nursery production (in terms of both supply and potential sequestration), where data is among the least advanced. The benefits of producing EPD guidance in this sector would be significant for practitioners because of the current gap in provision.

This work focuses on connecting with industry bodies to encourage and promote EPD development and to ascertain member engagement. We will also investigate generic EPDs, recognising their particular importance for smaller enterprises where the cost of bespoke EPDs can be prohibitive.

Do you have experience, knowledge or data that will help us to quantify the carbon of softscaping elements in landscape projects?

Please get in touch at policy@landscapeinstitute.org

Education

This initiative will develop educational resources, including a general introduction to EPDs and a glossary of key carbon terms for landscape practitioners. It will include ways to raise awareness and educate clients about the role of landscape in reducing carbon emissions, considering ESG factors and such stakeholders as the public and the finance and insurance sectors. We are also considering the delivery of EPD training at different levels to equip practitioners for work with suppliers and specifiers. The topic will connect with the other groups around such themes as:

– Understanding underpinning legislation, regulation and ethics and identifying gaps around landscape.

– Appreciating the lifetime carbon impact of materials, including considerations when selecting lower carbon materials, with a focus on whole-life usage and end of life.

– Guidance on carbon measurement tools for design, build and operation.

– The sequestration potential of different landscapes, soils and plants.

– Mitigation, adaptation and regenerative approaches, including recycling and circular economy practices.