Advocacy Page
Adapting to Climate Change
A Sample of other players in the Sustainability Debates
back to - AILA advocacy
The BEDP
The Australian Council of the Built Environment Design Professions (BEDP) has been through significant changes in 2008-2010.
As has been reported elsewhere, several key partners no longer saw their future advocacy efforts as being in association with the other partners within BEDP. This remains an unfortunate move. The door has been left open to welcome back to join in collaborative advocacy - we all hope this will happen one day soon.
However, the present BEDP partners have moved on and have been very active in advocacy.
Given the current urgent needs for joint advocacy on the built environment in the context of Climate Change, it is certainly of benefit to all (including our society and all the professions) to be able to present one joint voice on issues to all levels of government.
To paraphrase one of AILA’s senior members:
“One can't help thinking there is too much parallel work going on in the area of the built environment and climate change, which seems to be a waste of resources, silosation and an unproductive turf war about who should be leading us to a sustainable future.
A sad case in point is to witness the Green Building Council of Australia undergoing research in the are of rating tools for precincts and urban spaces when they could easily review and adopt the USA’s LEED Neighbourhood...it is not a million miles from what we can use in Australia and the US Green Building Council and their partners have spent over a decade and millions of dollars getting to where they are.
All this messing around – time is getting short – we need to move on to providing solutions.”
As a result the BEDP has reformed with membership from leading Architects, Architects Consultants, Engineers, Lighting Engineers, Landscape Architects and others professionals at the state levels with links to other sectors.
Key policy positions have been published.... visit the BEDP web site.
The BEDP Sustainable Settlement Paper
Other Key AILA policies: www.aila.org.au/policies
back to - AILA advocacy
ASBEC
The Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council
ASBEC is a coalition of lobby groups and associations formed to be an advocacy and research association - and as such also takes on the role of being an issue based lobby group.
ASBEC relies on the members funding the research. Therefore the research outcomes and the advocacy naturally suit the agendas and policy directions of those that can afford to pay for the research.
ASBEC has tended to be dominated by and therefore to favour the 'usual suspects' in the sustainability debates in Australia - and excludes many others.
The AILA joined in 2008 but left in late 2009. The agendas were very much based on those of the main players - The usual suspects who currently have made it their business to dominate the agendas of several national issues based lobby groups
(example - Efficient Building Scheme is rejected by the Senate)
The AILA has different policy position - based on a set of ethical standards as set out in the Australian Landscape Principles - so has not been able to embrace easily the ASBEC advocacy statements.
Much of the ASBEC work relates to buildings and grey infrastructure with minimal relevance to the landscape, ecology or an integrated approach to sustainable settlement.
The research outputs from ASBEC are valuable if they are viewed as particular aspects of the very much larger sustainability debate - rather than being seen as central.
Their research contributes very much to the debate but remains limited as it has to date not adopted the integrated frameworks as set in the Sustainable Settlement Policy of BEDP.
The Australian Urban Design Award
Members may have noted that the AILA is no longer involved with this long standing award.
In recent years the AILA had moved to have this award realigned with the BEDP and to have it address more the real landscape and urban issues of green infrastructure and climate change.
Unfortunately as with issues as reported elsewhere here, former partners did not enter into any form of realistic debate about the issues as identified by the AILA.
Somewhere around early 2009 the award had also been restructured to be overseen by new partners, all with no consultation with the AILA who were founding partners to the award.
As a consequence, the AILA can no longer endorse the Australian Urban Design Award in its present form and notifies the membership that the award no longer fits within the AILA national policy on competitions.
So we have the unfortunate situation of a Australian Urban Design Award - not based on the ethical approach as set out in the Australian Landscape Principles - and therefore with no formal participation by the National Professional Institute representing Landscape Architecture - one of the key professions in Urban Design. How strange!
However, we do hope that one day soon the former partners will be convinced to sit down with the AILA to discuss the issues of concern we have with the current Urban Design Award.
meanwhile - watch this space for a new national award - hopefully to be announced in 2010!
back to - AILA advocacy
What is the BEMP?
Built Environment Meets Parliament (BEMP) is an event initiated by several former partners of the BEDP.
This annual event attempts to be a one voice for the Built Environment once a year and through this exercise to be a bridge between the particular organizations and Parliament.
It is staged annually in Canberra in Parliament House.
BEMP was initiated by the Property Council of Australia and joined up the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA), The Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) and the Consulting Engineers (ACEA) - and was later joined by the Green Building Council.
Key Built Environment Design Professions organizations were not invited to be key owners of the event. Instead they are able to register as delegates to each event.
This event does not replace the advocacy as undertaken throughout the year by the the Built Environment Design Professions (BEDP).
In fact the advocacy position being undertaken by the BEMP partners has not been embraced by many Built Environment Design Professions.
On these issues of current environmental issues and how we deal with them, the AILA and its BEDP partners find themselves in a different advocacy position to those marketed through BEMP.
As outlined in our Sustainable Settlement paper, we are advocating for a far more comprehensive and holistic set of actions - rather than concentrating on particular parts of the debate - an approach which has historically kept these important debates within silos. **
It is now time for all professions to work together to advocate for far more complex and urgent approaches to how we deal with the issues of the built environment. And that this needs to start from first principles - that is we need to start from basic Landscape Principles.
With all this in mind, to advocate for a more holistic approach to deal with climate change, the AILA has responded to the August 2009 paper and through this response the AILA has pointed out the shortcomings of the position being advocated for through the BEMP.
see the AILA response here
A key BEDP Paper sets out the current position being advocated for by the BEDP:
Sustainable Settlement
Future ACTIONS:
The AILA would very much like to be working in a much closer partnership with some of the key players - those former BEDP partners - who now participate within BEMP.
This concept - BEMP - could have been so much more relevant to the Climate Change and Sustainability debates if its key players had been more embracing of other associations and key players and adopted a more inclusive and integrated approach to the lobbying and public statements.
The AILA therefore continues to seek way of influencing these agendas and one day even welcoming former partners into coalitions that would be so much more stronger and relevant to the future of the planet.
** a reference on the current use of Sustainability - whereby sustainability is being used in reality by many as a term to argue that we should be working to sustain the present situation - as opposed to making our built environments work to sustain and put value back into the planet - which would include working urgently for a carbon free approach.
see Tony Fry's book: Design Futuring
back to - AILA advocacy
search | site-map | sponsors | privacy | copyright | refunds | payments | terms
of use