Advocacy Page
Adapting to Climate Change
Shifting Priorities and Placing Value on the Landscape
NATIONAL ADVOCACY
The BEDP
The Australian Council of the Built Environment Design Professions (BEDP) has been through significant changes in 2008-2009.
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.
However, the present BEDP partners have moved on and have been very active in advocacy and remain open to any or all of the former partners rejoining the BEDP some time in the future.
Given the current urgent needs for joint advocacy on the built environment in the context of Climate Change, it would certainly be 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.”
Visit the BEDP web site.
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 organisations and Parliament.
It is staged annually in Canberra in Parliament House.
BEMP was initiated by the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA), The Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) and the Consulting Engineers (ACEA) - and has been joined by the Green Building Council and the Property Council.
Key Built Environment Design Professions organisations 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 involved with 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 hisorically 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
** 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
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.
Sadly along with issues as reported above, former partners did not enter into any form of realistic debate about the issues as identified by the AILA.
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.
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.
The BEDP Sustainable Settlement Paper
Other Key AILA policies: www.aila.org.au/policies
AILA advocacy
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