Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) president Ian Tant has said planners lack the resources, policies and powers to make the "significant impact that is essential" to meet the Government's target to eradicate its net contribution to climate change by 2050.
Speaking at the RTPI's Planning Convention this week, Tant launched the Institute's Resource Planning for Climate Action campaign. Highlighting the Committee on Climate Change's Report, he said it demonstrates that there has been "comparatively little or no progress" towards reducing carbon emissions from buildings or surface transport.
He called on the Government to take "radical" climate actions on buildings and transport, and that more resources would enable local authorities to better gauge the carbon impact of existing and emerging local plans.
Tant commented "it falls directly to planners to devise and implement policies to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in our buildings and transport infrastructure, and to facilitate carbon-neutral energy generation. It also falls to us to engage our communities so they come with us to accept the necessary changes".
"Without planners or adequate planning systems and policies, there is no realistic way to progress to zero carbon. The Government's own advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change, recognises the role of planners in taking decisive and effective climate action".
"We call on Government to ensure that climate change mitigation is a vital component of wider planning and infrastructure policy and that Government listens to the planning profession in formulating that policy".
The RTPI said the campaign would focus on practical solutions to reduce carbon emissions. It calls on the Government to:
Tant concluded by vowing to put climate action at the heart of the RTPI's new corporate strategy, that would guide their work from 2020 to 2030.
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