The climate crisis is the single greatest issue of our time, and it requires urgent action.
hcma stands in solidarity with the youth-led Global Climate Strike, and we invite our clients, collaborators, and design and construction industry colleagues to join us.
As an industry, we are responsible for creating safe and just spaces for humanity and biodiversity to thrive. Designing and delivering buildings, however, accounts for significant greenhouse gas emissions, and has a tremendous impact on the health of both our communities and our environment.
We cannot continue with business as usual. We must address the complexity and urgency of this issue; one we believe is as much social as it is bio-physical. It’s time to examine ourselves, our business practices, and our influence on society if we are to give our children, and our planet, the future they deserve.
hcma commits to further actions, including those in the
Canadian Architectural Professionals Climate Declaration
1. Raise awareness of these interconnected crises, and the impact the built environment has on them;
2. Take immediate action through our projects, and our individual and collective capacities as advisors, advocates, educators and enablers within our communities, cities and supply chains.
3. Design for holistic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change impacts, and advocate for investments in a rapid transition to climate-positive alternatives;
4. Design to eliminate waste and harm and to support rapid transition to circular economies;
5. Design to support holistic health, resilience and regeneration; respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples as outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
6. Adopt regenerative design principles and practices to build the necessary capability, with the goal of designing projects and environments that go beyond the standard of net zero in use;
7. Advocate for the rapid systemic changes required to address the climate crisis, and the policies, funding priorities and implementation frameworks to support them.
We also invite you to join us outside Vancouver City Hall at 1pm, and the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, Victoria, at 12pm, on Friday, September 27th for the strike.
