Heat islands, urban deserts, dwindling biodiversity. Increased extreme weather events. As the world continues to experience the rapidly increasing effects of climate change, landscape architects like Meg Calkins, FASLA, FCELA are emerging as shaping solutions to the challenges affecting our physical environments today. 

Calkins, a professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at the North Carolina State University College of Design, chaired the task force for the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) that considered how to provide practicing landscape architects with opportunities to combat the challenges of climate change, encouraging not just carbon neutrality, but a carbon-positive approach. The result: the LA 2040: Climate and Biodiversity Action Plan. 

“Landscape architects employ nature-based solutions to reduce the impacts of climate change on our environments,” says Calkins. “We have a unique opportunity in this profession to be able to offset our own carbon footprint. Calculating not only the carbon footprint of building and maintaining the site through activities like powering the lights, mowing the grass, blowing the leaves, etc. – then offsetting those greenhouse gas emissions with plants that can reduce those carbon impacts through carbon sequestration,” she adds. 

The recommendations outlined by ASLA incorporated feedback from the previous iteration of the plan, but added in another important issue – biodiversity considerations. Responding to feedback that the 2022 plan wasn’t actionable for the everyday practitioner, Calkins and a nimble team set out to revise the benchmarks for 2030, just four short years away. 

From Vision to Action: Making Climate Goals Usable for Everyday Practice

The new plan takes a cue from its natural surroundings, acting as a “living” document with routine updates and multiple detailed supporting documents for implementation. “We’re not going to shift radically overnight, but there are opportunities for low-hanging fruit that we can target,” Calkins adds.

The plan provides those recommendations as concrete actions throughout – everything from building smaller and tapping into local supply chains to recommending native species to improve biodiversity. Meaningful actions don’t require radical steps; rather, many professionals choosing thoughtfully as sites are designed can compound into real change.

Nature-Based Solutions: Designing for Adaptation, Health and Equity

Calkins is insistent that the pairing of climate and biodiversity in the ASLA action plan should be the status quo in both the department’s curriculum and in the professional practice. “This isn’t the far-out future of practice,” she states. “It’s the now-future of practice.” With the embrace of a new status quo comes growing pains, but the students graduating from the department are well-equipped to take those urgent challenges into the firms in which they work.

The students within the department have grown up with the threat of climate change throughout their lives, seeing catastrophic climate disasters wreak havoc on communities around the globe. Finding programs led by faculty members who are addressing this work, looking at the impacts of climate change not only through the lens of landscape architecture, but through the lenses of public policy, community and social equity, prepares them to graduate with the skillset needed to design for an ever-changing world.

“Good design isn’t thrown out the window with climate-positive design. We still have to design compelling, beautiful places, and it’s a double-win when we can do that and create a climate-positive site,” Calkins says.

Collaboration Across Disciplines and Borders

The emphasis on improving our climate footprint transcends borders – so Calkins did just that, representing ASLA as a delegate to the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP30. The 2025 conference took place in Belém, Brazil, and Calkins had the chance to share with representatives from the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme and others on how landscape architects can address climate adaptation through nature based solutions – focusing on environmental benefits like stormwater mitigation, improved water quality, heat island reduction, improved air quality and more. 

But the benefits don’t stop at the physical; they affect the social and emotional well-being of the people who inhabit these places. Noticeable health outcomes result from access to natural spaces, including improved mental health, reduced healthcare costs and positive opportunities for healthier communities. 

Calkins was heartened to see sub-national leaders from across the United States – from small-town mayors to statewide governors – participating in the discussion. And within the landscape architecture and environmental planning department in the college, those borders are shrinking as students embrace a worldlier approach to their studies. 

The College of Design has embraced partnerships worldwide, most notably with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. One big focus of the Climate and Biodiversity Action Plan is learning from indigenous cultures as the experts in managing those lands. “As the college expands its partnerships worldwide, students have increased access to learn from a wide array of cultures and experiences, which will inform and enhance their work as designers”, says Department Head Maria Bellalta.

“As the college expands its partnerships worldwide, students have increased access to learn from a wide array of cultures and experiences, which will inform and enhance their work as designers.”
– Maria Bellalta

Bellalta has taken great strides to expand the knowledge and practice of landscape architecture across territories, as both vice president of education and academic affairs for the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Americas Region and by leading students in urban design studios in Mexico City focused on urbanization and environmental resilience. Students have had the opportunity to travel to Mexico City and see firsthand the challenges of urban growth coupled with the benefits of the inherent rich biodiversity of the area.

“There are currently 44 landscape architecture university programs in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Each offers increasing potential for our discipline to expand and to be informed by a broader network of environmental practices. And taken together, the Americas, including Canada, the United States, and Latin America — constituted by Central and South America and the Caribbean — cover a wide range of territories, each with specific and peculiar ecotones. A collective approach fueled by the entire Americas region offers a much deeper understanding for addressing environmental opportunities and dilemmas, and underscores the basis for a renewed 21st century landscape architecture and environmental design paradigm,” Bellalta adds.

But the work doesn’t stop in the classroom – alumni and practicing landscape architects can further support the bold goals of ASLA’s Climate and Biodiversity Action Plan through their practice, research, advocacy and personal support. Landscape architecture isn’t just responding to climate change – it’s helping to shape the path forward to bring a more climate-positive future for all.