Facilitating climate change action across built environment life stages – perspectives from built environment professionals

Built environments are not implementing the scale of action needed to adequately address climate change – zero net emissions by 2050 to limit warming to 1.5 °C. This paper aims to provide a comparative and integrated understanding of how different sectors experience barriers and facilitators of climate change action (mitigation and adaptation) across built environment life stages: from ‘change initiation’, through to ‘renewal/recovery and decommission.’ In-depth interviews were conducted with 111 Australian built environment professionals working across five professional sectors including: urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and sustainability. The interviews provide detailed insights into professional practice. The greatest barriers to climate change action identified across all sectors were at the ‘costing and approvals’ stage where economic savings/profit were prioritised over climate change initiatives. Architects and urban designers identified greatest opportunity for action in the final life stages. For professionals from other sectors, greatest opportunity was identified in the ‘change initiation’ stage. The most frequently identified barrier to climate change action across professionals from all sectors was perceived lack of influence. Results indicate that to achieve the required climate change action, an integrated approach to tackling climate change across built environment life stages and professional sectors is needed. Building the agency and capacity of built environment professionals to facilitate climate change action is critical. Sixteen priorities for climate action across built environment life stages are identified. These include embedding required climate actions into regulation across life stages. The paper provides new insights to progress climate action in cities.