Register Today: Climate Action Symposium

By Jared Green

The ASLA Sierra Chapter is hosting a Climate Action Symposium on April 18 in Sacramento, California. It's a day-long "interactive, multidisciplinary experience where designers, state and local agencies, academics, and community leaders will converge to share actionable strategies to further climate solutions."

According to the Sierra Chapter, "this symposium un-officially continues a lineage of ASLA-hosted climate action events" in California: first with the ASLA Southern California Chapter’s event in 2023 and then with the Northern California event last year.

Along with providing education for landscape architects, a key goal is to build a bridge between the profession and legislators. "We are leveraging our position in the state’s capitol to invite policy makers and agency staff to both attend and speak." The chapter says "outreach to the California Natural Resources Agency has already gained us a seat in conversations about wildfire mitigation policies."

Keynote speakers include:

• Torey Carter-Conneen, Hon. ASLA, ASLA CEO
• Lisa Lien-Mager, Deputy Secretary for Forest and Wildfire Resilience, California Natural Resources Agency
• Meghan Hertel, Deputy Secretary for Biodiversity and Habitat, California Natural Resources Agency

The symposium opens with a plenary, followed by a series of sessions that focus on "where we are now," which will explore how to:

• Unify climate and resilience through the relationships of native plants
• Design for fire-prone communities
• Use compost for erosion control
• Cool cities
• Green Sacramento
• Enhance biodiversity conservation at solar energy facilities

Afternoon sessions will focus on "where we are going" and cover how to:

• Repair, restore and rewild using Miyawaki forest techniques
• Grow the future
• Sequester more carbon through landscapes
• Work with industry partners to decarbonize design
• Do climate action planning

An afternoon sketch-crawl with Chip Sullivan, FASLA, and Elizabeth Boults, ASLA, will use their recent book Wisdom of Place: Recovering the Sacred Origins of Landscape as a guide to climate and biodiversity action.

The day will end with a "dream session" where attendees will "workshop ideas" on the future of landscape architecture and climate action.

Register for the Climate Action Symposium on April 18, 8.30 AM - 6.30 PM PST, at Our Place Event Space in Sacramento. Registration fees for ASLA members are $105 and non-members, $120. For firms that register more than three people, it's $90 per person.