Planners for Climate Action (P4CA), congregated at the annual ISOCARP Congress on 2 October to engage planners towards bold and ambitious goals to address climate change. The Congress was hosted by the city of Bodo, Norway is a particularly inspiring venue, 60 km above the Arctic circle where climate change is a live issue for all levels of the society. Mayor Ida Pinnerod opened the Congress by reminding the challenges of lowering levels of Arctic sea ice and warming temperature levels, urging planners to address climate change in their practice. The Congress gathered 500 planners from all regions.

 

Didier Vancutsem, Isocarp Secretary General opened the side event where participants discussed the need to strengthen the nascent P4CA collaborative initiative meant to incorporate climate change in planning practices worldwide. P4CA members convened their ambitious goals to a crowd of planners, and made a plea to join together to better train planners at all levels so that climate change be at the heart of planning worldwide to reduce emissions, adapt and prepare cities and territories to upcoming hard events.

 

Key action areas will include a global repository of syllabi on Urban and Territorial Planning for Climate Change coordinated by UN-Habitat. The repository will support capacity-building of planners and help ensure that all graduate-level urban and regional planning curricula prepare future professionals to plan for effective climate action. Participants expressed the need to strongly advocate on the role of urban and territorial planning in climate action and position themselves in the international debate to advance the commitments to the Paris agreement and SDG11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities.