Projects and Initiatives - CIP Policy on Climate Change

Adopted by CIP Council in June 2009, the Institute's Climate Change Policy represents an important step into a more proactive approach to public policy issues and how they relate to professional practice.

The CIP Policy on Climate Change establishes the Institute's commitment to raising awareness of climate change impacts and better preparing members to build adaptation and mitigation strategies into their work, especially at the community level. The policy establishes CIP's position and sets out a call for action from the Institute and its members.

The goal of the policy is to empower CIP members to tackle the effects of climate change by:

• increasing planners' capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change, including through the development of new tools and educational resources
• increasing planners' knowledge and awareness of climate change and their use of mitigation techniques and adaptation strategies
• raising awareness of the links between planning and climate change among CIP's members and stakeholders
• building networks to share information and find collaborative solutions to the challenges of climate change

The policy includes 8 directives that lay out the actions CIP endorses to ensure that planners contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The directives have far-reaching implications for CIP and its members, compelling each to:

• take constructive action towards advancing knowledge on this topic
• share information among the planning, science and academic communities, and
• engage in research and partnership activities

CIP is also developing a "report card" approach to monitoring implementation of the policy by its members.

I'd like to download or read CIP's Policy on Climate Change.