IFLA Working Programme 03 - Climate Action

Goal: Develop and implement landscape-based solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation, including strategies for carbon sequestration, urban heat island reduction, and climate-resilient design.

Impact: Reduce the impacts of climate change, promote carbon sequestration and create more resilient communities

Working Programe Directors

Director - Tamsin Faragher

Tamsin Faragher works at the City of Cape Town in South Africa as a principal resilience officer. She is a landscape architect, designer, policy maker and strategist, researcher, author and mentor. Tamsin relentlessly pushes the profession’s boundaries to make cities liveable, resilient and climate adaptive.

She proudly leads the International Federation of Landscape Architects Africa Climate Change Working Group and more recently, accepted IFLA’s invitation to lead the Climate Action Working Programme.

Curiosity about why cities look the way they do spurred development policy research focused on the nexus between policy, practice and implementation, particularly as it relates to the competing demands between the environment and development – and how they manifest in water sensitive design, food systems and urban health.

Tamsin has a Bachelor of Architecture, a Masters in Landscape Architecture and a further Masters in Infrastructure Design and Management all from the University of Cape Town.

Co-director - Jane Welsh

Jane Welsh, BLA University of Guelph 1984 and MSC in Planning University of Toronto 2000 has been Project Manager of the Environmental Planning unit of Toronto City Planning since 2005. Her education and experience as a Landscape Architect has been the foundation for her work in developing new innovative solutions to address environment/sustainability/ resilience issues and change the way we build and develop in Canada's largest city.

This work has included the award-winning Toronto Green Standard and Green Roof Bylaw; the Bird Friendly Guidelines; the Biodiversity booklet series and the Enduring Wilderness: Toronto Natural Parklands book. She has also been responsible for developing the first Ravine Protection Bylaw for the amalgamated city, and the first Ravine Strategy and the first Biodiversity Strategy.

She previously developed Waterfront Plans for Metro Toronto, City of Mississauga and Halton Region Conservation Authority and worked as a landscape architect in the private sector and has always made time to mentor staff and students.

Jane has volunteered with the OALA for many years: as founding member of the Honours Awards and Protocol Committee (since 1988): as Co-Chair of the CSLA conference in 1991; and on OALA Council from 2014 to 2023 including the role of President. She is the past co-chair of the CSLA Committee on Climate and Biodiversity and the current Chair of the CSLA Finance and Risk Committee. She is also the IFLA Special Envoy to the International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH) and co-director of IFLA’s newly launched Climate Action Group.

Other members of Working Programme 03

Blake Creamer

Carlos Bueno

Daniel Jauslin

Hannah Ismail

Haris Piplas

Katarzyna Solarek-Pancic

Ricardo da Cruz e Sousa

Sourav Kumar Biswas