I'd like to share an initiative started by some like-minded colleagues in the United Kingdom. They have joined up with a group called "Construction Declares" to launch "Project Management Declares".
Project Managers would be joining over 11,000 scientists who made a declaration just last month. Read that article from Bioscience here. Or view the YouTube summary of a Guadian newspaper storybelow:
I'm sure some of you have varying degrees of belief in the climate crisis but if you are a project manager, I think you'd have to agree that the 6 actions that are called for will require our talents as project leaders. Feel free to share your opinion in the comments below. Intelligent and rational discussion is never a bad thing.
I invite you to visit the projectmanagersdeclare site and at least see what they have to say - and if you agree, join in the effort to "up the game" for us as project managers with respect to climate action.
If you want a sneak peek...here's some of what they have to say:
Project Managers Declare is part of Construction Declares, a global petition movement uniting all strands of construction and the built environment. It is both a public declaration of our planet’s environmental crises and a commitment to take positive action in response to climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse.
We know that we have just over a decade to address these global emergencies, or we risk catastrophic damage to the natural world. Yet as the earth’s life support systems come under increasing threat, the scale and intensity of urban development, infrastructure and building construction globally continues to expand, resulting in greater greenhouse gas generation and loss of habitat each year.
For everyone working in construction and the built environment, meeting the needs of our societies without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries will demand a paradigm shift in our behaviour. If we are to reduce and eventually reverse the environmental damage we are causing, we will need to re-imagine our buildings, cities and infrastructures as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating and self-sustaining system.
Such a transformation cannot happen without a wide-ranging declaration of intent, followed by committed action, international cooperation and open source knowledge sharing. A united declaration will support more effective lobbying of policy makers and governments to show leadership and commit resources. The next few years will decisive in shaping our collective future - now is the moment to act.
