Climate Action in Practice

2025 marked SWA’s first full year of implementing its Climate Action Plan. As the first major landscape architecture firm to publish firmwide decarbonization goals, this inaugural year focused on building the foundations required for meaningful, measurable emissions reductions across our work. Click through the full report below.

At the center of the Climate Action Plan is a science-based target to reduce project emissions by 50% by 2030, aligned with global climate science and evolving commitments across the AEC industry. To understand what this goal would require in practice, SWA conducted a firmwide carbon benchmarking study of ten recently completed projects representing all eight studios and a wide range of project types, scales, and geographies. This effort established the industry’s first “business-as-usual” emissions baseline for landscape architecture and demonstrated that material choices, sourcing strategies, and design decisions can significantly reduce embodied carbon without compromising design intent.

In parallel, SWA completed its first third-party audit of operational emissions, covering office energy use, employee commuting, and business travel. While this work will continue to evolve, it establishes a transparent baseline from which future operational reductions can be pursued.

Recognizing that decarbonization depends as much on culture as on metrics, SWA invested heavily in expanding carbon literacy across the firm. New tools, resources, and educational materials were developed to support project teams in integrating climate considerations into everyday practice. These efforts were reinforced by a network of Studio Climate Champions who helped translate research into action.

The report also highlights built project examples that demonstrate low-carbon strategies in practice, from material reuse and low-carbon concrete to soil protection, planting for sequestration, and local sourcing—showing how climate-responsive design can deliver measurable benefits on the ground.

Looking ahead, one of SWA’s near-term priorities is expanding the use of carbon assessment across more projects, with an aim of reaching 25% of projects by 2027. Achieving this goal will require sustained momentum and deep collaboration with clients and peers. SWA views this work as a shared endeavor that depends on transparent methods, common standards, and cross-industry partnerships to help scale climate action across the profession.

–Jonah Susskind, Director of Climate Strategy