By Mitchell Labiak, Property Week’s Reporter

Wednesday, 8 May 2019

The property industry needs to stop growing within the next 12 years in order to deal with the threat of climate change, LandSec’s sustainability insight director Edward Dixon has said.

Speaking at Real Estate Women’s Healthy Buildings event, the LandSec director said that “the point about degrowth illustrates the pickle” that we are in.

“We could stop growth now through aggressive policy changes or through tightened up regulation or through making it unviable to deliver unsustainable buildings through the planning system. There are mechanisms and levers that could be pulled. But, our pensions are underpinned by that growth,” he said.

He added: “Whilst we can’t afford to stop growth right now, because that would bring the economy to a grinding halt and cause huge problems, obviously we have to stop growth – or at least pull it back a bit – within around 12 years. It’s a wicked problem and there’s no immediate answer to it. What we need is smart policy intervention that will allow us to transition without completely collapsing the world’s financial systems.”

The article was published on Property Week:
https://www.propertyweek.com/news/landsec-says-industry-must-stop-growth-to-tackle-climate-change/5102650.article