Transforming the Landscape to Help Fight Climate Change

This article is part of a Women and Leadership special report highlighting the work by women around the world addressing climate change.

When Martha Schwartz studied fine arts at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s, she was drawn to land art, which uses the landscape as a canvas and incorporates materials such as concrete, gravel and sand.

“I didn’t have enough money to buy a tract of land where I could create land art projects, so I decided to go into landscape architecture, which allowed me to work with the earth,” she said.

After working with the landscape architecture firm the SWA Group, Ms. Schwartz established Martha Schwartz Partners in 1983.

The firm has offices in New York, London and Shanghai.

As she worked on landscape designs over the years, Ms. Schwartz, 73, read numerous books and articles about the negative impact of climate change.

“I realized that we could use the profession of landscape to deliver climate solutions and, around 2015, the focus of my work expanded,” she said.

Since then, Ms. Schwartz’s firm has led the design of nearly 50 urban projects that aim to mitigate the effects of climate change.