***Ad lib**Lets get oriented*Blue Marble image of the Western
Hemisphere that includes cloud cover, oceans, phytoplankton
activity, topography, and city lights in the nightime part of the
hemisphere. Credit: Reto Stckli, NASA
NASA Releases New Views of EarthBy Andrea Thompson, LiveScience
Staff Writerposted: 10 October 2007 12:42 pm ET
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.crystalinks.com/earth1007.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.crystalinks.com/earth.html&h=300&w=300&sz=43&hl=en&start=58&um=1&tbnid=G-hCdfli4AxB8M:&tbnh=116&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3DEarth%2Bimages%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN
*CLIMATE CHANGE is one of the most critical global challenges of
our time. Recent events have emphatically demonstrated our growing
vulnerability to climate change. Climate change impacts will range
from affecting agriculture- further endangering food security-,
sea-level rise and the accelerated erosion of coastal zones,
increasing intensity of natural disasters, species extinction and
the spread of vector-borne diseases.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): RisksSea
level, biodiversity impacts, sea weather events, coral bleaching,
droughts, heat waves, floods, food security, etc.exacerbating
issues like poverty, unequal access to resources, conflict and
disease.Rewardscombating climate change does not have to damage or
derail economies.
UNEP and WMO Panel Puts Final Full Stop Behind Risks and Rewards
of Combating Climate Change: Pocket Guide for Policy Makers Agreed
by IPCC in Run Up to Bali Conference Valencia, 17 November 2007
the IPCC is a panel jointly established by the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation
(WMO).
*Extreme Weather Events
Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina, nearly 40,000
families still are living in vulnerable mobile homes and trailers
across the U.S. Gulf Coast with another hurricane season just two
months away.Reuters, April 2, 2008*Sometime during the year 2008,
humanity will probably pass the point where it collectively
consumes 1,000 barrels of crude oil every second of every day. More
than half of it and the share continues to rise is dedicated to the
movement of goods, services, and peoplee are, without a doubt,
entering the twilight of the Oil Age. Canwest News Service, April
2, 2008
Gary Kendall, Plugged In: The End of the Oil Age, released April
1, 2008 to Canwest News Service. Kendall, a former Exxon insider
for 9 years, is now an analyst with World Wildlife Fund in
Brussels.
Reported in Vancouver Sun, April 2, 2008, p.A4*The forces
driving the global food crisis:1) swelling population, 2) soaring
energy prices, 3) middle-class hunger for meat, 4) competition from
biofuels, and 5) hot money in commodities.Globe and Mail, April 12,
2008, p.1, Why Costs are Climbing
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2007/08/13/17/85-20070813-FOODPRICES.large.prod_affiliate.91.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.mcclatchydc.com/economics/story/18902.html&h=727&w=920&sz=131&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=qd-lL-FVAG7syM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=147&prev=/images%3Fq%3Drising%2Bfood%2Bprices%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DG
Rice shortages in exporting countries push up the wholesale
cost, force local supermarkets to raise theirs.Reuters Thursday,
April 03, 2008
Joanne Lee-Young, Vancouver Sun; with files from Reuters
Published:Thursday, April 03, 2008 Food-price inflation is about to
hit one of the main staples for local shoppers at Asian
supermarkets: rice.
Most countries that export rice face supply shortages, the Food
and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday.
Rising populations and higher incomes across Asia are leading to
increased consumption of rice*The headlines in this Tuesdays (March
3, 2009) Business section of the Vancouver Sun read as follows:
Trouble with the Economy
Canadian Economy Shrinks, Stock Market Tumbles
Hard Times Are Here, Canada
*The headlines in this Tuesdays (March 3, 2009) Business section
of the Vancouver Sun read as follows:
Trouble with the Economy
Canadian Economy Shrinks, Stock Market Tumbles
Hard Times Are Here, Canada
* leaving impressions like this one seared in collective
consciousness *This map represents the perspective of one European
Union organization; if they are correct, North America can expect
profound economic and social crisis lasting over the next 5-10
years. *Climate change has been called the worlds biggest
regressive tax: the poorest pay for the behaviour of the rich.
Kirk Smith, UC Berkeley professor, cited in The Economist, Vol.
388, Number 8597, Sept. 13, 2008, p. 67*Environmental Problems of
Dispersed Land Use PatternsHigh per capita energy useHigh per
capita auto emissions(both smog and greenhouse gases are directly
related to the amount of gasoline used)High per capita water
useHigh land requirements in both the block size and the road
system required to service it (road provision is seven times
greater in low density areas than in medium density areas)High
stormwater pollution from the extra urbanized land (low density
areas have double the stormwater pollution of medium density
areas)High domestic heating energy due to the lack of a shared
insulating effect when buildings are grouped (50% differences are
found) Poor recycling rates due to the large cost involved in
collection compared to a compact housing system (European cities
have four to six times the recycling rates of North America)High
physical infrastructure costs (pipes, poles. roads, etc.)High
social infrastructure costs (cars are required for participation in
social life; juvenile crime is often based on stealing cars; the
poor are increasingly pushed into outer suburbs)
Robert Yaro, president of the NY Regional Plan Association,
predicts the US population will grow by 140 million by mid-century.
He told the NY Times recently: If we accommodate the next 140
million Americans the way we accommodated the last 20 or 30
million, we would urbanize three times as much land as we have over
the last 200 years.
* Yaro interviewed in Jon Gertner, Chasing Ground, NY Times
Magazine, Oct. 16., 2005, pp. 46-82.**Here in Victoria you probably
are familiar with Dockside Green, which uses an integrated
triple-bottom-line approach throughout focusing on ecology,
economics, and equity.
The University of Victoria has an Office of Campus Planning and
Sustainability, a few enlightened academics, and some very dynamic
students who have created Common Energy to advocate going
beyond-carbon-neutral at U Vic and now elsewhere.
The City of Victoria is establishing a Sustainability Framework
and hiring a Director of Sustainability.
HOWEVER, to understand these kinds of initiatives and to be able
to create them we need to see them as part of a bigger picture.
As Julie Andrews says in The Sound of Music, Lets start from the
very beginning
*What is a Sustainability Framework?
A sustainability framework is a high level policy that provides
strategic guidance to both corporate and community policy, program
and service areas, including the renewal of key City policies, such
as the Official Community Plan, the Transportation Master Plan, and
the Corporate Strategic Plan. Other communities, throughout the
world, are undertaking similar processes as we all realize we must
take action now to ensure our resources and quality of life are
protected for future generations. The chart shown indicates how the
Victoria Sustainability Framework will affect all aspects of the
City's business.
On February 5, 2009 City Council reviewed public input received
on the draft Victoria Sustainability Framework, and a restatement
of the sustainability commitment and goals reflecting feedback
received. The draft framework was further revised to reflect
Council input.* *The current debate over the Kyoto Accord on
climate change illustrates that the mainstream view of the
environment today is sharply different from what it was twenty-five
years ago, when environmental problems were almost universally
regarded as minor, technical, soluble, and politically
uncontentious. They were considered by-products of economic growth
and social progress which further applications of growth and
progress would duly solve, as increasing wealth created the
resources, and improved technology the means, to solve
them.Throughout the industrialized world, governments and parties
of both left and right now acknowledge that environmental problems
are indeed very serious, requiring solutions which are not merely
technical, and which may not be available at all without
significant social and economic change. The vehicle for this shift
has been the concept of sustainable development, which has
succeeded in overcoming the conflict between environmental
protection and economic growth that characterized the environmental
debate of the 1970s and early 1980s. It accepts that protecting the
environment requires fundamental change in the direction of
economic progress and the institutions of government policy. But it
argues that this is compatible with continued economic growth in a
(regulated) global capitalist system. In this sense, sustainable
development represents a historic compromise between the ideology
of capitalism and its environmental critique, and which has enabled
a single environmental discourse to develop, used by all manner of
governments, businesses, and environmental organizations (Jacobs
1997). One might believe today that sustainable development has
finally come of age. Born publicly, at least in the 1987 report of
the UNs (Brundtland) World Commission on Environment and
Development, a child of the global agenda at the Rio Earth Summit
in 1992, stumbling awkwardly toward maturity with the Johannesburg
World Summit on Sustainable Development (ICLEI 2002, Otto-Zimmerman
2002) and the 2005 Kyoto Accord on climate change, sustainable
development seems to have survived even the shift to a
post-September 11 world.
Certainly in the last couple of years, with the IPCC and Al Gore
taking the Nobel Peace Prize, and here in BC the Provincial
Government taking the continental lead with respect to carbon taxes
and GHG reduction targets, it is clear that sustainability is not
just a fad it represents a new way of thinking and acting in the
world.
*Ad lib*Ad lib*Ad lib*Ad lib*Ad lib*Ad lib*Ad lib*Ad lib*There
are myriad ways to understand and conceptualize community. In terms
of sustainable community development, we are discovering that it is
useful to think of community in terms of assets, or capital.
*Sustainable Community Development =Planning for the long-term
success and well-being of your community
Sustainable community development requires mobilizing citizens
and their governments to strengthen all forms of community capital.
Community mobilization is necessary to coordinate, balance and
catalyze community capital
SCD is like a gyroscope it needs to be somewhat evenly balanced
or it wont stay up.
COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION requires building individual and
community capacity for sustainability leadership through
EDUCATION.
*Minimizing the consumption of essential natural capital means
living within ecological limits, conserving and enhancing natural
resources, sustainable resource management (soil, air, water,
energy, agriculture, etc.), cleaner production, and minimizing
waste (solid, liquid, air pollution, etc.).
*Improving physical capital includes focusing on community
assets such as public facilities (e.g., hospitals and schools),
water and sanitation, efficient transportation, safe, quality
housing, adequate infrastructure, and telecommunications.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://web.mit.edu/civenv/idr/images/Infrastructure_Collage.jpg&imgrefurl=http://web.mit.edu/civenv/idr/&usg=__Yo8YO7dzjT9bFgh9fmx7T0WrY8Q=&h=493&w=509&sz=75&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=i0Fn3_O8xLjamM:&tbnh=127&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dinfrastructure%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DG
*Strengthening economic capital means focusing on: making more
with less maximizing use of existing resources (eg. using waste as
a resource); making the money-go-round circulating dollars within a
community; making things ourselves - import replacement; making
something new creating a new product; trading fairly with others;
and developing community financial institutions.
*Increasing human capital requires a focus on areas such as
health, education, nutrition, literacy, and family and community
cohesion; basic determinants of health such as peace and safety,
food, shelter, education, income and employment are necessary
prerequisites.
http://www1.worldbank.org/devoutreach/winter01/images6/photo_human_6.gif*Multiplying
social capital requires attention to effective and representative
local governance, strong organizations, capacity-building,
participatory planning, access to information, and collaboration
and partnerships.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/images/wonderfullife.jpg*Enhancing
cultural capital implies attention to traditions and values,
heritage and place, the arts, diversity, and social history.
http://www.billtjones.org/breaking_ground/DSC04858.jpg*Strengthening
these six forms of community capital is the foundation for
sustainable community development.*Sustainable community
development requires mobilizing citizens and their governments to
strengthen all forms of community capital.
COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION is necessary to coordinate, balance and
catalyze community capital
SCD is like a gyroscope it needs to be somewhat evenly balanced
or it wont stay up.
*1) For the most part, no, but for now we need to work with and
through them while we develop the new paradigms, systems and
institutions we need for tomorrow.
2) If we think in ecosystem terms, the economic crisis is giving
the planet a chance to breath. Now we can try to either stimulate
our conventional industries and economy back into high gear by
continuing to deplete resources and pollute at unprecedented rates,
or we can see this moment as an opportunity to redesign our economy
so as to improve all six forms of community capital. There is no
doubt that this is technically possible to achieve; it is a matter
of vision, will, strategy, and organizational capacity, courage,
and cleverness..
3) For answers, we need to look HERE, toward the social economy,
co-operatives, community land trusts and social enterprises.
Imagine if the stimulus packages around the world were aimed at the
social economy rather than the unsustainable economy! These are the
organizations and institutions that are demonstrating an economy
which serves all, which is fair and trades fairly, which is
community-based, and which is founded on respect for all people and
respect for living systems. Citizens and their governments in over
6,000 communities around the world have conducted LA21 processes
through ICLEI, and thousands others are, like the City of Victoria,
proceeding with related sustainable development plans and programs.
These communities are laboratories for social innovation and are
developing the policies and programs that eventually become the
models for national and international initiatives, and for a more
sustainable economy.
What motivates you?*The Chinese recognized centuries ago that
crisis and opportunity go hand in hand.
Sure, weve got a crisis, but we also now perhaps the most
important opportunity in generations, to try not just to prop up
our current economy, but to create a BETTER, more sustainable
economy.
The stakes are indeed high, both now and for the future. We need
to get on with creating a better, more sustainable economy.
Let me leave you with a more hopeful image of that more
sustainable economy*
