Sevilla Conference 2007

MOVING FROM AN ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM TO A SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM HAS ITS CHALLENGES

GUTTORM GRUNDTEnvironmental Affairs CoordinatorCity of Oslo

Oslo is completing its EMS and continue on the long and winding road to SMS

Economy Society

SUSTAINABILITY TRIANGLE

Ecology

EMS

SMS

EMS OSLO

• Department of Environment and Transport

• Agencies

Organisation

AnnualReport

Environmental policy

Budget

Oslo Forum forSustainable City

Managing UrbanEurope - 25

47Agencies

176Schools

45Homes forelderly and

disabled

15Urban

Districts

350Kindergardens

ECO-EFFICIENCY/ CERTIFICATION- energy efficiency/change- materials efficiency/waste - transport efficiency/change - eco-procura

Green Living

Environmental management in Oslo

GREEN WAVE

• Local management towards sustainability

• Natural common goods

• Responsible consumption and lifestyle choices

• Sustainable mobility

• Local to global

And not:

• Governance

• Planning and design

• Local action for health

• Vibrant and sustainable local economy

• Social equity and justice

SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?Ålborg Commitments in the UEP :

• Oslo shall be an international attractive city and a motive power in the Oslo region

• Oslo shall be a safe city with high quality of life for the inhabitants

• Oslo shall offer user adapted municipal services of high quality

SO WHAT IS THE CITY MASTER PLAN?

Goals:

• Oslo shall have a sustainable urban development

CMS OSLO

• City Hall Departments

• All Agencies

Organisation

City Master plan

AnnualReport

Budget

• The Master plan does not have a sufficiently long term view to cater for sustainability, only medium (16 years)

• The Master plan does not have sustainability indicators on social and economic development.

• The Master plan does not focus on the most critical issues concerning sustainability, but on critical and uncritical issues alike.

SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM II?

• Does the Master plan try to appeace the reader as much as to raise concern?

THE SUSTAINABILITY IMBALANCE

THE REGIONAL IMBALANCE

• “No city is an island”

• Ecological footprint as a key indicator for sustainability requires a global perspective

• A global perspective requires a new and broader public ethic (CSR, Earth Charter)

INCONVENIENT RECOGNITIONS

• High quality of life is an inadequate measure for sustainable lifestyle; A reduction in people`s quality of life may prove more sustainable.

• Adopting the Aalborg commitments is only a start.

• We need to focus on the 10 most vital, and probably the politically most sensitive, sustainability issues/indicators (of the AC 50) in an open dialogue with the major partners in the City society.

• We need experts and bureaucrats who have the guts (balls) to tell this to the politicians

• We need politicians who have the openness and guts to go into a dialogue with their bureaucrats and experts and put the real sustainability challenges on the local political agenda

SO WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

• And we need local media who has both the humility, honesty and guts, to tell the people the facts about the challenges and solutions about sustainability that their readers, listeners or viewers neither want to read, hear nor see.

http://www.oslo.kommune.no

• Biodiversity

• Climate gas emissions

• Drinking water supply

• Population health

• Children in public custody

• School dropouts

• Adults permanently outside employment

• State of public infrastructure

• Municipal dept

10 POSSIBLE OVERRIDING SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS

• Ecological footprint