In This Issue Urban Sustainability
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Welcome to Issue 8, CRC NewsletterWe hope your summer is going well, the weather back East has been great for swimming. Over the summer, John Robinson, Lenore Newman and I have been working on a major research proposal on climate change adaptation and mitigation in B.C. and I encourage to go to our website and see the results of our preliminary scan of the province. I continue to experiment with using the internet for the forces of light, and have added a blog feature to the website. I am hoping our graduate students get involved as they are now the ones on the ground working to implement sustainable development in the private and public sectors. We have also just published one of the first scans of the hospital sector greening initiatives published today. With the help of my colleagues from Sustainability Solutions Group and Chris Stashok, our seventh CRC discussio paper includes key recommendations for future directions that could fundamentally transform the leadership role that hospitals could play in communities. Please enjoy the rest of your summer, read a fantastic book, The School of Essential Ingredients by Bauermeister (2009), and I leave you with this thought "We're all just ingredients. . .What matters is the grace with which you cook the meal". Ann Dale |
Climate Change ResearchTwo critical climate change research projects are now underway, one led by Dr. Kevin Hanna, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the other by Professor Ann Dale, in partnership with Dr. John Robinson, Executive Director, UBC Sustainability Vancouver.
Funded by Canada's granting council, Planning for Adaptation and Resiliency, led by Dr. Hanna, is a comparative research project exploring local government planning for climate change adaptation and resiliency in Canada. The project will assess the state of planning for adaptation and resiliency by Canadian local governments, develop detailed case studies, and generate applied knowledge for advancing community adaptation planning.
The second, at the proposal stage, Meeting the Climate Change Challenge (MC3), led by Dr. Dale, is focusing specifically on the response of British Columbia municipalities to the first major wave of provincial policy response to climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The goals of this Canadian University Research Alliance (CURA) project are firstly, to identify and investigate innovative municipal approaches to provincial climate policy and document best practices through selected detailed case studies, and secondly, to spur cross scale knowledge mobilization between communities in order to bootstrap innovation diffusion. The dissemination of innovative responses and actions on the ground is critical as other jurisdictions in North America begin to develop active climate policy regimes.
In collaboration between the two projects, one of the research outcomes will be two scans, a map of international best practices of climate change adaptation and their relevance for Canadian learning and a scan of all the local government responses in British Columbia. Visit the Resources section on our website to view these as they are available. |
Greening Canadian Hospitals - Discussion Paper Just ReleasedWith over 3000 hospitals, medical facilities and surgery centers found throughout Canada’s many communities, the health sector has tremendous impacts both on individual health and on their ecological, social and economic vitality. The sector’s unique requirements for health safety and security, and sterilization, however, influence the decisions hospitals make regarding the energy they consume and the waste they generate. See Appendix B for a simple solution for improving the cleanliness of hospital buildings through a chemical free cleaning system that is put into practice at Royal Roads University
Go to Google Docs to share your hospital's leading edge sustainability initiatives with us.
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Urban Sustainability: Youth—The Missing Solution? e-DialogueOur most recent on-line discussion, June 23, 2010, led in partnership with the International Centre for Sustainable Cities, brought together young interns and experts from around the world to talk about the role of youth in urban sustainability, and particularly looked at opportunities for youth to be catalysts of change in their community.
The importance of engaging youth
Projects
Visit our website to read the e-conversation. |
CRC Blog - Views from the EdgeWe have added a blog to the CRC research site, /crc-blog. We will be actively blogging, discussing the latest news from our research as it is happening 'on the ground'. I would like to encourage all of our graduate students to share their experiences and expertise from the private and public sectors since their graduation, as well as practitioners across Canada, making our blog the 'bleeding edge' place to go to share problems, solutions and practical ways to make a difference. Bring your questions, and we will do our best to answer them with the best advice we have.
It takes courage to be 'at the edge', so share your knowledge, log in. Just as it takes a community to raise a child, it takes communities everywhere to realize sustainable development in our lifetime, it has never been more urgent. |
TIPS TO SUCCESS Sustainable community development relies on long-term integrated planning. Our unique online Integrated Community Sustainability Planning Tool provides a framework for any community, large or small, to develop their own sustainability plan, independent of outside consultation, in a community process designed to ensure implementation. Tips to success is a regular feature of this newsletter. |
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CASE STUDIES We invite you to visit our online library of over forty case studies in sustainable infrastructure and sustainable community develop- ment. The site's dynamic inter- active feature lets you read comments left by previous readers, and add your own. Read and comment on existing threads anonymously, or register to post new topics. If you have a case study in sustainable community develop- ment that you would like to contribute to our online forum, simply contact us. |
Community Research Connections Newsletter |