Social Innovation

Blog by Joanna Chin, Doctoral Student, York University-Environmental Studies

Several years ago, the CRC Research team created a series of HEAD Talks videos featuring interview clips with Ken Lyotier. As the founder of United We Can, a charitable organization creating “economic opportunities for people with multiple barriers living in the Downtown Eastside” in Vancouver, he led the creation of the United We Can Bottle Depot.

One thing is constant in today’s modern world—change. One institution that is changing are museums as they open up to the web and digital media.

This episode of CBC Radio’s Ideas, featuring clips from The Enright Files, explores some great ideas on how we can improve “our communities, our countries, and our quality of life”. It opens with an interview with Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian and author, who discusses basic income and how wealthy western societies have become complacent.

There is a new metric when it comes to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: the ‘spillover effects’ of each country on the world at large. These spillover effects include pollution, financial secrecy, and contribution to peace abroad. Since these effects are accounted for outside of a country’s borders, they are not represented by national statistics. A country might rank very highly when judged only by its own statistics (such as the US and Switzerland), but this is a lopsided view when looked at in a global context.

Blog by Joanna Chin, Doctoral Student, York University-Environmental Studies 

Robert Hart, a pioneer of forest gardening in the UK, had a vision of forest gardening:

“Obviously, few of us are in a position to restore the forests. But tens of millions of us have gardens or access to open spaces such as industrial wasteland, where trees can be planted and if full advantage can be taken of the potentialities that are available in heavily built up areas, new city forests can arise…”

Blog by Joanna Chin, Doctoral Student, York University-Environmental Studies

“Learning is the only way to turn failure into success.”

India is well on its way to meeting the renewable energy targets set during the Paris Climate agreement. With plummeting wholesale prices of solar power reaching another record low in the country, renewable energy is continuing to undercut fossil-fuel generated power. Cheaper finance and growing investor confidence have resulted in this historic 40% drop in price thereby enhancing India’s renewable energy capacity. Even as the world’s third largest carbon polluter, the country is set to exceed renewable energy targets by 2027.

Women for Nature, a philanthropic initiative with Nature Canada, just launched the Young Nature Leaders Grant. In celebration of Canada 150, they invited young Canadians to submit projects that “celebrate the role that nature plays in Canadian culture and identity”.