NAOMI DEVINE

Self portrait. (Taken with Instagram)

rumoncarter:

<Depart> Lake O’Hara, 6:30 a.m., a spooked solitary duck sends me off

Looking back towards the lakeshore cabins of Lake O’Hara Lodge, headed towards the first climb, there was no questioning why people pilgrimage to this place

Out of the trees a couple hundred metres up the first…

Taken while climbing a particularly long hill in California, just south of the Bay area. Headed for the coast…

workisnotajob:

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” - Kurt Vonnegut

You´ve had your passport stolen. You poor bastard! You think that the Canadian government cares about you. (Ahahahahaha! Stop that. Right now.)

Here are some not so pro tips for what to do in case you lose your passport while travelling:

1. Don´t.

2. If you are still reading this, dummy, it must mean that you didn´t listen (to your Mom, Grandma, people on the street, etc) and you got what you deserved (it can feel this way). If you have failed at 1, then you will need to prove you are a Canadian. To do this, you will need to look up where the nearest consulate is in the country you are travelling in. (If Canada doesn´t have a consulate in that country, they advise you to register your travel abroad before you go.) As the government official informed me, the onus is on you to prove you are a Canadian, not them. To do this, you need your birth certificate (I had mine, just in case this happened).

3. Don´t travel with your birth certificate (if you can - WHAT was I thinking?!?). The proper thing to do is entrust it to a trusted friend or relative who would be able to produce it for a Canadian official, in Canada, should you lose your passport.

4. Take a day out to be able to fill out the forms at the Consulate and build in time for their lunches, because the whole show shuts down when they go for lunch.

5. You can apply for a full new passport while abroad, or they can issue you an emergency (temporary) one.

6. If, like me, you have more than your passport taken, and lose access to your phone (because the charger cord was stolen too) have no fewer than four of your friends´personal information - including phone numbers and addresses - who have known you for more than two years, memorized. These need to be the type of people who won´t kid around about this information.

7. If you can´t rememember this info, a call out to FB usually works. (Thanks everyone!)

8. You will not have a ´guarantor´ unless you know a professional in the country where you lost your passport who has known you for over three  years. (Canada seems to be the only country that has this requrement.). In this case, you pay around $50 (Canadian) and fill out another form declaring you are who you say you are. This is where two of the four friends come in handy.

9. Ensure that your friends are the type to answer the phone. Even when the number is foreign. (You know the types that don´t pick up the phone because they don´t know the number? Yeah - they don´t make the reference list.)

10. Be prepared to pay a lot of money (R$375,00 in Brasil, for example), have to get some passport photos taken. (Canada, oddly enough, refuses to develop its own system for this requirement, unlike most of the rest of the world. Instead they prefer to just demand certain sizes, etc, and put the onus on you to figure it out) and have a super human amount of patience. Nothing will go as planned, no one will really care that this happened to you (at the Consulate) and you will have to fill out more forms than you ever dreamed possible.

Best of luck!

(There has to be a better way)

Twenty years ago I was 13 when the first Earth Summit took place in Rio. As a child who is a part of the generation that has grown up entirely under dire environmental threat, I can tell you that I was paying attention and hopeful at the summit’s outcomes.

Today I am no longer a youth. I am now a young professional and I have spent my whole career working on the front lines of sustainable development in Canada, my home. During this time I have been an advisor to a premier on how to achieve ambitious carbon emissions reductions and have written and worked on implementing sustainability plans for universities and cities.

I have worked to get environmental champions elected in municipal, provincial, and federal offices in Canada to ensure that this issue is never off the table.

I know firsthand how difficult this challenge is and the complex issues that face anyone, including political leaders. I am not naive about the challenges the planet faces; I inherited them.

I believe that nations as fortunate as Canada have a special responsibility to be leaders in the journey toward sustainability.

I have been a strong believer in multilateralism and the promise of the UN to bring the world together to catalyze global solutions to our generation’s most urgent issues.

That is until now.

As I grew up and told people of my passion for the environment and sustainability, I was met with an almost universal response: “That’s great because you are going to have one big mess to clean up.”

That’s the message your actions have given to my generation and it is the one that the next generation. As someone who is a recipient of this message and is responsible for the clean-up, I would like to say you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.

After twenty years as a faithful participant in this global challenge, and watching the continued failure to implement, and even honestly try to achieve the goals set out in 1992, has been a gut wrenching experience.

I would like to share with you my thoughts as someone who has come to this conference and witnessed what has just taken place. There have been consequences to your inaction.

I am a woman in her childbearing years who is unsure if she should bring a child into the world. I am not alone in this regard. After watching us fail at getting even the simplest policies implemented how I could I tell my daughter or son that we tried our best?

Rio+20 has failed to live up to the scale of the challenge before us, and excuses about how difficult it is to get the world to agree on these issues are no longer holding up to scrutiny.

If you cannot get your collective act together on these issues, you have proven to the world that global governance is in deep crisis; a crisis from which it may take over a generation to recover from.

I am tired of watching this happen, and I am tired of having to listen to generation after generation attend these conferences to tell you the same thing: you aren’t doing YOUR JOBS. 

Your actions and efforts to date have been unjust. We are committing war on future generations and it is time for intergenerational justice to own the global stage. The Rio+20 agreement is definitely not the future we want, and we have been clear about this for decades.

There is hope, however. In my country and indeed around the world, we are witnessing the beginnings of a democratic renewal. People are rising up around the globe demanding a better future, and better leaders to help make it happen.

You have a choice in this matter, as we all do. If you are not willing to do  your jobs, our message to you is this: you’re fired.  

@billmckibben participates in youth led People’s Assembly at Rio+20

21 June 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The theme of Rio+20 is The Future We Want. In the lead up to the conference organizers have been asking people around the world to contribute to the conversation on this website.

Youth have been making most of the dramatic noise at this conference, and given the weakened agreement that seems destined to be Rio+20’s legacy, their participation and calls for leadership have been a welcome breath of fresh air.

The same can be said for the youth of Victoria, BC.

As I was on the road headed to Rio, the second annual Youth Climate Action Summit took place at the Off the Grid Festival in Victoria, BC.

I had the pleasure to speak at the inaugural conference the year before and this year had the opportunity to ask youth (via video) for their statements of the future they want.

Without further ado, I present to you the future that our children desire. It’s damn better than what world leaders have agreed to.

YesBC Youth Climate Action Summit 2012

• We believe it is the right and responsibility of all people to be involved in the decisions affecting our coastal waters.

• We commit to a future of sustainable living through holding our leaders and ourselves accountable for our actions.

• We will inspire other youth locally and around the world by sharing our passion for our coastal ecosystem and stopping the enbridge pipeline via social networking, media, word of mouth and protesting.

• We believe that, if we want to make positive change in this world, we need to change ourselves.

• We believe that youth need to get involved with politics and put pressure on our elected leaders to give us policies that protect our future sustainability.

• We believe it is the right of all people to have secure local food and water – always!

• We commit to a future of sustainable living through making the right food choices, by buying local, by growing our own food and sharing our knowledge about food security with others.

• We will inspire other youth locally and around the world by spreading our knowledge and leading by example.

• We believe we have the right to a secure energy future and we will pressure our elected leaders to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

• We want to live in a world that views energy as a precious resource – to be conserved and used efficiently.

Attending a UN conference can easily feel like you are being pushed around by an information fire hose. Plenaries, meetings, side events, changing texts - it is all a bit much to keep up with when you are here, let alone following along at home.

In response, I’ve curated the best of the best for your reading and viewing pleasure.

WEBSITES + BLOGS

Hands down, if English is your first language, The Guardian has the best up to the minute coverage of Rio+20. There are two correspondents here in Rio: Latin American correspondent Jonathan Watts and Sustainable Business correspondent Jo Confino.

The Guardian’s Live Blog of Day One

Jo Confino’s Rio+20 Online Diary [Business Perspective]

Guardian Coverage of the Earth Summit

The American environmental news and humour website Grist also has great coverage. Senior editor Greg Hanscom is in Rio.

Grist: Rio or bust

The UN is broadcasting all major plenaries and meetings. Here’s the link:

The UN Live Webcast

CANADIAN COVERAGE?

Postmedia’s Mike D’Souza is the only one doing the topic justice. Follow him on Twitter.

TWITTER

Follow the #rioplus20 hashtag on Twitter here to keep up with up to the minute global coverage.

Individuals and Organizations worth following:

Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo

tcktcktck Executive Director Kelly Rigg

tcktcktck

We Canada (Canadian Youth pushing for sustainable development leadership)

“Are you here to save face, or are you here to save us?”

20 June 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

As someone who’s been to this dance before (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Nairobi, 2006), I would like to share a few things that might help you navigate the waters that surround international negotiations of this magnitude. 

There are a few things you can expect from an event like the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. They are good to know so that you can separate what’s new from what’s expected. Here’s my list:

1. The agreement (known as ‘text’) will be negotiated behind closed doors.

The beginning of the conference will have many open sessions. As we get closer to the deadline (and when international pressure rises) closed sessions will appear on the agenda. This is the way it is done.

Why, you may ask? The UN runs on a consensus style of decision making, meaning everyone has to agree on text before moving forward. If you are now thinking that these meetings are global level edit by committee sessions, then you would be pretty close to the truth.

In addition, the conversations of the negotiators use a style of language known as ”diplomatic-speak.” When an open negotiating session is taking place, they eyes of the world are on it (through the observers in the room) and they are speaking to representatives from governments around the world. Diplomatic language helps ensure that the negotiations move forward without offending anyone too much. As you can imagine, this leads to lengthy discussions before consensus is reached. Blocking consensus by refusing to agree to certain words, sentences, or paragraphs also occurs, and also in the most polite terms. (But that’s another article).

All of this leads to time being used up and the meeting racing toward a deadline with the rest of the world awaiting an outcome. What this means is that the closed door meetings happen to avoid scrutiny and hopefully accelerate arriving at consensus to meet the deadline.

Rio+20 officially began today, but in the week leading up to it, nations were still negotiating the text to be adopted in a meeting called “Prep Comm 3”. When the final day of Prep Comm 3 arrived and the negotiators had only agreed on 40% of the text, Brazil took matters into their own hands, re-wrote the entire text, presented it to the nations behind closed doors and basically said “take it or leave it.” The world took it.

It will also lead to tweets like this, because few people have been to the dance before.

Look for the national leaders, who arrived today to begin the 3 days of high level talks, to change the text before this dance ends.

2. Civil society will denounce the results of the negotiations.

Check out Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo’s Twitter for a consistently excellent example of this.

When the text that was agreed to at Prep Comm 3 came out, his response:

“This is Rio Minus 20 which Fails on equity, fails on ecology,Fails on economy #rio+20 #earthsummit text longest suicide note in history”

See?

They are not wrong for doing this, but it will also never be a surprise. (Civil society groups were also disappointed with the results of Rio ‘92 which resulted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Rio+20 will not achieve anything this ambitious, or launch even one international treaty.)

“Civil Society” (i.e. non-governmental organizations) is the most interesting group to follow at these types of meetings because they use the most dramatic language, organize the protests that attract media attention that are then beamed into your living room or on your computer, and they leak important documents to reveal countries’ real positions on key issues.

3. Someone will say that the results are an important step forward. 

This is because someone has to - the UN has spent two years negotiating what became known as the “Zero Draft” (hold your snark for a second) which was the basis for the Rio+20 agreement. Two years - and that is a relatively short time frame as far as international negotiations are concerned.

The Guardian has already found that person. It is Caroline Spelman, head negotiator of the UK delegation. Here’s what she had to say:

“Whilst there is still a lot of work to do, this agreement means we have made progress towards achieving what the Rio Earth Summit set out to do – to get the world on the right path to achieve cleaner and greener growth that ends the damage we have done to the environment and helps end poverty. The agreement on Sustainable Development Goals is a good outcome.” (source)

Expect a lot of this type of language - “While there is a lot of work to do … progress … on the path … achievement … goals.”

Don’t expect an agreement that will set the world to action. 

What’s new?

Social media is becoming a new and important force on the stage here, and 350.org’s Twitterstorm on June 18 helped bring the topic of ending fossil fuel subsidies to the forefront. Did it work? Kinda, according to Grist’s Greg Hanscom.

That’s just the complexity of negotiating one point. Remember that the Earth Summit is essentially aimed at tackling the green economy, and creating a better system of global governance (see the Guardian’s Jonathan Watts’ excellent Q+A on Rio+20)

So there you have it - regardless of the UN meeting you can expect these 3 things to happen. Hopefully it helps you push through the deluge of information coming out of the talks and form your own opinion on how best to move forward.

Regardless of how Rio+20 turns out, the challenge of achieving sustainability is a responsibility we all share - governments and citizens alike.

Linsday Cole and her son, Maathai, at Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Camp.
Photo: Naomi Devine

Originally Posted: July 14, 2011

Vancouver is poised to adopt a plan designed to make it the Greenest City in the World by 2020, fulfilling an election promise made by Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver team. Described by Deputy City Manager Sadhu Johnston as one of the most ambitious environmental stewardship plans in the world, I thought now was a good time to speak to someone who has been integral to this plan since the beginning.

Lindsay Cole is the Greenest City Planner for the City of Vancouver, and has been for over the past year working with city staff and leading the public engagement side of the plan’s development. Her attachment to the plan didn’t begin there, however. She is also one of the architects of the framework itself, chosen as one of the 15 all star sustainability members (which included Dr. David Suzuki) of the Greenest City Action Team, convened by Mayor Robertson after his election, to fulfill their critical election promise and generate widespread excitement over Vancouver’s bright green future.

Cole is no stranger to innovation in sustainability and green planning, in fact this is something that has marked her career; she has been spearheading and/or a part of almost every notable green milestone in BC’s recent history. From creating Canada’s first comprehensive framework for measuring sustainability performance in universities and colleges, to being a team member on country’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental design projects to her latest incarnation in Vancouver, Cole has demonstrated an uncanny knack for identifying, leading, and participating in initiatives that are leading the way to a better future. She’s impressive, she’s humble, and she prefers to lead from behind. Hers is a career to keep an eye on.

As the plan goes to Council for approval (today, and you can read the details on how the plan will work in the 160 page report here ), here’s my interview with the inspiring and unstoppable Lindsay Cole.

ND: What got you interested in sustainability, and how did you know that it would form the basis of your career?

LC: I’m not quite sure, honestly. It’s kind of a compulsion for me, whether that’s healthy or not, I’m not quite sure [laughs] perhaps someone should ask my family about that!

My Mom tells me that when I was a kid it must have been some defining moment in elementary school that got me riled up about garbage and food choices and that kind of thing, because I’ve always made choices that were not in line with what my family was doing, like riding my bike to school, you know, and deciding to be a vegetarian when I was very young and sort of making those willful decisions that drove my Mom pretty crazy! Maybe it’s in part response to the community I grew up in [Kelowna, BC] which was an idyllic, orchard and lake centred town when I was a kid and turned into a sprawling, car and consumption centred city as I was a teenager and sensing that there was something that was missing from it that wasn’t going to last. I felt like we were missing the important things and replacing them with consumption and TV watching and those sorts of things that were just not aligned with my values. I think it kind of grew from there.

ND: As sustainability practitioners we all have a certain personal stamp we want bring and leave on the work we do. How would you describe your approach to sustainability?

LC: I think I’ve learned over the years that my approach is very much process … sustainability as process not end state, and that in that process we need to be building capacity across organizations or communities or whatever sector that you work in. It’s about bringing more and more people into making that word and concept and those values meaningful to them in their own ways. There’s a certain amount of preaching and advocacy that needs to happen and I’ve been in that place and I definitely appreciate that work. But that’s not for me.

The stamp I put on my work is – when I was doing my masters’ thesis, my supervisor called it quiet leadership or leading from behind. I think that’s what I try and do.

ND: Your masters’ thesis was a pretty important one and it led to the creation of a very robust sustainability measurement framework for institutions of higher learning to measure their progress. It’s known as the Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework (CSAF). What drew you to the measurement side of things?

LC: When I was doing my undergrad at the University of Victoria I was increasingly frustrated by some of the things that I saw that the institution was doing that were not aligned with my values as a student, you know the ultimate customer that the university is serving. When I started learning about the investment practices and some of the pension funds is when I really got riled up and felt that the university as an institution of higher learning should be demonstrating/practicing/modeling, the values of protecting future generations.

Universities need to be responsible and responsive with resources in ways that protect future generations [and because they weren’t] that kind of inspired me to become more active in making my campus more responsible, more ethical, and more sustainable for the long term. I got into doing some work at UVic and was inspired by some students at Mount Allison University who I think were the first in Canada to really assess where their university was at in a fairly comprehensive way. So I got involved in an informal network of students across Canada who were doing university based sustainability work and activism and realized that a tool to help students encourage their universities to be more responsible and sustainable would be really useful. That was how I arrived at focusing my masters on creating the Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework.

ND: Is it fair to say you are the creator of the CSAF?

LC: I guess so. The way that I approached the creation of if was through a methodology called participatory action research. What that means is getting the people involved in the implementation of your work also involved in the creation of it. I pulled together the leaders at the time from academia, the administration and the student movements; there was probably a group of ten or fifteen of us from campuses across Canada, to advise me in shaping this framework. The advice I sought was – what kind of tool could we create together that is going to be useful in the work that you are trying to do?

I think that how it’s being implemented and evolved, being led through the Sierra Youth Coalition, over the last ten years has followed that method. Again it goes back to capacity building and providing the tools and resources for people that will help them achieve their objectives. The other thing about it is that it is holding universities to account for their actions and being a bit more open about some of the impacts they have.

ND: From there, you worked with a developer for a while, as a part of Victoria’s groundbreaking Dockside Green development. Tell me more about that.

LC: Yeah, so when I was at Royal Roads doing my Masters one of my classmates, when I was quite broke and doing a lot of volunteer work, kindly connected me to a project called the Vancouver Island Technology Park. This ended up being the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified project in Canada. Through that I ended up in a few years of work with a company called Windmill Development Group that led quite a few of the really groundbreaking green building projects in Canada – there was one in Ottawa, a couple in Calgary, and then Dockside Green in Victoria.

It was really interesting work that taught me to be a consultant and operate a business – skills that were really important when we were opening up SSG. And it was just inspiring to work in a sector that I never imagined I would work in and to see what leadership and what kind of potential for powerful change can come when a business is being transformational in a sector that isn’t usually seen as leading the way.

ND: Sounds like it was an important formative experience. So from there, you went on, with a group of people, to create Sustainability Solutions Group, which is a cooperative run sustainability consultancy. What was the impetus behind that?

LC: The people that started it, my co-creators, we all met through the campus sustainability work. The inspiration behind it was that we were tired of trying to get funding for projects that were difficult to fund. In the early days, it was hard to get it funded and people to understand what it is that you are trying to do and why it’s important, and on top of it we were really young. So we thought, we’re smart and we’re about to graduate and people can pay us for what we know how to do [laughs], and that led us to think let’s start a consulting firm! And while we’re at it let’s try and make it the most ethical business model we can imagine. That’s when we found the worker’s co-op structure, which is our legal entity, and structure and we’ve tried to model it after participatory economics.

Participatory economics is a world of theory that’s great if you haven’t already gotten into it, created by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, who are the big names behind it. We pulled some of the ideas from it to apply to our work – like flat structures, pay parity, and balanced job complexes. It means that there isn’t a hierarchy and people share the workload and its not a case where only some people get to do all of the fun work and others do the mundane stuff. It’s a flat structure, there’s pay parity between all the members, meaning we all get paid the same amount based on the hours that we work. So we operate in the business world but also do it in a way that really models that a different motivation behind business was possible, one that wasn’t profit oriented but that was oriented towards doing good work in the world and based on finding meaningful work for people.

ND: That’s something I really have always admired about SSG – the work you all put into building an ethical practice.

ND: How important would you say innovation is to you in your work?

LC: Innovation or creativity or whatever you want to call it is essential. Probably more important or more critical is finding those points of integration and common ground, and I find that is a lot of the value that I’ve been able to add in the work that I’ve done. I look at challenges or situations or projects in new ways that are more integrated and from a fuller picture. I like finding creative solutions that pull you out of a traditional way of looking at a challenge or problem.

ND: From SSG you became a member on Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team. How did you become involved with this initiative and what was that experience like?

LC: The Mayor of Vancouver [Gregor Robertson] and Vision Vancouver was elected on four platform commitments, one of which was for Vancouver to become the greenest city in the world by 2020. Because of my expertise and working on green buildings I was asked to sit on, I think it was a fifteen-person team, which the Mayor and Councilor [Andrea] Reimer pulled together to advise the city on how they could achieve those targets. That was a volunteer gig and it was really interesting – we looked at best practices from cities around the world to establish a set of goals and targets and some potential actions that the city could take and came up with a list of quick start actions. Quick start actions were things that the city could do in the year leading up to the Olympics to kick-start the city and make sure that we were acting in addition to planning.

From there I became the staff person in the Sustainability Group at the City working on the development of the Greenest City Plan.

ND: It has been three years since this process began, and you’ve spent just over a year inside the City of Vancouver on the implementation side of the plan, so how does this feel now that it is about to go to Council for approval?

LC: It’s a great milestone. We’ve engaged 35,000 people from cities around the world in the development of this plan and over 10,000 people from Vancouver in the creation of this plan. 130 organizations really directly advising the process and at least 60 or 70 staff from most of the departments across the city have been involved in creating this plan. Plus there was a lot of leadership from Mayor and Council and our Senior Managers here at the city so it’s really touched most people in parts of the organization and has been a really cross-departmental effort.

The plan is great and it sets the course for our work. As I’m coming to the end of my work on this plan, I’ve been trying to find a bit of time to reflect on the work to figure out what the most important pieces have been. I think that  the most exciting thing for me is that we’ve been able to build capacity and excitement in all these staff to really figure out how to integrate these goals and these targets into their daily work. The same thing has happened with all the community partnerships that we’ve built. We’ve got community organizations who come and say ‘yep, we’ve integrated helping the City of Vancouver become the Greenest City in the World by 2020 into our own non-profit strategic plan, and we’ve figured out really practical and tangible ways we can support and contribute to that.’ Evergreen, ClimateSmart and the Strathcona Business Improvement Association are some examples that come to mind. And there are so many stories like that, that are out there that are really inspiring and I think that’s what’s going to make this work – all of the leadership coming from all kinds of different places. Some of them are really surprising places throughout the organization and throughout the city.

ND: What would you say the biggest thing you’ve learned about integrating a major vision like this into a large organization like the City of Vancouver? Are there a few top things?

LC: One is that you can’t do this kind of planning work without integrating it into the financial planning of the city. That sounds obvious, but it’s key. We have been working with the people in the financial services groups to make sure that what we are committing to is what we can deliver. So it’s not a bunch of empty promises. The result is that the plan is real and it’s tangible and filled with things we can do.

I think the other interesting thing has been trying to find the balance between keeping aspirational targets that will be quite challenging to meet, and holding that because that is where we need to go in order to create the cities of the future that are going to last, and thrive and survive and be healthy and resilient for people. And at the same time creating  plan that we can actually implement and those things don’t go together easily – it’s been quite challenging to find the balance between those. That will be the hard work of the next nine years – is to continue to hold that inspiration and not lose sight of that, while continuing to make those significant moves toward the targets.

Another thing that is interesting about what Vancouver is doing is that we’re creating targets. A lot of community plans like this don’t have clear benchmarks with targets and timelines and baseline levels of performance that they are measuring themselves against, and this has been really critical for us. We’re in the middle of a process to figure out how to regularly report out on progress so that we’re being accountable to what we set out to do.

I think the last thing that has been really transformational here has been the public engagement work. We’ve shown that it’s possible to do public engagement in new ways. We’ve used new methods that hadn’t been used at the City before. Councilor Reimer set up the first Facebook account for the City of Vancouver when GCAT was assembled. We’ve been able to do all kinds of interesting public engagement work through this process and that’s now shaping how other public engagement processes at the City are being run because we’ve been able to share some of those stories and lessons learned with other departments running consultations on neighbourhood plans, housing and homelessness strategy, the transportation plan – they are all building off of what we’ve done which is really great to see too.

ND: That was going to be my next question … How did the public engagement plan come together, and did you look for inspiration from other cities or was it a made in Vancouver approach?

LC: It came together with a lot of hard work [laughs]. We did look to other cities and the tactics that they used, but there was a lot of “made in Vancouver” that happened too. I think the things that really characterized what we did were going to where people are at, not just holding open houses and inviting people to come, but partnering with community organizations that have networks that we wanted to hear from and inviting them to co-design workshops where we could hear what they had to say. Really married the in person with the on-line space and tried to connect them quite closely so that we were building real community in real space and time and also making the content and discussion more accessible by having it on-line through on-line forums and using other social media.

I think the other thing that we paid a lot of attention to was making sure that we were having a two-way dialogue, that it wasn’t a one way “city hearing what people had to say” but we were being really clear what we were doing with that information and really valuing and honouring people’s time that they put in and being respectful and accountable to that. It didn’t mean that we accepted everything that people suggested, but it did mean that we explained to them why we didn’t accept something if it didn’t end up in the plan. People really respected that. We’ve heard a few different times that even if what people suggested didn’t end up in the plan then they understood and appreciated that because they understood the process and can see that they were listened to. Other people said that the on-line forum was really great, and that staff were responding to them, and that it isn’t just a bunch of robots that work at City Hall. It was nice to get some of that reinforcement back from the community that they knew we were appreciating what they were contributing to the process.

ND: How important will community engagement be, and what role will it take on as the plan moves into the next phase?

LC: There are a couple of people that will still be working on Greenest City engagement. They’re still figuring out what the strategy will be for the next 9 years. We know that one of the things we’re going to do is focus on engagement and also other infrastructural programs and staff and resources in one specific neighbourhood. We will through a lot of energy attention on this one neighbourhood to see if we can move the dial in some of our targets in a meaningful way, and if that works, roll that out to other neighbourhoods across the city. That’s going to be the main focus of the engagement work over the next six months.

ND: Overall, when you look back on the plan, what do you think its greatest strength is?

LC: I think the plans’ greatest strength is that it is so comprehensive and it crosses so many departments. People have really integrated the strategies into their work plans and budgets, so it is a plan that will last, it won’t be shelved. It will change, obviously, because the world is rapidly changing, but the essence of it should persist which is one of the things I worried about not happening at the beginning. I wanted to ensure that we worked through the development of this plan to make sure it didn’t end up on a shelf, but that it lasted and it meant something for a long time and I think that’s going to matter.

Other cities are constantly in touch with Vancouver both in terms of our public engagement process and what we did and what we learned through that, and through the complexity and comprehensiveness of the plan. I mean, it doesn’t mean much if Vancouver becomes the greenest city in the world and other cities aren’t vying for that space because we need all cities to be moving in that direction. I hope that’s one of the legacies of this plan – that it continues to inspire and motivate other cities and that Vancouver continues to be inspired and motivated by other cities so that together cities are moving quickly in these directions.

The other thing that’s really interesting about it and some of the criticism that we received early on is that it is a greenest city plan and not a sustainability plan for Vancouver. But if you dive into it you’ll see that there’s a whole section on the green economy and a lot of the goals and strategies have been looked at with an economic and social justice lens. You’ll see that in the water plan – one of the highest priority actions is to increase access to drinking water throughout the city for vulnerable populations in particular. You’ll see in food, buildings, waste, and climate we’ve looked at assessing the new green job potential for some of the jobs that will be needed to deliver those actions and strategies and which ones might be available for people that have a lot of barriers to employment.

Even though it’s a greenest city plan, we’ve really looked at other factors, and I think it was good to do that because it kept us focused and we were able to make it tangible and practical.

ND: What goal do you think will be the most challenging to achieve out of the ten?

LC: Oh – it really depends who you ask [laughs]. I think that the lighter footprint target will be difficult to achieve, and both of the buildings targets as well. And I think the jobs targets are pretty ambitious and will require a lot of work to achieve.

Others will be difficult for other reasons, some of the transportation targets will be difficult, but it’s because many of the significant actions are out of our jurisdiction. Some of the big moves required in clean air will depend on other levels of government or other partners coming on board in a big way so there are things that because they are out of our jurisdiction we can’t control them. So they are difficult for different reasons.

I don’t know if we see any of them as really easy, but the one that might be the least challenging is the water quality target because Metro Vancouver has a new treatment plant coming on line for the whole region, shortly, so that one we suspect will take care of the water quality. We’ve already got pretty high water quality for the region and that will make it even better. But the rest are really challenging in their own ways for sure.

ND: How exciting. Well congratulations on all the work you have done! It has been exciting to watch it all unfold, and I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of some of the engagement events along the way. I’m in admiration of what you all have been doing. It’s great to have Vancouver leading by example.

Now that you have had these experiences, do you have any advice for current students who are thinking of doing similar things?

LC: Yeah, I think I’m actually not the best person to give career advice [laughs] because I don’t plan very far in advance. What works for me is to hold true to your values and go where you feel like you can manifest your values and feel like you are doing work that’s important to you are contributing in a positive way. I think that’s what characterizes most of my decisions.

Also – I would say plan, but also don’t be afraid to go where the energy is sometimes. I fell into that work with the developer by coincidence and that was great. So you need to pay attention to what’s going on around you, and if it is not part of your plan maybe just think about it because it might be an interesting route to go for a while.

ND: What’s next for you?

LC: I am not sure. [Laughs]. It’s been a busy year, so I need just a little bit of time to chill out and hang out with my family, and enjoy summer if it ever comes, and see what comes next.

ND: Thanks very much Lindsay. I wish you great success in the future, and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

LC: Thanks Naomi. That was fun.

Originally Posted: May 27, 2011

The Globe and Mail published an interesting interview today with singer Dan Hill covering his thoughts on urban cycling and bike sharing. BIXI Bikes are coming to Toronto (after having first arrived in Canaada in Montreal). For a $95/year subscription (according to their website) Torontonians will be able to pick up a bike at one of eighty stations to run their errands, and drop it off at another one. Bike sharing is designed for short trips and errands, meeting short term mobility needs in an easy, convenient, and reliable manner. An elegant alternative to the ever enjoyable parking space hunt in dense, busy urban centres.

While we are long behind many European cities when it comes to this concept, it is heartening to see it advancing in Canada. It is an important step forward in making low carbon mobility a first choice for Canadians.

Will it catch on? I think Dan Hill says it best, “You can define success in a lot of ways. Every person that gets on a bike is one less person driving. Every convert you get is a success. I think it will catch on. The perfect timing, the perfect storm of environment and culture.”

Can’t wait until bike sharing comes to Vancouver.

Rio+20 Agenda on screens at Riocentro

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