SUSTAINABILITY - WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?



Sustainability Committee Meeting - March 1 2012


On Monday night Halton Hills Council will approve engaging consultants to move the Town’s Sustainability Project forward to a conclusion by the end of this summer.


Many communities in Canada and around the world are tackling the issue of sustainability by producing plans to help them achieve their goals.

In Halton Hills, Mayor Bonnette initiated our Town Sustainability Advisory Committee last year. Residents representing a vast array of interests and expertise were recruited and given the task of figuring out what sustainability meant and how we should proceed towards creating a plan.

In the past year, this committee made several important recommendations, one of which was to take this process as far as possible themselves without the assistance of an outside consultant. They formed 4 committees and proceeded to define goals that would address the following 4 major areas of interest: environmental, social, economic and cultural. These have now been dubbed the 4 Pillars of Sustainability.

Last Wednesday evening the committee and members of the sub-committees assembled to present their vision and goals. It was impressive to see amount of thought that each group had devoted to each area of inquiry.

Now the job is to take these goals and test them with the wider community to see if they are meaningful to our residents and businesses and then come up with an implementation plan. The task is beyond the ability of our volunteers and so now expert assistance is necessary.

Considering that we are spending $50,000 on the consultants it is important that we all understand what sustainability is and why we are bothering. In the end, what will be different?

Locally, Sustainability grew out of the Mayor’s Green Plan which looked at how the Town could reduce its use of non-renewable resources and was focused entirely on environmental goals.

I think of Sustainability as looking at the overall well-being and vitality of our community by identifying the social, cultural and economic aspirations of our residents. Using a sustainability framework these goals are constantly tested against the underlying and ever-present environmental goals. It also works in reverse with the environmental aspirations being tested against the social, cultural and economic goals.

Normally the 4 pillars are portrayed as being equal and demanding of equal attention. In a perfect world these 4 pillars would be in balance. But in the real world we could expect them to be out of balance. The important thing is to have a decision making process in place that forces one to consider all four pillars and to think about the long term implications for achieving and retaining the desired balance.

The goal in the end is to make decisions, on an ongoing basis, that ensures Halton Hills continues to be a great place to live and work while at the same time reducing our environmental impact and if anything, improving our local environment.

Sustainability??? The Natural Step?

Sustainability is a buzz word that pops up in many conversations but is very poorly understood. The fact that people are talking about it indicates that it is important but some people are actually making fun of it because they don't understand it.

On the other hand, if you ask people if they think that the forests are disappearing faster than they are being replaced or if they are worried about farmland disappearing, then they intuitively say yes. There is an obvious link between their worries and the concept of sustainability.

Two people who have done a great deal of thinking about sustainability were at Sheridan College today for the kick off of Sheridan's Sustainability Week and appear in the photo. On the left is Mayor Ken Melamed of Whistler, B.C. and beside him, the founder of The Natural Step, Dr. Karl-Henrik Robert. Dr. Robert was the guest speaker to a full house of students, faculty and community leaders.

Dr. Robert is a very engaging speaker who attempts to explain this very complex topic in a manner that can be understood by lay people such as myself. The Natural Step was founded in 1989 in Sweden and was first used to help businesses analyse their business model in terms that would sustain them over the long haul. The principles have now been applied more broadly and have been embraced by communities such as Whistler.

I attended the lecture because I am one of those people who worry about running out of farmland. I see the population going up and up and up whereas I understand that resources are limited. To me, when there is an apparent endless abundance of resources then we use them with abandon. However, when resources are perceived as limited then an entirely different mindset kicks in. We have only to look at the cod fishery to see what happens when we think only of today and fail to manage our resources with the future in mind. To me, sustainability is simply about good management with a long term vision of what we want the world to be like in the future. The actions we take today must match the vision we have for the future.

Dr. Robert has provided the world with a framework to help us to think about the future and to help us figure out how to manage our resources so that we can both prosper today and improve our environment for the future. In the coming term of council this will be a theme that will be heard regularly as we attempt to manage our piece of the planet, the Town of Halton Hills.