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Sustainable Development Initiative Launching

by Tom Peters of The Chronicle-Herald (May 14, 2007)

Several municipalities, businesses and non-governmental organizations have signed on to an initiative designed to turn Atlantic Canada into a model of sustainable development for Canada and North America.

Fourteen "sustainable partners" are launching the Atlantic Canada Sustainability Initiative at a workshop being held today and Wednesday at Oak Island Resort.

Eighty-five participants representing 33 organizations are taking part in the first sustainability workshop.

"The workshop is the start of a year-long project that will be capacity-building and training around dealing with sustainability issues and sustainability planning," Clare Levin, with GPI Atlantic and the initiative's co-ordinator, said Monday.

"Many of the organizations present (at the workshop) are already doing a number of things around environmental, social, cultural and economic sustainability. This will be another tool or framework they can use to develop an action plan and start to implement some strategic actions."

The new sustainability charter commits 14 partners to take several steps toward sustainability.

They must attend intensive training sessions throughout the year, embed sustainability action plans into their organizations, create a collaborative network to support each other, serve as role models in their sectors and regions, and seek opportunities to help move the region towards sustainability.

Specific actions will include reducing energy, waste, toxins, greenhouse emissions and adopting environmental technologies and green procurement policies.

"A municipality may choose to develop something called the integrated community sustainability plan, which is something they need to do to get money from the federal tax gas agreement, while a business may have totally different objectives," Ms. Levin said.

Because of these different objectives, she said it would be difficult to establish a timeline when programs would be in place but said that "in terms of a global objective for the whole program, we expect to see action and movement by the end of the year."

Tom Peters. Contact at: tpeters@herald.ca

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