Citizens for a Livable Cranbrook Society provides grassroots leadership and an inclusive process, with a voice for all community members, to ensure that our community grows and develops in a way that incorporates an environmental ethic, offers a range of housing and transportation choices, encourages a vibrant and cultural life and supports sustainable, meaningful employment and business opportunities.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Putting Sustainability into Action

The new buzzword seems to be sustainability. Its a great idea but what does it mean and how do we put it into action?  Monday night in Kimberley, MLA Norm McDonald and MLA Lana Popham took us through an exercise which provided some answers to those questions.  Participants were presented with 12 principals of sustainability:

Eco-system Protection
Resource Conservation
Biodiversity
Resilience
Protection of the Commons (Water and Air)
Food Security
Social Equity
Full Cost Economics
Precautionary Principal
Adaptive Management
Democracy and Due Process
Just Transition

On tables around the room, each principle was presented with paper to write down your ideas about how each could be enacted at the Federal, Provincial, and Municipal levels.  A lot of discussion and good ideas came from this process and it was interesting to see  people come up with local, grass root solutions.  People were also able to vote on their top three principles. At the Kimberley forum the top principal was Food Security, followed by Resource Conservation and finally Protecting the Commons.
Think about these principles and how they could infuse our daily lives with values to live by in the choices we and our politicians make. Would people in Cranbrook be interested in taking part in this type of forum?
We all have an opportunity to take part in our own local sustainability project called Cranbrook Connected. To learn more go to http://www.cranbrookconnected.ca/.

No comments:

Post a Comment