Archives: 2008 May

Archive for May, 2008

Resource “Our Water Challenge” from the State of the World website

Posted in Uncategorized by fedwards on May 20th, 2008

Please find below a post from the State of the World website by Michael Foley.

Water is as essential to economies as it is to human life. But there is strong evidence that there will not be enough water to produce the food needed to feed the world in 2050, and more than 75% of the global population may face water scarcity by 2025. Ger Bergkamp and Claudia Sadoff write in State of the World 2008 that innovations in water management and policy can promote equitable and sustainable water use.

Read:

Tags: Resource, Water
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Event - Behaviour, Energy & Climate Change Conference, 16-19 November, Sacramento, California

Posted in Events by fedwards on May 19th, 2008

We welcome proposals for presentations, posters and roundtables and encourage you and your associates to submit abstracts on-line. The deadline is May 27, 2008. See website for details.

Following the extraordinary, sell-out success of the first BECC Conference in 2007, the second annual BECC Conference will be held November 16 – 19, 2008. The conference is focused on understanding the behavior and decision-making of individuals and organizations and using that knowledge to help accelerate our transition to an energy-efficient and low-carbon economy. On-line registration starts June 1.

This year, because of the high level of interest and breadth of topics, the conference is expanding to 2 1/2 days of sessions, plus a not-to-be-missed
conference kick-off program and reception. There will be a rich mix of invited speakers, panels and networking opportunities PLUS presentations, posters and roundtable topics selected from submitted abstracts.

Information: www.BECCconference.org

Tags: climate change, energy, networks
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Event - Going Local: A Relocalisation Convergence, 23-25 May, Brisbane, Australia

Posted in Events by fedwards on May 19th, 2008

The Ethos Foundation will host a visit to Australia by Judy Wicks, co-founder and director of the US Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). To find out more about this event visit the Ethos Foundation website at http://www.climateleadership.net.au/.

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Resource - Online sources of environmental inspirational & innovative speakers!

Posted in Events, Visions by fedwards on May 9th, 2008

Also from Worldchanging.com is a recent report from Chad Monfreda about the recent conference in Stockholm on “Resilience, Adaptation, and Turbulent Times“. You can read his article here.

Many of the talks from the conference were captured online with Chad’s favourites listed as:
1. Steve Carpenter, University of Wisconsin – Madison, on World-Ending Disasters, coping with uncertainty, and the many-fold uses of scenarios in approaching complex problems in “Scenarios: Imagination for Transformation”.
2. Martin Scheffer, from the Netherland’s Wageningen University, describes ‘tipping points’ in coral reefs, lakes, forests, and society more generally to show how surprise is often the norm in non-linear systems that pack big change in rapid events in his talk on “Critical Transitions”.
3. Will Steffen, Australian National University and former Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), describes how humanity’s Great Acceleration has inaugurated the Anthropocene, and its implications for geo-engineering, the precautionary principle, and other potential solutions in a talk titled “The Earth as a Social-Ecological System?”.

Another great feature to watch inspirational speakers on a variety of topics is to tune in to TED, http://www.ted.com/. TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and started out in 1984 as a conference to bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes!

A bit closer to home for SustainableCitiesNet.com are the Sustainable Cities Round Tables where key sustainability professionals outline their environmental innitiatives in just 3 minutes!!!!! Scroll down the SustainableMelbourne.com blog to view the wide variety of talent within Melbourne, Australia.

Tags: Provocations, Resource, Urban Design and Built Form
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Research - Rising food prices

Posted in Research by fedwards on May 8th, 2008

The report listed below was found on the Australian Policy Online newsletter and thought it might interest the Sustainable Cities Network audience. A link to the entire article is listed after the article.

Rising food prices: what should be done?
Joachim von Braun / International Food Policy Research Institute
Posted: 27-04-2008
The sharp increase in food prices over the past couple of years has raised serious concerns about the food and nutrition situation of poor people in developing countries, about inflation, and – in some countries – about civil unrest. Real prices are still below their mid-1970s peak, but they have reached their highest point since that time. Both developing- and developed-country governments have roles to play in bringing prices under control and in helping poor people cope with higher food bills.

In 2007 the food price index calculated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) rose by nearly 40 percent, compared with 9 percent the year before, and in the first months of 2008 prices again increased drastically. Nearly every agricultural commodity is part of this rising price trend. Since 2000 – a year of low prices – the wheat price in the international market has more than tripled and maize prices have more than doubled. The price of rice jumped to unprecedented levels in March 2008. Dairy products, meat, poultry, palm oil, and cassava have also experienced price hikes. When adjusted for inflation and the dollar’s decline (by reporting in euros, for example), food price increases are smaller but still dramatic, with often serious consequences for the purchasing power of the poor.

To read the full article visit: http://www.ifpri.org/themes/foodprices/foodprices.asp.

Tags: climate change, Food
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Event review - Highlights from the recent 7th EcoCity World Summit

Posted in Events, Models, Movements, Visions by fedwards on May 7th, 2008

Holly Pearson has recently published an article about the highlights from the 7th EcoCity World Summit on WorldChanging.com and its well worth a read! Find an abstract of her post below followed by a link to the full text.

ABSTRACT:
Highlights from the 7th EcoCity World Summit
HOLLY PEARSON
APRIL 28, 2008 9:48 AM
“In order to transform our cities, we need to move from ego-culture to eco-culture.”
— Rusong Wang, President, Ecological Society of China

The EcoCity World Summit wrapped up on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco. An incredible assemblage of the world’s brightest minds that are working to build greener cities and towns gathered for three and a half days of presentations, discussions, city tours, arts & culture, and celebration. As an urban planner for whom the sustainable cities movement is not only a passion but also a raison d’etre, professionally speaking, I found the conference to be nothing short of mind-blowing.

A vast amount of information and ideas was exchanged, and after letting it all sink in for a day or so I’ve summarized what I thought were some of the most interesting concepts and initiatives presented at EcoCity.

The Big Picture for Saving the Planet: Sustainable Cities
Amazingly, somehow I have worked as a city planner in Oakland, California for almost a year without knowing that right here in my own neighborhood is one of the leading green city advocates in the country, if not the world: Richard Register. Dubbed “EcoCity Master” by his conference co-organizer, Rusong Wang of China, Register is the President of non-profit EcoCity Builders.

Looking critically at the environmental movement, Register asserts that humanity is “winning the battle but losing the war.” Despite lots of successes – stronger environmental legislation, recycling programs in most metropolitan areas in the U.S., and the like – ecological degradation continues and is, in fact, worsening. That’s because, says Register, we’re not paying attention to the big things. And the big things, first and foremost, have to do with the design and functioning of our cities. Urban population is on the rise the world over, and cities are by far the greatest sources of natural resource consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and other pollutants. For this reason, a sustainable global future cannot be achieved without re-thinking and redesigning cities to reduce their ecological impact.

To read the full article visit: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007996.html

Tags: Carbon-neutral, climate change, energy, Food, Health, networks, Provocations, Resource, Transport, Urban Design and Built Form, waste, Water
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Sustainable City, Greensburg, Kansas, in the news

Posted in Models, Research, Visions by fedwards on May 6th, 2008

The city of Greensburg, Kansas, USA, has witnessed hurricanes and now renewal in their aim to create a sustainable city. Find below an abstract of an article about Greensburg from Business Week, May 5. A link to the full story can be found after the abstract. Greensburg GreenTown forms part of the Sustainable Cities Network. More information about this site can be viewed at http://www.greensburggreentown.org/.

NEWS ABSTRACT:
The Greening of Greensburg
As President Bush pays a visit, all eyes are on a town that’s rebuilding itself after being almost destroyed by a tornado
by David Sokol
INNOVATION & DESIGN

May 4 marks the one-year anniversary of the EF-5 tornado that destroyed most of Greensburg, Kansas. As part of a town-wide green initiative, students from the state’s two architecture schools are lending a hand in helping residents rebuild using sustainable design principles and techniques.

University of Kansas architecture professor Dan Rockhill’s well-known Studio 804 is working with the nonprofit Greensburg Art Center to develop Sustainable Prototype, a versatile prefabricated building that deploys multiple passive and active sustainable design techniques. Meanwhile, a group from Kansas State University is dotting the small city with 10-foot pods—a project called Greensburg Cubed—that promise to educate locals about the ecologically responsible design to which municipal leaders have committed in a variety of high-profile announcements.

The University of Kansas’ contribution was constructed by Studio 804, a design-build program at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning that has a longstanding commitment to teaching economic and ecological sustainability. The 1,600-square-foot facility will contain wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and other green technologies and could be the first building in Kansas to earn a LEED Platinum rating, according to Rockhill. The building was prefabricated in Lawrence, Kansas, using reclaimed materials from a retired storehouse at the state’s Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant. Modules were then trucked to Greensburg, where class members assembled them over the course of several weeks. In addition to a multipurpose room, kitchen, and office space, the facility will house the town’s new 5.4.7 Art Center, opening May 4. The building was designed to be a community center for the ravaged town, Rockhill says. “These people are victims, they lost everything,” he explains. “We seized the opportunity to contribute.”

To read the full story visit http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2008/id2008055_355693.htm?chan=innovation_architecture_top+stories

Tags: energy, Resource, Urban Design and Built Form
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Resources & Models - What cities are doing about compost and green waste!

Posted in Models, Movements, Research by fedwards on May 5th, 2008

Below is a list compiled from the Community Food Security email list from a wide variety of contributors about different models outlining what cities are doing are compost and green waste. The final list of all contributions was kindly compiled by Jill Richardson. This is a particularly timely exercise as this week is part of International Compost Awareness Week! You can subscribe to the Community Food Security email list here: https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/comfood. To find out more about International Compost Awareness Week visit: http://www.compostingcouncil.org If you would like to add what your city is doing about food waste please do so by commenting at the bottom of this post!.

California
• San Francisco – gave out compost bins
• Oakland – has green waste composting (http://www.oaklandpw.com/Page300.aspx) collects and composts yard waste and food scraps together in a “Green Cart” recycling program: http://www.oaklandpw.com/Page298.aspx. You can read more about the program and how it applies to food (and suggestions for changes and improvements) here: http://oaklandfoodsystem.pbwiki.com/f/OFSA_WasteRecovery.pdf
• Berkeley - I am fairly certain that it is all run by the Ecology Center here in Berkeley (which handles everything from our farmers markets to the curbside recycling program.) http://www.ecologycenter.org/recycling/about.html. Here’s a page about the relatively new city-wide composting program on the Berkeley city site: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=5606
• Santa Cruz
• Mission Viejo
• Woodland
• Davis
• Modesto - has been collecting yard waste separately for many years and composting it. Then recently they’ve started a kitchen compost collection as well and even provided households with a container to keep in their kitchens to collect the compost before bringing it to the yard waste dumpster.

Canada
Toronto - http://www.toronto.ca/greenbin/index.htm
Jasper, Alberta operates a voluntary residential and commercial compost program.

DC
Also, an entry at The Slow Cook tells of municipal compost in DC:
http://theslowcook.blogspot.com/2008/04/searching-for-dcs-municipal-compost.html

Illinois
http://www.city.urbana.il.us/urbana/public_works/arbor/lrc/Main.asp

Massachusetts
Cambridge, (and Somerville) MA doesn’t collect it from residents but has a pilot program where they give out bins and people can drop it off at the recycling center.

Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI collects yard waste, but not food. The huge composting facility is open to anyone and you can go pick up free compost (byo container). It is a particularly great resource for the community gardens… who I think have connections with the City so they get the compost delivered.

The city is working on developing a commercial/restaurant food waste recycling program.

Minnesota
Duluth – collects institutional/retail food waste
http://www.co.hennepin.mn.us/portal/site/HCInternet/menuitem.3f94db53874f9b6f68ce1e10b1466498/?vgnextoid=a576b70a699fc010VgnVCM1000000f094689RCRD
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/01/compost/
http://www.co.hennepin.mn.us/portal/site/HCInternet/menuitem.f25c437125254e89710ece04b1466498/?vgnextoid=ab73ce4c9c116110VgnVCM1000000f094689RCRD

Nebraska
Omaha has a big program and sells its product as “Omagro”
Check out their web site at http://www.omagro.com/

New York
In New York City, the Lower East Side Ecology Center operates the Manhattan branch of the “NYC Compost Project” for the New York City Department of Sanitation. The purpose of the NYC Compost Project is to “encourage residential and institutional composting” via voluntary composting and educational out-reach.
Here are links to the LESEC’s Composting Project and to the NYC Compost Project:
http://www.lesecologycenter.org/composting_MCP.html
http://www.nyccompost.org/program/index.html

The NYC Compost Project collects organic matter people save up from their homes. In Manhattan, the LESEC’s project organizer has a table at Union Square Greenmarket everyday the market is open (Mon, Wed., Fri. and Sat.). The table is set up with educational information on composting, giant Tupperware bins into which people deposit their saved-up organic matter, and soil for sale.

Anecdotally, I have been dropping off my vegetable and fruit remnants at the NYC Compost Project’s Greenmarket table for over 2 years. As a student I found myself with not enough time (and perhaps rotting vegetables) to manage my own compost bin or to cook all of the produce I purchased weekly. Bringing the vegetables, fruit, grain, etc…that I didn’t eat to the Project’s bins helped me to understand how much produce I was wasting each week and to change my shopping habits to buy only as much produce as I will cook that week. What has resulted is that I waste less so I end up having less to donate to the Project.

Oregon
Contact Metro in Portland. They are a regional government agency with an information hotline at 503-234-3000. They have tons of compost information and can answer questions regarding this regions management of compostable materials.

Utah
Salt Lake City - The city recently started offering containers for residents to deposit yard waste, they are picked up just like garbage & recycling.
http://www.slcgov.com/slcwaste/yardrules.htm
http://www.slcgov.com/publicservices/Streets/leaf.htm

Vermont
Burlington

Washington
Seattle has an amazing program through Seattle Public Utilities, see link http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/util/Services/Garbage/For_Commercial_Customers/Commercial_Compost_Collection/index.asp
Bellingham - http://www.ssc-inc.com/index.php

Tags: Food, Resource, Urban Design and Built Form, waste, Water
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Event - Conference on Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Hong Kong - 12 - 13 November

Posted in Events, Research, Visions by fedwards on May 5th, 2008

See below for details about a Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Hong Kong. I wonder if this event will include a sustainability section?….

Conference Innovation and Entrepreneurship
12 - 13 November, Hong Kong International
Wing Lung Bank International Institute for Business Development (IIBD), David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI) and the School of Business of Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) are organising a two-day international conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The conference will focus on innovation in social entrepreneurship as well as new directions in entrepreneurial education in emerging nations. Academic scholars, doctoral students and others interested in entrepreneurship related research are welcome to attend the Conference.

Venue: Hong Kong Baptist University Topic: Education
More Information: David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI)

Tags: Provocations
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Event - International Compost Awareness Week - 4 - 10 May!

Posted in Events by fedwards on May 4th, 2008

May 4th represents the first day of International Compost Awareness Week, May 4-10, hosted by the US Composting Council, and others in Canada and the UK. To find out more information about this Awareness Week visit: www.compostingcouncil.org.

Tags: Food, Resource, Urban Design and Built Form, waste
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