This is to reminder that you are welcome to post your sustainable-city related events, initiatives, research & even questions & ideas for free DIRECTLY on SustainableCitiesNet.com!

SustainableCitiesNet.com is a communications hub as “a portal to the future of cities” that are ecologically, socially and culturally sustainable. It serves as a network and communication system to deliver information, to connect people and projects, to accelerate the city’s transformation across the world. For more information about this site please visit “About“.

To contribute a post click here and follow the instructions. If you have any problems posting your data please contact either:
Ferne Edwards, Project co-ordinator & site moderator, at fedwards @unimelb.edu.au or
Simon DAlfonso, Technical support, at dals @unimelb.edu.au.

SustainableMelbourne.com and the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab in association with the University of Melbourne’s Entrepreneurs Week would like to invite you to:

The Sustainable Cities Round Table on Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Tuesday 12 August night, 6 – 8pm
Copeland Theatre, Economics & Commerce Building
University of Melbourne
RSVP now to save your seat at rsvp @sustainablemelbourne.com

The challenge of climate change presents many opportunities for new sustainable ventures. Entrepreneurs working in this space are able to creatively develop innovative solutions that have environmental, social and economic benefits, yet like all entrepreneurial ventures it is not without risks. At this Sustainable Cities Round Table we will showcase examples of proactive entrepreneurs who have taken this step and bravely gone where no mainstream business has gone before!

The evening will feature a series of short presentations, musical interludes, networking opportunities and more!

Speakers include:
Nick Savaidis, Etiko Fair Trade;
Mitch O’Sullivan, Waterwall Solutions;
Samantha Parsons, Family of Sam design;
Alexi Lynch, Australia Manager, Cities for Climate Protection, ICLEI & Co-founder, the Environmental Jobs Network;
Cathy Parry, Owner of Ron D Swan: Bags and Cycling Accessories;
Bruce Rowse, Director, CarbonetiX;
Cam Hines, Co-founder & owner, Mountain Goat Brewery;
Elizabeth Boulton, Founder, Logistick – Sustainable Supply Chain Solutns;
Aldo Penbrook, Central Victorian Carbon Auditing Service.

The Sustainable Cities Round Tables are a regular series of events that showcase local environmental initiatives and encourage networking for people working in urban sustainability issues across the government, academic, industry and community sectors. To view footage of previous events visit www.sustainablemelbourne.com/category/sustainable-cities-round-table/.

Please forward this invitation to others who may be interested in attending.

Best,
Ferne

Ferne Edwards
Sustainable Cities Research Officer
Victorian Eco-Innovation Laboratory (VEIL)
Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society (ACSIS)

Green TECH 08, www.greentechshow.com.au, is proud to present an international Trade Show and Conference with a core focus on green building, sustainable design and clean technology . GreenTECH 08 special features include SRD ChangeX 08 , Green Inventors Showcase , Eco House of the Future Competition and a Green Living Zone. Please find more information about the event below.

International and Australian authorities will present keynote topics in their respective fields of expertise. Subject categories will include:
Built Environment
Carbon Trading
Climate Change Science
Clean and/or Renewable Energy
Ecological Sustainable Development
Energy and/or Water Security
Energy Efficient Building Design
Water & Energy Conservation
Environmental Engineering
Exhibitor Product Launch
Government Policy
Low Emission Technology
New Inventions
Permaculture Design
Sustainable Cities
Sustainable Product Design

Steps to apply to present a seminar at Green TECH 08:
Email your seminar title, a brief overview and biodata to: info @greentechshow.com.au (include any website details)
On our review and acceptance you will be required to fill in a Confirmation Form.
Submission deadline: September 30, 2008

Review GREX 07 speakers here: http://www.grex.com.au/conferenceinfo.shtml

Please find information below about “The Playbook for Green Buildings and Neighborhoods: Strategic Local Climate Solutions”, originally published by the National Association of Counties.

The Playbook for Green Buildings and Neighborhoods: Strategic Local Climate Solutions, a web-based resource, provides strategies, tips, and tools that counties can use to take immediate action on climate change through: green building, green neighborhoods, and sustainable infrastructure. The Playbook is designed both for communities that are considering making the first steps toward these, as well as for those who want to take existing efforts to a new level.

This webinar from the National Association of Counties addresses how counties can put the Playbook for Green Buildings and Neighborhoods to use. This is just one of a series of webinars that NACo is offering through the Green Government Initiative.

Registration is required; the webinar will run from 1:30pm – 3:30pm Eastern time.

In addition to county case studies, this webinar will cover:
An explanation of the link between climate change and green building, neighborhoods and sustainable infrastructure
How to utilize the playbook, regardless of what stage your county is at
Additional resources available to assist your county in your efforts.

To find out more about this resource visit http://www.greenplaybook.org/.

THE FIFTH MAGRANN CONFERENCE
Date: April 16-17, 20091

Location: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Climate Change in South Asia: Governance, Equity and Social Justice

Call for Papers
Climate change presents significant challenges for South Asia. While climate change is a global phenomenon, mitigation and adaptation are regional in character. Residents of agricultural and resource dependent areas increasingly face threats to livelihoods due to alterations in precipitation and temperature, such as the disruption of the South Asian monsoon. Concurrently, within South Asia’s dynamic and rapidly growing cities, the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme climatic events may disrupt economic and social life. Although the effects of climate change on social and environmental systems are likely to be highly uneven (even between communities within South Asia), present trends in mitigation suggest that impoverished regions and populations may bear the brunt of these changes. This discrepancy is also evident in the ability to adapt and respond to climate change. Therefore, addressing climate change within the South Asian context will require new types of social institutions, cooperative responses and new forms of governance. In all cases, efforts to respond, mitigate, or adapt to climate change raise issues of equity and social justice, posing both challenges and opportunities for civil society.

We invite papers that address climate change issues within any country or region of South Asia. Preference will be given in paper selection to those that connect their topic to one or more of the broad conference themes of governance, equity, and social justice. Potential topic areas for papers include but are not limited to:

• Legal, Political, and Economic Frameworks for Responding to Climate Change
• Cultural, Social and Gender Implications of Climate Change
• Natural Resources Management and Land Use Practices Under Climate Change
• Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change in Cities and Urbanizing Regions
• Implications for Agriculture Under Changing Climatic and Hydrologic Regimes
• Technological Responses and Innovations

Papers are solicited from established scholars, as well as recent PhDs and advanced graduate students. Partial support will be available to presenters to defray the costs of travel. Abstracts of 250 words or less should be sent to the conference organizers on or before September 15, 2008. Final papers (approximately 4,000-6,000 words) will be due by March 1, 2009.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

• Conference Email: magrconf@rci.rutgers.edu
• Conference Website: http://magrann-conference.rutgers.edu
• Conf. Organizers: Trevor Birkenholtz; Monalisa Chatterjee; Robin Leichenko; Martin Bunzl; Sumit Guha
• Conference Sponsors: Department of Geography, Initiative on Climate and Social Policy, and Office of International Programs, Rutgers University

http://www.climate-l.org

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), in collaboration with the United Nations Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) and the UN Communications Group (UNCG) Task Force on Climate Change, has launched a new tool for climate change policymakers. CLIMATE-L.ORG is a knowledge management project that provides news and information to decision makers on the actions of international organizations in responding to climate change.

In one location (http://www.climate-l.org) users can find the most up-to-date knowledge base on climate-related actions throughout the international community, and specifically with information on United Nations activities provided in cooperation with the UN system agencies, funds and programmes through the UN Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) Secretariat and the UN Communications Group (UNCG) Task Force on Climate Change.

IISD’s Reporting Services team of Issue and Institutional Cluster Experts will provide a constant stream of articles and updates on international climate change activities that are organized and searchable by organization, issue area and the four UNFCCC “building blocks” for a post-2012 climate change regime: mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology. Policymakers following the Bali Roadmap negotiations can use this site to track progress in the various policy formulation streams. The CEB and international organizations will use this database to assist them in coordinating system-wide activities to combat climate change.

The CLIMATE-L.ORG initiative supports the work done by the UN Communications Group Task Force on Climate Change and the UN Department for Public Information to build the UN Gateway to the UN System’s Work on Climate Change http://www.un.org/climatechange/. CLIMATE-L.ORG’s focus is on information for policymakers (rather than the general public), providing more in-depth and policy-oriented materials of a political, technical and scientific nature that will assist the diplomatic and policy communities as they prepare a post-2012 agreement.

The CLIMATE-L list serve, which was launched by IISD in 1998, is celebrating its tenth anniversary as a primary communications mechanism for more than 15,000 professionals in the climate policy community. IISD Reporting Services will use this existing network to distribute a fortnightly electronic newsletter, CLIMATE-L Bulletin, which will contain the key précis and summaries posted to www.CLIMATE-L.org during the previous two weeks, along with guest articles on international climate change activities, written by the heads of UN and other international bodies. IISD will contribute a fortnightly analysis of global activities on climate change, focusing on the inter-governmental negotiations for long-term cooperative action around the areas of adaptation, mitigation, technology and finance.

Phase I (April - June 2008) of the CLIMATE-L.ORG project has been supported by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with special assistance from the CEB Secretariat.

For more information or to find out ways to support Phase II of the CLIMATE-L.ORG project, contact Kimo GOREE at kimo @iisd.org or visit http://www.climate-l.org

Please find an abstract below and some attached information from the recent “Making Cities Livable” conference, Santa Fe. The documents cover issues about children and nature in urban centres by Professor Louise Chawla and Selena R. Paulsen. If you would like more information contact Louise at louise.chawla @colorado.edu.

Abstract: Paper for International Making Cities Livable Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 1-5, 2008
Restoring Children’s Access to Nature in Urban Environments
Louise Chawla and Selena R. Paulsen
Children, Nature and Cities
In his book Last Child in the Woods, the journalist Richard Louv (2005) described a radical change in the pattern of children’s lives that has occurred in the space of one generation. Baby boomer parents and grandparents typically remember having free run of their neighborhoods by the time they reached middle childhood, but too often, their children and grandchildren live under conditions that Louv calls virtual house arrest: confined to their homes by real or imagined dangers beyond the front door, dependent on their parents to drive them to structured activities and play dates, entertained by experiences that come to them second hand on TV sets and computer screens. This loss of physical activity outdoors is associated with a rising rate of childhood obesity: more than 17 percent of 2 to 19-year-olds were overweight or obese in 2003-2004, up from 5 percent in 1971-1974 (Ogden et al., 2006). Being overweight in childhood increases risks of low self-concept, depression, diabetes, hypertension, and high LDL cholesterol, among other negative consequences, and overweight children are more likely to become overweight adults. What especially concerns Louv, however, is children’s loss of freedom to explore the natural world, find special places in it, and feel at home in this larger universe that sustains and transcends us.

benefits_of_nature_fact_sheet_1_april_20071.pdf

studentgainsfromplace-basededunov28.pdf

Please see the “Call for Nominations” notice below from Climate Change Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities.

We are announcing the 2008 “Call for Nominations” The Better Air Quality (BAQ) - 2008 Young Voices Award on Urban Air Pollution and Climate Change Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities (CAI-Asia) encourages new thinking and approaches to deal with the problems of urban air pollution and climate change in Asia. http://www.cleanairnet.org/caiasia/1412/channel.html

So far, traditional approaches used in dealing with urban air pollution and climate change have not produced enough results nor are seen to create significant impacts in the future. It is therefore important to consult with the next generation of air quality and climate changes policy makers, experts and managers. The 2008 Young Voices Award on Urban Air Pollution and Climate Change (the Young Voices) will be handed out for the first time at the Better Air Quality (BAQ) 2008 workshop, which will be held from 12-14 November 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand (Further details can be found here: BAQ Awards, “Young Voices Award”: http://baq2008.org).

Eligible for the Young Voices award are full/part - time students currently enrolled at Universities or Colleges in an academic degree (undergraduate or advanced degree) program in a subject that is of relevance to urban air pollution and climate change in Asia. The maximum age at the time of BAQ 2008 (12-14 November, 2008) is 25 years. There is no geographical restriction on participation in this competition and students from all over the world can participate. The award committee will however consider the ideas submitted for their relevance for Asia. If applications are submitted on behalf of a group the application form should clearly indicate who the person is who will present at BAQ 2008 if the awards committee selects the submission as one of the winners.

Deadline:
Please send form and attachments (if applicable) to baq2008 @cai-asia.org and cornie.huizenga @cai-asia.org before 15 August 2008. Only electronic applications will be considered.

As reads from their website, “TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week.”

TED is a fantastic, inspirational resource which offers a range of talks that would engage the Sustainable Cities Net audience. For example, related themes include A Greener Future?, Design Like You Give a Damn, Inspired by Nature, Technology, History and Destiny, The Power of Cities, The Rise of Collaboration, and more…. Check it out and enjoy!

Please find below a report about the ‘Edible Cities’ movement which was based on some urban agriculture projects a delegation from London, UK, visited in the US, supported by the US Embassy, as part of an exchange trip with Growing Power, Milwaukee.

The ‘Edible Cities’ report can be found here: http://www.sustainweb.org/page.php?id=432, and is available for free download.