Planning, Participation and Sustainable Cities

Posted on May 14, 2012 by lathamsa

Sustainability has many definitions and provokes a wide range of concepts and approaches. In many aspects sustainability has been overused and lacks the clarity needed to fully understand what it means for a particular place. In my experience stemming from years of hands-on planning in communities of all sizes and locations, one lesson is that one size does not fit all in terms of sustainability solutions. Anyone concerned about a brighter future for the next generation across the globe will promote a tailored, custom solution to the unique needs and situations faced by the range of communities and cultures. In order for the concept to have meaning, it needs to be tied to measures that reflect where we are and whether what we do is making us more or less sustainable.

Patterns of human development – physical, social, and economic – affect sustainability at the local and the global level. City and regional planning helps define how, where, and when human settlement occurs. The location of urban development and the choices for reusing and adapting cities make a huge difference in resource consumption. Planners can play a crucial role in improving the sustainability of communities and the resources that support them.

Sustainability, seen broadly, should address three main goals, commonly referred to as the “three Es”: Environment, Equity, and Economy. The most sustainable policies and implementation practices will be the ones that simultaneously advance all three goals. For me sustainability is a value-based effort to achieve what is right for society, or in any given community. My organization, The American Planning Association (APA) just held its 104th annual conference in Los Angeles and to kick it off, we cosponsored a Youth Forum on Sustainable Cities in cooperation with our Chinese partners. It is critical that we reach out to young people from all disciplines and all countries to engage them in the process of shaping the future. Too many times, their voices are not at the table when decisions are made yet their generation will be most affected.

ECPA Fellow Jeff Soule getting local perspectives in Rio De Janeiro with meetings in the neighborhoods. (Courtesy Photo)

Widespread urbanization in both the U.S. and around the world is one of the most significant demographic trends seen today. Fortunately, it is also one of the most sustainable trends. Populations in urbanizing areas experience lower birth rates, higher educational attainments, and smaller carbon footprints. In other words, urbanization is at the core of sustainability. Yet for the benefits of urbanization to be realized, there are things we need to do better.

1 Improve citizen involvement. We must engage each other in the discussion of the choices we have based on knowledge and information sharing. Planners are especially trained to help citizens become more informed and engaged in shaping a more sustainable future. In many places, citizens do not have a direct voice in development decisions and resource allocation and participatory governance a new concept that needs our support.

2 Plan according to Nature. Look at the regional picture and protect sensitive areas from urbanization. Much of today’s urbanization is occurring in areas of high risk for natural disasters: coastal and delta regions, earthquake and tsunami prone areas and places susceptible to sea level rise. Planning for hazard mitigation and avoidance is a critical effort that is often overlooked. We must not continue to place people in harm’s way through lack of planning.

3 Respect and learn from traditional patterns and techniques. Today the world is more interconnected than ever and we can recognize and value cultural differences and approaches to creating places. In many cases, historical building styles and materials embody the essence of low energy and sustainability. Equating high technology with modernity is a concept that needs to be questioned as we examine and respect the traditional settlements, designs and cultures that can inform our options.

This guest blog was written by Jeff Soule of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA).

Earth Day Stories: Mexico and Malaysia

Posted on April 18, 2012 by lathamsa

Today is day three of our week of international Earth Day stories leading up to Earth Day 2012 on Sunday, April 22. Today’s stories are about Mexico and Malaysia. Don’t forget to check out yesterday’s stories about Iraq and Jamaica!

Mexico

Students participating in an Earth Day event at the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve near Querétaro, Mexico (Photo credit: Earth Day Network).

In the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, near Querétaro, Mexico, Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda is mobilizing for Earth Day 2012 through a series of Earth Festivals in schools. The festivals—running from February until the end of April and involving thousands of students and parents—will feature a play entitled “Everyone Listen to the Call of the Earth.” The group will engage the students with environmental songs, as well as educational activities about forest-fire prevention, recycling, and the Reserve’s biodiversity.

The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve is 1 million acres with 100,000 residents in 638 communities who own 97% of the mountainous area which is removed from modern society three and half hours from the cities of Queretaro and San Luis Potosí. Yet, for the last 25 years the schools and communities have been celebrating close to 40 Earth Festivals per year; celebrating Mother Nature and all her gifts despite the extreme poverty that characterizes the region. To us, every day is Earth Day. In 40 different strategic communities, hundreds of students, parents, teachers, local authorities, and local businesses all gather and present skits, poems, songs and dances; grandmothers prepare the traditional dishes otherwise forgotten; and that is how we celebrate our connection to the Earth and the kinship that demands we take action to protect her.

– Laura P. B. Pérez-Arce, Director of Sierra Gorda

Malaysia

Participants in a waterfall cleanup in Malaysia (Photo credit: Earth Day Network).

In Malaysia, Waterfall Survivors Malaysia is mobilizing for Earth Day by hosting a waterfall clean-up on April 22 as part of its “Save our Waterfalls” campaign. The campaign aims to expose local residents and tourists to Malaysia’s pristine waterfalls, while promoting civic awareness about the importance of preserving and cleaning up these natural areas.
On April 22nd, approximately 500 participants will travel to Templer’s Park in Selangor, Malaysia with the goal of removing all waste and litter from the magnificent waterfalls in the park. The event will also feature activities and discussions to educate the participants about the environmental threats facing Malaysia’s waterfalls. The event will mark the fourth straight year that Waterfall Survivors Malaysia has participated in Earth Day.

* These events are two of thousands being held around the world for Earth Day 2012. To find or start a local event and learn how you can get involved in Mobilize the Earth™, go to www.earthday.org/2012.

Earth Day Stories: Iraq and Jamaica

Posted on April 17, 2012 by lathamsa

Over the next week leading up to Earth Day on Sunday, April 22, we will have a series of stories from around the world about what people are doing to celebrate Earth Day. Today’s stories are about Iraq and Jamaica!

Iraq

His Excellency Dr. Barham Salih, Prime Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government, planting a tree in honor of Earth Day (Photo credit: Earth Day Network).

In Iraq, the provincial government in Kurdistan is mobilizing to plant five million trees for Earth Day 2012. Other important Iraqi government agencies have participated, such as the Agency of Protection and Improvement of the Environment, the Ministry of Municipalities, and the Ministry of Education. And Earth Day Network partner “Together” has already planted 400 trees in honor of Earth Day 2012 in Salah Al-Din Province.
“We’re proud to be joining so many people all over the world who are taking action for Earth Day 2012. By planting these trees, we’re improving the environment of Kurdistan and the surrounding communities, but we also hope to set an example for the rest of Iraq, the region and the world.” – His Excellency Dr. Barham Salih, Prime Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government.

Jamaica

Children in Kingston, Jamaica, participating in a “Building Appreciation for Nature in Children at Risk” event in the run up to Earth Day (Photo credit: Earth Day Network).

The Jamaica Environment Trust—based in Kingston, Jamaica—is mobilizing for Earth Day by hosting a day of festivities to mark the completion of its “Building Appreciation for Nature in Children at Risk” project. The project seeks to expose children from inner-city communities to the natural world. Since the project started in October of 2010, 150 children from Cockburn Pen, Olympic Gardens and Drewslnd in Kingston have participated.

The event will feature environmentally-themed games, arts and crafts, and educational activities. There will be a concert held during lunch, as well as an opportunity for the children to showcase the artwork that they’ve created throughout the project.

“As a voice for Jamaica’s natural resources, JET has always found Earth Day to be a great opportunity to spark public interest in our environmental programmes. Earth Day allows us to promote different aspects of the important environmental education work JET is doing, giving Jamaicans, particularly our young people, a cause to rally around and an opportunity to learn more about the environment in which we live.” – Suzanne Stanley, Programme Director, Jamaica Environment Trust

Children in Kingston, Jamaica, participating in a “Building Appreciation for Nature in Children at Risk” event in the run up to Earth Day.

*These events are two of thousands being held around the world for Earth Day 2012. To find or start a local event and learn how you can get involved in Mobilize the Earth™, go to www.earthday.org/2012.

Guest Blog: Solar Sister #2

Posted on January 13, 2012 by lathamsa

Solar Sister’s Energy Access & Health Matters Series:
Reading Should Not Be Injurious To Children’s Health

I love to read.

There is so much to read and learn that I feel one lifetime is not enough. There are three things required for reading – First and foremost, a quest for knowledge or stories or both (mysteries are my favorites!). Second, a book, a school lesson, a magazine, a newspaper or a good website, depending on what you like to read and using which platform. Third, but not the least by any means, good light. For how can you read if there is no light?

And even more, how can you read if reading was to be injurious to health? It is not supposed to be like smoking after all. But for many young children in villages and small towns around the world reading is injurious to health in ways as harmful as smoking and even more. Why? Because these children do not have good quality light available to read. They read under the dim, smoky, dangerous kerosene lanterns and candles.

An early advertisement for Edison Mazda Lamps (Image courtesy of Solar Sister)

Then there is also the constant danger of getting burnt as the slightest nudge to the lantern can make hot kerosene spill and cause injuries. A study conducted in Irrua, Nigeria showed that more than 50% of burn victims brought into hospitals were victims of fires caused by overturned or exploding kerosene lamps. Another estimate says that more children die from fire related injuries than fatalities from diseases like tuberculosis or malaria. Burns are no fun – they hurt and make the body vulnerable to many other infections. In fact, skin is the largest organ of the body which acts like an army protecting the castle of our bodies from any outside attack. When skin is burnt, our whole body is at risk. And with risks like this, doing school homework cannot be fun.

Reading should not be injurious to the health of any child. It should be something that children enjoy as they open their minds to wonderful new worlds of facts and imagination to which books hold the magic key. Solar Sister provides a solution by displacing kerosene lanterns with solar lights that are affordable, safe and bright. Solar Sister Mary says she is proud to sell great solar products to her community, as now children do not have to get burnt by kerosene and candle. Besides, domestic fires not burn houses any more. With bright light, children are not scared of reading any but look forward to doing their homework and reading new stories.

Solar Sister Mary from Kumi, Eastern Uganda. Hear Mary’s story on YouTube (Photo and Video Credits: Solar Sister, 2011)

As you finish reading this blog piece, I ask you to reflect for a minute to be grateful for your reading light, on what it must be for children to be without light and what you can do spread some light as well.

Children use solar light to read in Mityana, Central Uganda (Photo Credit: Solar Sister, 2011)

These posts are written by Neha Misra, the Chief Collaboration Officer of Solar Sister. You can follow her on Twitter at @LightSolar.

Join Solar Sister in spreading light, hope and opportunity. Join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Learn more at www.solarsister.org.

United Nations Environmental Awards

Posted on December 21, 2011 by lathamsa

Four winners of the UNEP Young Environmental Leader Award, October 2011 (Photo courtesy of UN)

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) gives out several different awards each year to deserving recipients in a variety of “green” categories. The Champions of the Earth award, created in 2004, specifically spotlights environmental innovation, and recipients are often youth! “The Champions of the Earth Award recognizes outstanding environmental leaders, whether individuals or organizations, that have exemplified inspiration, vision, innovation, leadership and action for the environment.”

This video shows the 2009 winners of the seven Champions of the Earth Award that were “honored for coming up with innovative solutions to environmental challenges.” Winners included Tigist Tsegaaye Belay from Ethiopia who co-founded an organization that brings together young people to rehabilitate garbage dumpsites. Tigist stated that “It is a great opportunity for the youth of our country, for Africans and also Europeans. After this they will encourage themselves to get involved in environmental issues. This is very important.”

A different U.N. Award that honors youth for their environmental innovation is the Young Environmental Leader Award, which was given to four co-winners this October. The four recipients, all students, were from Indonesia, Ecuador, Kenya and the Philippines, and each received 3,000 euros and technical support to help support their sustainable ideas. Their four ideas are described below:

Ms. Rudianto developed a bioreactor that can process farm and household waste to make renewable energy that can be used not only for cooking in Indonesia’s West Java province, but also as an alternative source of fuel to the traditionally used firewood. Ms. Acosta of Ecuador designed a process to treat water that has been contaminated by mercury, a toxic element that has usually resulted from gold mining. Mr. Muli is implementing a green energy project in his native Kenya that aims to lower carbon emissions by using clean fuel briquettes made of foliage and waste paper rather than traditional cooking fuels such as charcoal. The project should also create jobs and income for local residents in his community. In the Philippines, Ms. Gabanes has set up an environmental education programme for children with special needs that includes art therapy sessions, a musical variety show and photo exhibitions.

Mr. Muli of Kenya ended with this remark: “I came away from this programme realizing that, when it comes to sustainable development, the time for action is now.” Do you agree?

Guest blog: Steve Frisch on Environmental Governance

Posted on December 17, 2011 by lathamsa

Mongolian youth look to lead on environmental governance

Mongolian Coat of Arms

Probably the most frequent question I fielded from Mongolian students was “what can we learn from your experience that will help us leap ahead? How do we create a system that allows for economic prosperity but respects and protects the environment?”

Environmental governance is the set of rules and practices that govern the use and allocation of natural resources. These rules can be embedded in legal codes or they can be more informal, cultural and behavioral factors.

In the United States we take a well-established legal system of environmental governance for granted. US systems were established gradually as resource conflicts led to a body of law to resolve dispute. Eventually this led to the passage of the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act and numerous other regulatory policies, all studied and understood by our intrepid Mongolian students. In Mongolia, because property rights were not a founding principle of government from 1920-1990, and pressure on resources was light, many of these rules and practices were embedded in cultural values. As pressure on resources is increasing they sense the opportunity to establish a legal system that avoids many of the pitfalls of the US system.

The issue that seemed to fascinate many Mongolian students was the establishment in US law of the “public trust doctrine”, or the principle that certain resources—such as clean air and water, species, and perhaps even cultural landscapes—are public or common resources, and that government has a primary required role in maintaining them for the public’s use. While I was in Mongolia this very issue was being debated and decided by the Mongolian Supreme Court, which eventually found that citizens have a right to sue on behalf of the environment if government fails to protect it.

The other environmental governance issue that fascinated students is the idea of ecological debt. Ecological debt is the concept that the right to a healthy environment is a fundamental right, and exploitation of the planet’s resources by industrialized countries at the expense of undeveloped countries is a breach of those rights. This right is further breached by the fact we now face a global climate crisis and the only way to mitigate impacts is to de-carbonize our economies. Since industrialized nations built their wealth on cheap and abundant carbon based fuels, what debt do we owe to developing countries for monopolizing these resources?

Rapidly developing nations like India and Brazil, seeing them selves shifting from under-developed to developed nations, are hesitant to endorse rapid cuts to carbon emissions. Instead they are joining the ranks of the nations that owe the ecological debt—the group of 17 most industrialized nations who account for the vast majority of global GHG emissions—and are balking. Nations like Mongolia are saying that the wealthier developed nations ought to carry the bulk of the fiscal burden. Western and emerging economies say that the funds will need to come from taxes on the private sector and no one has the political will to make the case while their economies are still languishing under slow growth and debt crises.

I suspect that the answer probably lies with our altruistic, optimistic, innovation hungry, barrier leaping students, like those I was so fortunate to meet during my time in Mongolia, rather than the bankers, and bureaucrats who have taken over my generation.

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Community Water Programs

Posted on September 28, 2011 by lathamsa

Nelson Mandela and First Lady Michelle Obama in South Africa (AP Images)

Nelson Mandela once said,

We in South Africa have ourselves faced hard questions and had to make hard choices in this regard. We know that political freedom alone is still not enough if you lack clean water. Freedom alone is not enough without light to read at night, without time or access to water to irrigate your farm, without the ability to catch fish to feed your family. For this reason the struggle for sustainable development nearly equals the struggle for political freedom. They can grow together or they can unravel each other. Threats to our governments in the century ahead will come from poverty, if anything.

Access to clean water is everyone’s right, yet it is denied to people around the world on a daily basis. A potential solution to this problem lies in the hands of communities, who can work together to build the wells and create the infrastructure necessary to provide safe water reliably to community members. Whether water access today is limited by political strife, geography, poverty, or any number of other things, water will become scarcer as the effects of climate change increase and the world’s population continues to grow. Working within one’s community to find solutions to accessing a safe, consistent water source is essential. Thankfully, many are taking it on today.

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, many low-income Latino communities are without clean water. Seeing this problem firsthand, Susana de Anda co-founded the Community Water Center, an advocacy organization that works to promote community access to safe, clean, and affordable water. The Community Water Center describes their mission as creating “community-driven water solutions through organizing, education and advocacy in California’s San Joaquin Valley.” They have three main strategies they use to accomplish this mission: “[1] Educate, organize and provide legal assistance to low-income, communities of color facing local water challenges. [2] Advocate for systemic change to address the root causes of unsafe drinking water in the San Joaquin Valley. [3] Serve as a resource for information and expertise on community water challenges.”

Check out the podcast of this interview with de Anda on her work with communities.

On the other side of the globe in Nepal, the organization Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH), “aims to improve the standard of living of poor people in Nepal by supporting community development initiatives.” They also “encourage… the community to take a lead in planning, construction, operation and maintenance of new facilities by using participatory approaches. This aims to ensure the community is the owner of the facilities.”

NEWAH works with communities on projects like Fog Water Collection, which is meant to help those communities perched high atop hills and ridgelines that have to go to lower elevations to collect their water, trips that can take 6-8 hours per day and are usually undertaken by women and children. In these areas, NEWA is helping people capture water from fog using Large Fog Collecters, “4×8 meter sheets of polypropylene mesh, which is then suspended on a ridgeline [and] resembles a large volleyball net… As fog passes through the fog collectors, water droplets cling to the weave of the mesh, and filter down into a discharge system that stores the water in 20,000 liter ferro-cement tanks. Water quality testing found that all parameters meet [World Health Organization] (WHO) guidelines.” This fog water was previously left uncollected, and can now be used by people who are prevented by geography from having reasonable access to safe water.

Does your community do anything related to these water issues?

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