Machu Picchu Documentary – A Lesson in Sustainability
Sustainability in Government Agencies
Protect and help people who need it
In the early part of the last century taking care of the needy was largely a task for churches and communities. Now, however, many citizens expect governments to take care of homelessness, hunger, illiteracy, drug abuse, child abuse, gangs and domestic violence. It’s a tall order, especially in times of reduced funding.
In troubled Oakland, California, Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center is spearheading a Green Jobs Corps programme to solve several problems at once. He plans to train disadvantaged people in poor communities to do ‘green jobs’, including installing solar panels, fixing bicycles and farming organically. He’s secured funding to create these green jobs in the area in the hopes of lifting many minorities into the new economy. The offshoots of this effort are employing young adults who might otherwise join gangs to do energy audits and recently incarcerated convicts to build green homes on brown fields.
This is an elegant coupling of social, economic and environmental goals. While the challenges are immense, if it works, this could become a model for other troubled cities. The developed world can learn a lot from the developing world in this area, as people there have more profound problems and even less money. We’ll use Curitiba again as a source of inspiration.
RESOURCES
Myers, Norman and Jennifer Kent (2001) Perverse Subsidies: How Tax Dollars Can Undercut the Environment and the Economy. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Subsidy Watch, www.iisd.org/subsidywatch .The Product Stewardship Institute at www.productstewardship.us is a non-profit organization of governmental entities that sets priorities for product stewardship initiatives in the US. The National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative, see www.nepsi.org/ , is a US initiative to solve end-of-life issues for electronic products.
WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive, http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/index_en.htm. For British Columbia’s extended product responsibility (EPR) programmes, see Driedger, R.J. (2001) ‘From Cradle to Grave: Extended Producer Responsibility for Household Hazardous Wastes in British Columbia’, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Vol 5, No 2, Spring, p89.
Focus on prevention
The old adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, is certainly true in the sustainability realm. Our societies seem all too eager to pay for the misery after the fact but resist investing in prevention. We should invest in programmes that are proven to reduce health and psychological problems: parenting skills, early education and healthy habits.
For example, take Ontario’s Healthy Baby, Health Children programme which screens and assesses all pregnant women and all new mothers. They provide home visits and referrals. This programme has led to higher scores in infant development (a marker for their future earning ability as adults), and family violence has dropped. Note that in the US, child abuse costs $94 billion per year).
Early treatment is key as well. Instead of locking up juvenile offenders in large prison like compounds, Missouri puts their troubled youth into small group settings with highly trained staff. As a result, only 8 per cent of these kids end up in adult prisons, while in California half are behind bars within two years. Missouri’s programme also costs less.
They spend $43,000 per year per child whereas California pays about $80,000 per child.
Perform triage
On a recent visit to Curitiba, one of the authors saw no homeless people, a dramatic contrast to her home in Portland, Oregon. Certainly, some people lived in conditions that many in the developed world would find unacceptable, but no one was wandering the streets, pushing stolen shopping trolleys or urinating in alleys. How had this relatively favourable situation been accomplished? In Curitiba, if you see someone on the street who appears to need help – perhaps you see a homeless man or a runaway teenager – there’s a central number to call. A social worker is dispatched to offer assistance. That is one entry point to their network of public–private partnerships to address social needs, everything from food and housing to job training and substance-abuse programmes. The authorities provide free rent in business incubators, where they also provide training in marketing and other business skills. They also set up markets for people to sell their wares. Curitibans are working hard to move away from a care-taking philosophy where government is responsible for taking care of people to one where individuals and communities share in the responsibility to make things better.
Combat hunger
Curitiba’s programmes emphasize good nutrition. Instead of just providing food stamps, there are a number of ways to put fresh fruits and vegetables into the hands of the poor. In the favelas, a waste-for-food exchange as a way of cleaning up the shanty towns and reducing disease was implemented. People bring refuse and recyclables to the edge of the
favela (an area with streets too narrow for the refuse collection vehicles to manoeuvre) and exchange them for surplus produce. There are also low-cost groceries at Citizenship Streets, buildings along the major transportation routes which house, in a decentralized fashion, the city services people are likely to need: job training, legal assistance, business licences, social services, etc. When people come to pick up their packet of staples (rice, beans, flour, etc.), they are asked to spend an hour in training where they learn to read, develop job skills, discover how to make meals from kitchen scraps, and hone their parenting skills.
RESOURCES
Smith, Stephen C. (2005) Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works. Palgrave Macmillan.
Provide housing
As in any city, providing affordable housing is a challenge. One mechanism Curitiba uses to fund new projects is transferring building rights. Similar to the programme mentioned earlier in this chapter where they used building rights to preserve precious habitat, in some situations they allow builders to construct a taller building than zoning allows. The developer pays a fee for the additional floors that goes into a low-income housing fund.
RESOURCES
Bullard, Robert (2005) The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books.
Sachs, Jeffrey D. (2005) The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our Time. New York: Penguin Press.
For a fascinating example of creating healthy communities in the poorest communities and settings (in Colombia), see Weisman, Alan (1995) Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World.
White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Guide us toward a better future
We all hope that our governments have the foresight to set into motion policies that will lead us toward a better future. In addition to all the strategies we have already mentioned, there are many ways, both big and small, for government to use its clout. Here are a few to consider.
Model and encourage new behaviour
Habits are hard to break. Sometimes government needs to model new patterns of behaviour.
For example, Japan wanted to change energy use patterns to achieve their Kyoto greenhouse gas goals. So their prime minister, Jurichiro Koizumi, built a campaign to encourage workers to dress casually during the summer. To be without a coat and tie was considered unprofessional, so this represented a major cultural shift. He told his cabinet ministers to show up in shirtsleeves and was photographed in casual attire with US President George Bush. He decreed that air conditioning thermostats be set to 28°C (82°F). He even sponsored a Cool Biz Collection fashion show that he hoped would result in a boost to the economy, resulting in an estimated US$92 million in consumer purchases.
Educating the community is also a critical task. The resort community of Whistler, British Columbia convened a group of community leaders and businesses to create the Whistler: It’s Our Nature programme. The members included the municipality of Whistler-Blackcomb, the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, Tourism Whistler and the Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment. They developed four toolkits: a household kit, a small business kit, a kit for schools and a community sustainability kit. These were funded in part by foundations and were distributed in the community to build awareness.
In this global world, inspiration can come from far away. The mayor of Kamikatsu, a small community in eastern Japan, is pushing community leaders around the world to follow his lead and make their towns zero waste. Kamikatsu residents compost all their food waste and separate rubbish into 34 different categories. There are no waste collection services at all, so residents must take responsibility for anything they throw away.
Use purchasing as a way to drive markets
The high-tech industry was launched a few decades ago by the military. Their long-term demand accelerated production, drove down costs and inspired research and development.
Similarly, governmental purchasing guidelines for recycled content paper and LEED-rated green buildings have created a cost-effective market for those products and services.
Oregon’s Department of Administrative Services is trying to enlarge their influence and bulk purchasing power by encouraging schools to use the state’s purchasing programmes.
Recently, the City of Portland in Oregon issued a request for proposal (RFP) to purchase all their electricity on the open market from wind farms rather than through their local utility. To protect the interests of their taxpayers, the RFP stated that it couldn’t cost a cent more than what the city was paying now, even though the green power programmes in the area all cost a premium. The city is currently in negotiations with a company and it appears that the power will actually cost less. The main benefit to the community, though, is this contract creates a larger market for renewable energy. It also helps to heal the urban–rural divide. In Oregon, there has historically been friction between the conservative rural areas and the more liberal, populated and powerful urban areas. Since the wind farms will be in the rural parts of Oregon, this is a way to benefit these economically challenged regions. Also, it may be possible, once this contract is in place, for other communities and large power users to be added to this groundbreaking agreement, multiplying the market effects.
Don’t underestimate the power of putting the word ‘sustainability’ in your RFPs. Making it one of many criteria sends a strong signal to potential respondents and it will create a ripple of learning. AXIS Performance Advisors were once asked to become part of a team proposing on a waste treatment job. We have no experience in that field but the engineering firm needed someone on the team with knowledge of sustainability since it was mentioned in the RFP. By the time the proposal was written, our firm had provided them with grounding in the concept. Write sustainability-related terms into your contracts as well, perhaps as add-on options..
