How a Canadian mountain resort became a model of sustainability

Let’s face it, very few of us like Monday mornings, but the beginning of last week was truly a depressing wake-up call for me. I contemplated hiding away under my quilt as the alarm clicked in and BBC radio reeled off the latest on government spending cuts and potential job losses. As the commentators considered what cuts of 20% here and 40% there might mean, I thought of our construction partners as Building Schools for the Future was shelved, and wondered about the prospects for colleagues in local authorities striving to implement low-carbon infrastructure.

But thankfully, my day did get better. I’d organised a Forum network seminar with Ken Melamed, the Mayor of Whistler, to talk about how the Canadian mountain resort community is implementing an ambitious plan to achieve a prosperous and sustainable future. For those of you who don’t know, as well as co-hosting the recent Winter Olympics, Whistler is seen as an exemplar in terms of community planning, with a systems-led approach to sustainable development at its core.

A decade ago the Natural Step framework (http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/the-natural-step) was used to inspire, align and guide the community toward a shared vision of sustainability and success. Ken talked about how Whistler2020 (www.whistler2020.ca) lays out a vision, prioritised strategies and  action planning process – guiding strategic planning and actions over time. There is also regular and transparent reporting on progress. Drawing on local and external knowledge, Whistler2020 informs decision-making, optimises use of limited resources and provides a framework for aligning community efforts in a common direction.

Today, Ken talks about Whistler2020 being a ‘living’ plan, driving ongoing progress, and being informed by community members, including local businesses. And this long-term plan is leading to significant change on the ground. We heard about how they used the Winter Olympics and Paralympics as a vehicle to accelerate the journey the community is on. This allowed them to complete 30 green building projects, to showcase clean technologies and green building techniques, to pilot a hydrogen-fuelled bus transit scheme, and to create hundreds of low-impact, affordable homes.

But the key message for me was the role of strong and pragmatic leadership through good times and bad. It’s clear from talking to Ken that he knows that Whistler is on a journey and it’s taken a lot of time to get all the necessary stakeholders on board. Barriers have had to be overcome, cynics convinced and some trade-offs made. But at the same time, Whistler has not waited for national government to legislate or tax, or for consumers to demand change.

Where feasible they have adopted innovation and piloted new ideas. The community has experimented with new ways to finance projects for the long term, and has restructured the municipal government around five strategic priorities. They have a plan that is now city-led, but community-owned. It is proving to be workable and Whistler’s approach is now being adopted by much larger towns and communities across Canada.

True, Whistler has some way to go before it is truly sustainable, and still faces significant challenges as a tourist destination. But there is a clear appreciation that uncontrolled growth is unsustainable, and that adding value and doing more with the community’s existing infrastructure and resources is the way forward.

Some may argue that Whistler is different from many of our communities here in the UK, but I believe that there are many lessons that we can learn about long-term planning, community engagement, innovation and implementation. Perhaps most importantly, I get the impression that Whistler will not be diverted from the long-term path it has set, and will continue to demonstrate the strong leadership and clear sense of direction which many of our partners should aspire to, even in the most testing of economic times. 

I felt a lot better Tuesday morning.

The Green Investment Bank will be a big step towards a sustainable future, but the government must ensure that it unlocks the potential of local authorities and community groups as well as business.

The Green Investment Bank Commission’s report calls for the government to set up a flexible bank to reduce the risk to private investors investing in greening our power supply, increasing the energy efficiency of our buildings and our transport systems.

The bank, as proposed, would represent a big step towards a low-carbon economy, bringing greater energy security, new jobs and a higher quality of life.  Big advances in green infrastructure, like offshore wind farms, are crucial to change at the speed we need to see in the UK to meet carbon targets.

Yet there is much that a community-led approach to an energy revolution can bring too. And this can create local skilled jobs, strengthen community ties and help people lift themselves to a higher quality of life. Communities in energy cooperatives have saved a third off their energy bills just by changing their behaviour, offshore wind doesn’t do this. So I was delighted that the commission has understood the role of financial investment in this community-led approach too.

However, we also need investment in skills to enable local government and community groups to take advantage of this funding opportunity. At Forum for the Future we have been working with West Sussex County Council, the South East of England Development Agency and a group of local authorities and community enterprises in our Climate Finance initiative to find out how to do this, and making great progress with some inspiring people. Other initiatives like the Ashden Awards and the Low Carbon Communities Challenge are also leading the way.

The challenge now is to scale up so that every community takes action. The advisory group of experts we have been working with are often translators between sustainability and finance teams within local government. Good opportunities are often missed due to a lack of understanding. If we could develop these skills, then local authorities and groups like Transition Towns and energy co-ops will be the experts, creating the new ways of financing local investment in carbon reduction such as green bonds.

Without this development of local skills, most of the funds raised by a Green Investment Bank will go to big businesses to support big projects. This government has led on a big society agenda and the prospect of a Green Investment Bank presents a real opportunity for local people to take action for their future. But it must ensure they have the skills to do the job. The commission’s ambition is to have the bank up and running in six months so we have no time to lose.

Environment policy didn’t break the surface during the UK election campaign.  How will it fare in a coalition of parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum?

Amongst the many surprises was the near absence of environment from the parties’ campaigns and the first ever prime-ministerial debates.  Does it mean the British care less about the environment than in previous years?  Apparently not: the share of the green vote held up and the Green party won its first ever seat in the British Parliament (Caroline Lucas, Leader of the party and long time Member of the European Parliament, taking Brighton from Labour).

But with the parties fairly close to each other on much of environment policy, there were more points to be scored by talking about social policy (we are bracing ourselves for Conservative leader David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, whatever that means) and of course, dealing with the deficit where we are up there with the European basket cases like Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Having torn lumps out of each other for months on these and other issues, our identikit party leaders now find themselves round the table in Britain’s first true coalition government in 65 years. I’ll spare you the constitutional niceties of how that came about. Suffice to say that political commentators, having had to speculate wildly for several days about what the outcome of the election might be, now find themselves, along with the new government in largely uncharted waters.  In a cabinet of 23, Liberal Democrats hold five posts,  including the responsibility for Energy and Climate Change, which has gone to Chris Huhne, millionaire businessman and one time contestant for the party leadership.   

This appointment throws into sharp relief the strategic and tactical questions this coalition raises for the future programme of the government, not least on environmental policy.  Despite substantial areas of common ground – on the need to cut emissions, boost renewable energy generation, and create a ‘green bank’ for investment in cleantech  for example - the Lib Dems have long been opposed to the replacement of Britain’s ageing fleet of nuclear reactors, whilst the Tories see nuclear as the mainstay of both emissions reduction and future energy security in the UK.  

This issue is such a clear divide, that in the formal agreement about the coalition the issue is dealt with directly, with a bizarre result.   The government (i.e. Huhne) will bring forward a ‘national planning statement’ which would give permission for new nuclear to be built, but then Lib Dems (including Huhne) would be allowed to abstain from the vote bringing it into force.  This in effect means that the Conservatives can push it through on their own, whilst the Lib Dems have (just about) a path of dignity in opposing it and allowing it.

What Green supporters who voted Lib Dem for their anti-nuclear stance will make of this is anyone’s guess.  In any case, both parties are agreed that there should be no public money for nuclear power, and since no nuclear power plant has been built, ever, without such subsidy, it will be interesting to see if any of the utility companies that were lining up to build the new capacity will still find it so appealing.   Lib Dems are presumably hoping not. 

Elsewhere the picture seems a bit clearer, and generally positive for the environment.  Campaigners are elated at the scrapping of Labour’s plans for a third runway at Heathrow.  The coalition agreement makes positive noises about a new high speed rail network – though it’s hard to see how that will be paid for any time soon. Though there’s no new target on the proportion of energy from renewables, investment in marine power and anaerobic digestion also gets a mention, as does a smart grid to link it all up, smart meters to make us all more frugal in using it, and other measures to boost energy efficiency in the home. And along with the promise of public investment in carbon capture and storage and a floor price for carbon comes an undertaking to prevent new coal-fired power without sufficient CCS to meet a demanding emissions standard.  

Some cynics have suggested that Lib Dems have been given jobs that are either so marginal to the Conservative project that they don’t matter, or require them to dip their hands in the blood of ‘dealing with the deficit’ and so alienate their supporter base.   A more nuanced view is that the coalition has enabled Cameron to do what he could not have done with a majority, giving him a reason to be more positive about the environment and Europe and move his party further onto the centre ground.  If he succeeds in finally decontaminating the Tory brand in this way, they argue, he will have laid the foundation for successive Conservative governments for many years to come.

Whatever the motivation, the new team have started with a bang.  Cameron swiftly announced that the government will cut its own emissions by 10% in the next 12 months.  Speaking to staff at the Department for Energy and Climate Change he said ‘I want this to be the greenest government ever’.  Meanwhile Huhne took up the reins at DECC, promising to put energy security ‘at the heart of the UK’s national security strategy’ and to ‘fundamentally change how we supply and use energy in Britain'.  Amen to that.

This blog first appeared in Grist

In the first in a series of blogs in the run up to the general election, Jonathon Porritt considers the (lack of) climate change and sustainability policies of the three main parties and the unknowing support for the Green Party's wider policies.

It’s certainly a more exciting election than any I can remember for years. But it’s a bit of a nightmare from a sustainability point of view. 

The party manifestos themselves are OK – a considerable improvement on the 2005 manifestos. Out of the three major parties, you’d have to put the Liberal Democrats way out in front (as usual), if only because of the way in which they spread the ‘green content’ through the entire manifesto rather than having the usual ‘green section’ with everything else around it pretty grey and grim.

But beyond the manifestos, there’s been next to nothing on either climate change or wider green issues. The parties had a brief moment set aside to go through their green motions, but without any seriousness of intent whatsoever. Gordon Brown was there to launch a separate Labour green manifesto, but devoted almost all of his entire speech to yet another lacklustre rant against David Cameron. It’s never been his strong suit, as we all know, and Labour’s whole election campaign has made that very clear all over again.

We shouldn’t be too surprised at this, simply because it has always been like this. It could have been different this time around, given all the serious political interest in climate change over the last few years. But then Copenhagen crashed, scientists started messing up all over the place, and our wretched rightwing media seized their moment to intensify their promotion of the near-bonkers babbling of Nigel Lawson, Ian Plimer et al. And all that pretty much blew any prospect of climate change featuring in any serious way in this election.

Happily, beyond the Big Party Circus, there’s an astonishing foment of political activity going on elsewhere, touching on every conceivable aspect of sustainable development territory. I’ll be focusing on one or two of these over the next week or so.

If your principal concern is about policies, instead of personalities and presidential debates, then the Vote for Policies initiative has thrown up some fascinating findings. If you go onto their website you’ll be asked to compare policies in nine main areas without being told which political party they come from – and then you are asked to ‘vote’ for the policy you prefer. The parties those policies belong to are then revealed to you.

It’s highlighted the general popularity of Green Party policies. At the last count, it was ahead on 26%, with Labour on 19%, the Lib Dems on 18%, Conservatives on 16%, and UKIP and BNP bumping along at the bottom.

What’s astonishing me, looking at voters’ preferences, is how well the Green Party did on other policy issues apart from the environment: top on education, health, crime and welfare, and second (behind the Lib Dems) on democracy and the economy.

I’m not sure how much that will help Green Party candidates on the ground – but there could be a few surprises here too. I was in Cambridge on Tuesday, when a local poll put the Green Party’s Tony Juniper ahead of all the other parties! A win for the Greens in Cambridge would be one of the biggest election shocks of all time!

Caroline Lucas, Green Party Leader and candidate in Brighton still has the best overall chance of being the first Green Party candidate to beat our despicable first-past-the-post system. I’ll be down in Brighton on Saturday – so more on this next week!

Here’s a bit of vintage Blair for you: 

“Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power. Our students won’t just be told about sustainable development, they will see and work within a school that is a living, learning place in which to explore what a sustainable lifestyle means”.

Having delivered himself of these eloquent words, Tony Blair sat back and got on with other things, presumably on the assumption that the Department for Children, Schools and Families would get together with Treasury and just ‘make it happen’. DCSF delivered on its side of the deal in terms of its ‘Sustainable Schools’ initiative, which is one of the best things the Labour Government has done. But from the point of view of our educational estate, Treasury and DCSF then spent the next decade scrapping over what could or couldn’t be done, from a sustainability perspective, through Building Schools for the Future, PFI and other capital programmes.

Net outcome ten years on: pretty poor. Some brilliant (even ‘iconic’) examples of best practice on both new build and refurbishments; a somewhat larger number of projects that might be described as ‘good, but nothing special’, and a much, much larger number of projects that fall so far short of what could have been done as to make Tony Blair’s words ring very hollow indeed.

It’s hard to exaggerate the scale of this missed opportunity – from an educational as well as a sustainability point of view. Here’s a very different kind of quote from an Ofsted Report last year:

“In the sample schools, ‘hands-on activities’ in a range of locations contributed to improvements in standards, achievement, motivation, personal development and behaviour”.

What’s being referred to here is what is known as ‘Learning Outside the Classroom’. Not just in terms of school visits and field trips, but in terms of the use of School Grounds designed specifically to promote good learning and excellent social interaction. In other words, proof positive of the kind of educational outcome that can be achieved by designing schools to the highest sustainability standards.

During the election period, I’d like to see those words embossed in gold and hung over the desk of the Secretary of State at DCSF – in preparation for the next holder of that Office.  They would remind him/her that schools that are well-designed, zero-carbon, super-efficient, bio-diverse and just great places to be, make a massive contribution to learning, motivation and even behaviour.

What kind of money value should we put on that as taxpayers? I only ask because Treasury puts a zero value on it. It really couldn’t care less about the huge societal benefits that flow from that kind of educational uplift.

Indeed, Treasury is so utterly dysfunctional that it still hasn’t settled on a standard way of accounting for the reduced operating costs of super-efficient, very low-carbon schools over the life-time of any new or even refurbished school.

Time after time, as a direct result of this failure, the blindingly obvious case for spending more up front on capital costs (anywhere between 10% and 15%, depending on particular circumstances) is ignored – or eroded away as the inevitable cost-cutting kicks in during the design and construction phase for both new build and refurbishments.

The sums involved here (in terms of capital programmes for the educational estate) are staggering: at least £45 billion over a ten-year period. Knowing what we now know about future energy costs and the likely cost of carbon, it’s criminally irresponsible not to be spending every one of those pounds as sustainably as possible in order to protect the interests of future taxpayers.

A worthy case, perhaps, for the Taxpayers’ Alliance – if they weren’t so ideologically predisposed against anything progressive, let alone sustainable.

One of the organisations that has been tracking this story close-up has been Learning Through Landscapes (LTL). LTL was set up 20 years ago, to get Head Teachers, the Department, Local Education Authorities and Ofsted to focus in on the importance of school grounds, both from a recreational and an educational point of view. During that time it’s advised and supported hundreds of schools, lobbied a stream of Ministers, and helped make life better, on the ground, for countless kids passing through those improved premises.

It’s achieved a huge amount – as became very clear at its 20th Anniversary Conference in London last week. But it could have achieved so much more if it hadn’t come up against the Treasury’s reality-defying short-termism.

At precisely the moment when this government has finally got its act together on addressing climate change, public confidence in the science of climate change would appear to have hit a new low. Depending on which opinion poll you read, the percentage of people who now believe both that climate change is happening and that it's primarily happening as a consequence of the emissions of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, has gone down to less than 50% of us, and possibly as low as 30% of us.


That makes it a lot harder for the politicians, in that such scepticism (and even hostility) provides little encouragement that leadership in this area will play well electorally. Despite that, the government is pressing ahead regardless, and the speed and scope of new initiatives churning out of the Department of Energy and Climate Change at the moment is mind-boggling. Not only has Ed Miliband achieved more over the last 18 months than all of his predecessors over the preceding 11 years, but he's also got Peter Mandelson, Andrew Adonis and even the Treasury on board. No mean achievement.


That doesn't necessarily mean that climate change will feature as a big issue during the general lection. Labour may feel it's already done enough, and there are some who believe that the Tories have been quietly scaling back their own climate change commitment, despite David Cameron's earlier leadership. The Lib Dems and the Greens will certainly try to force it up the agenda, but past experience has demonstrated just how difficult this can be. "It's the low-carbon economy, stupid!" is unlikely to dominate as an election slogan. Which means there's still going to be all to play for once the election is over and the new parliament is in place.


What's already clear is that this will be the last parliament that will be able to do what needs to be done if we're to meet the targets in the Climate Change Act. That "80% cut by 2050" target provides a false sense of reassurance that we've still got decades to play with, and can therefore comfortably defer some of the difficult things we have to do for many years to come.


Pre-empting that kind of complacency is what the Green Alliance's new report - The Last Parliament: Priorities for Urgent Action on Climate Change - is all about. The Green Alliance didn't want just another policy wonks' treatise, so it brought together myself, Barbara Stocking of Oxfam, Steve Holliday (chief executive of the National Grid), Bob May (former president of the Royal Society), James Cameron (vice chair of climate change) as well as Green Alliance director Stephen Hale, to come up with a plan of action on climate change for the next parliament.


An odd bunch, you may say. But the reality is that there's an extraordinarily strong consensus about climate change that binds together the UK's scientific establishment, almost all progressive business leaders, the NGO community and the smart end of the UK's capital markets. The profoundly irresponsible line taken by a major segment of our media (headed by the Daily Mail and Daily Express), setting out systematically to dismantle a body of scientific work that remains largely unscathed by the University of East Anglia's hacked climate emails case, let alone by the failure of Copenhagen, has only served to stiffen the sinews of those who want to see our politicians just get on with it.


Our panel focused on four priority areas:


• International leadership

• Low-carbon infrastructure

• Developing resilient communities

• Innovating new finance mechanisms.


And all of these will have to be underpinned by a concerted effort to rebuild public support for action on climate change. A huge amount of ground has been lost over the last year, partly because of the science controversy, and partly because the government's way of engaging with the general public (through the Act on CO2 Campaign) has been ill-judged and counter-productive.


You can't beat people into submission on climate change. All the evidence shows that promoting the benefits that flow from concerted action – in terms of jobs, skills, innovation, eliminating fuel poverty, energy security, resource efficiency, increased competitiveness and so on – works so much better than threatening people (and their children) with the four riders of the Apocalypse.


Happily, there's a solid foundation to build on here. The UK has been in the forefront of international negotiations, and now has the chance to drive forward the debate about new financing mechanisms. Closer to home, we have (at long last) got the outline of a strategy to retrofit existing housing stock, and the whole renewable energy scene is picking up rapidly. The Climate Change Act remains the best thing the Labour government has done on climate change since it is was elected.


But the next parliament will have to move much faster in terms of overhauling the entire regulatory system (particularly Ofgem, the Office of Electricity and Gas Markets ) and on incentivising greener, leaner technologies. It will need to get the green investment bank announced in yesterday's budget up and running and promote a wide range of new financial products such as Green ISAs, mortgages and pensions. Local authorities will need to be given a much more central role, working closely both with the energy companies and community organisations to get real action on the ground.


All of this depends on the restoration of trust between parliament and the people. And that means, above all, that politicians will have to show they mean it themselves, acting as role models in their own lives and their constituencies.

This article first appeared in the Guardian on Thursday 24th March 2010.

As the recession ends in the private economy, it is just beginning for the 5.8 million public servants in the UK, and the millions more around the world.  Faced with swingeing budget cuts (several percent per year for the foreseeable future) can public sector organisations stay true to their commitments to carbon reduction, sustainable regeneration, ethical procurement, greener healthcare and a wealth of other new practices and initiatives?

In theory, yes.  If sustainable development thinking is no use to you in times of austerity, it is no use at all, and hard times should be when it proves its worth.   Sustainable development was developed as a concept to address the pressing problem of environmental degradation and its impact on human welfare – the mother of all recessions.  But for municipalities, health trusts, police authorities and the many other providers of public services, it’s very tempting to cut spending on expensive-looking ‘green’ activity when you have to slice 5% off the salami –  whether that means abandoning projects or closing down the teams and strategy units set up to run them.

It’s a much braver choice to use sustainability principles to guide where to wield the knife, and, more to the point, to use the same thinking to find efficiency gains, new ways of working, and deliver greater public value.

Doing that means understanding how sustainability relates to the core business of the organisation and its success in the long term.   So it’s a paradox that whilst the business case for sustainable development is regularly articulated and used as a justification for corporate investment – and as a kind of strategic security blanket – the public value case for similar action is seldom expressed. This leaves public bodies with only patchy and partial arguments for their sustainability commitments in tough times. 

Well, not any more.   A new Forum report highlights how sustainability principles hold the key to creating public value in austere times.  In ‘Stepping up: a framework for public sector leadership on sustainable development’ we set out how forward-looking public bodies can go beyond the business case to address market failure, build resilience and reinforce the crumbling social contract when  they use sustainability thinking to create public value. 

What does that mean in practice?  Stepping up sets out a nine-point plan for public sector organisations wanting to take the lead in using sustainability to deliver better services.  It starts with ‘making the case’- setting out that basic argument - examines linking policy and delivery, and goes all the way through to building a learning culture and running demonstration projects.   And there’s a self-assessment tool to check where you are on the journey – from ‘At Risk’ (of failing to comply with legal obligations and suffering financial and reputational hits) to ‘Systemic’ – one of those rare paragons using sustainability principles to maximise efficiency and public value creation over time.

Some are well down this road.  Others have barely begun.  Stepping up picks out some of the best examples of progress from around the world, whether public or private.  Swedish city Vaxjo’s use of bioenergy, innovative food procurement by PCTs in Cornwall, Vodafone’s stakeholder engagement process,  the GLA’s approach to policy integration, and InterfaceFLOR’s investment in staff capacity show how early adopters are pointing the way. 

But we believe any organisation can be a leader on sustainable development, and those that grasp the challenge in difficult times will emerge strongest from the recession, with more efficient services, more productive relationships with their communities and partners, and better prepared for the environmental shocks that lie ahead.