Working with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), the Centre for Sustainability has created the Quick Start Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) process.  Quick Start is the ideal way for smaller communities to be introduced to a full-function, community-developed ICSP tailored to local circumstances without the time and expense of developing a one-off process.

In Osoyoos, the town with Canada’s Warmest Welcome, the community realized that sustainability planning was about ensuring future success, and wanted to make it explicit that sustainability needed to address Social, Economic, and Environmental objectives two key factors that are reflected in the ICSP’s name:  SEE Osoyoos Succeed.

Two of the features of the Quick Start approach are that it is designed to incorporate all of the aspects of sustainability that communities could and should be doing to move towards sustainability and it builds upon the community’s existing vision and sustainability initiatives.  This approach allows a considerable streamlining of the process and avoids the tendency to reinvent the wheel, allowing process stakeholders to focus their energy on where the community should be and how to get there.

In Osoyoos, the vision was found right in their current Official Community Plan (OCP) and said it all Osoyoos vision is to excel as a Smart Growth community which meets current and future population needs in a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable manner.

While ensuring that the ICSP is complete and robust enough to serve as the community’s overarching policy document, Quick Start also allows a community to establish its own Priorities, Strategy Areas, Descriptions of Success for the future, Actions to move towards that future, and Indicators to monitor progress and keep the community on track.

In Osoyoos, for example, the town created a unique Strategy Area, The Lake, reflecting the role of Osoyoos Lake not only as an economic and recreation asset, but also as the spiritual heart of the town and valley, a major determinant of community livability, and an environmental treasure that needs to be safeguarded for future generations.  Descriptions of Success reflect local issues and the current reality.  In Osoyoos, for example, these reflect a desire for affordable housing for the significant seasonal and permanent population, a diverse year-round economy based on the town’s existing strengths to attract young families, and sustainable buildings and sites that respected the town’s spectacular setting and took advantage of abundant sunshine in Canada’s only desert.

Along with the ICSP Document, Quick Start also includes an implementation toolkit that helps make sure that the plan can be put into action right away, including an ICSP-based decision making framework to evaluate plans, policies, projects, and practices, and an indicators and monitoring system for annual reporting.  The Centre also delivers an engagement process that brings community stakeholders in as equal partners with the local government, responsible for ongoing monitoring, action planning, and implementation to move towards the community sustainability plan’s future vision.

There are a variety of ways to fund an ICSP.  While some prefer to compete with other communities for available grant and cost-sharing funding, such as the FCM’s Green Municipal Funds, the quickest and easiest way to get started on the road to sustainability in BC is to use the community’s allocated Community Works Fund from the gas tax agreement. ICSPs qualify without restrictions for CWF funds, and all that is needed is notification to UBCM, the gas tax administrator, of how the funds will be used.

For more information on the Quick Start ICSP process, the SEE Osoyoos Succeed ICSP, or funding for ICSPs, contact me anytime at 604-966-4457 or mallison@whistlercentre.ca

by Erin Romanchuk

Imagine yourself entering new territory without a map to guide you, without any idea how to read the signs around you for direction. Pretty uncomfortable isn’t it? Sustainability planning can feel like that in the beginning. Not to worry, there is a solution. In this post, I am going to talk about the importance of something crucial for sustainability planning: something known as process indicators! These indicators are used to guide a person, organization, or community toward its goal and are vital for success. The Centre for Sustainability recognizes this need and has thankfully added a process indicator specialist to their roster to respond to it: me! Nice to meet you, my name is Erin.

First I need to let the indicator geek inside of me shine through and clarify something. When most people think of indicators they think of monitoring levels of fish stocks in the local river, or the cost of housing year after year. These are known as socio-economic indicators. These indicators tell the story of something that has already happened, and in some cases, of damage already done. Although necessary, these socio-economic indicators paint only part of the sustainability picture, specifically the last part. Whistler2020′s monitoring program is an excellent example of tracking mostly socio-economic indicators. The number of minutes it took for you to reach your destination is another example of a socio-economic indicator.

With sustainability planning, it is our goal to avoid going down the wrong path by using indicators at the onset of a planning process. This can often be the case because with only one target in mind people often get excited and put all of their efforts and focus in to single-issue initiatives, instead of taking a more strategic whole-systems approach.

Process indicators (sometimes known as planning-process indicators) are what help us avoid this problem. They tackle social, economic and ecological problems at the level of root-causes, so to avoid any negative effects of a plan. For example, percent of total municipal departments and staff involved in the planning process is a process indicator for a community sustainability plan. They would have also been those questions you asked yourself before even stepping out your door, on your new journey, so that you would feel confident you knew which way to go when you entered that new territory.

The Centre for Sustainability has expertise in community sustainability planning, so our use of process indicators is generally focussed on sustainability planning; however they are a tool that can be used for any planning process. In my research (at the Blekinge Institute of Technology) I found that two of the biggest challenges to community sustainability planning are internal compartmentalization (too many department silos) and lack of public acceptance. This is where process indicators come in to save the day. To avoid the uncomfortable feeling of disagreement on a resulting action or plan, the use of process indicators takes us back a step to a place that is more agreeable and comfortable for everyone involved so the end result will be one that all parties can support. They perform best when used over and over again to ensure the best path is being followed at every junction. In other words, they can be functional at every junction! (Does that type of local humour work here? I’m new, what can I say.)

The Centre for Sustainability employs planning process indicators to accurately guide community sustainability planning processes in order to result in positive outcomes. Used in conjunction with the methods already employed by the Centre, process indicators act like a check-in to ensure the usual planning challenges are not left unconquered. Taking this upstream approach to community sustainability planning almost always guarantees that a community will remain on a path that leads them to wherever it is they truly want to be!

by Cheeying Ho

The Centre is working with the community of Invermere on their integrated community sustainability plan (ICSP), and I had the pleasure of being there for their public launch. What struck me immediately while working with the District of Invermere is how SMART and PASSIONATE the locals are. Upon a call for interested people to participate on the sustainability advisory committee, sixteen diverse, articulate, and engaged citizens immediately signed up, and have been giving us their dedicated time, expertise and energy throughout the process.

These individuals are pushing the envelope on thinking about the community’s sustainable future. For example, they are not just talking about green buildings, they are looking at buildings as a part of the larger energy system and how the community will move to a more renewable and efficient one. This doesn’t just stop there it extends to how they will get their food, what the the supply chain in their health and education systems will look like, and the types of industry and economy they want. They understood immediately how systems are integrated, and that sustainability involves addressing community systems, not individual, segregated issues.

So far, we’ve worked with the sustainability advisory committee and the community on identifying a vision for sustainable community systems and have now written these visions down as shared Descriptions of Success. These Descriptions of Success statements define the community’s shared vision of the future and are meant to guide sustainable decision-making and action planning undertaken by the community, including the local government. The Descriptions of Success act as an important lens, ensuring that all actions, taken by a variety of groups and individuals, that will help accelerate Invermere towards greater sustainability and its defined successful future.

The next step in the process is to work with the sustainability advisory committee to identify specific actions that can be implemented by a variety of community organizations and the District of Invermere to move the community from what it’s doing now, to where it wants to be in the future.

Welcome to the journey towards sustainability, Invermere  you’re off to a great start!