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Last Update: May 28 2010
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  As of Oct 2006

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About Sustainable Niagara


Sustainable Niagara is to become a diverse group of private, and public, individuals and organizations. Our intended purpose includes impacting and influencing decision makers and a general public by providing invaluable information and resources, and by fostering regional sustainability. Our future initiatives will maximize the potential for spin-off oppotunities that will stengthen our quality of life, work and play.

( Click here to see who we are )

Our multi-sectorial, multi-disciplinary organization will be dedicated to developing sustainability within our region. We wish to help further the objectives of such regional/municipal initiatives such as water quality, waste management and smart growth. Whether that be from research, educational or public awareness program design, development and implementation of sustainability projects, or even socio-eco-economic enterprises will depend on what emerges from our joint efforts.

Sustainable Niagara could well become a glue similar to that of Sustainable Toronto which nurtures collaborations among projects and helps to forge new alliances. Sustainable Niagara aspires to join the York Centre for Applied Sustainability's Network of Centres of Excellence in Community Sustainability and the International Centre for Sustainable Cities.

As far as intended activities are concerned, a great deal will depend upon those involved and what issues are identified.

Countless organizations focused on developing sustainability exist as models for us to follow. Most offer to their communities/regions research, case studies, and best-practices for public awareness, education and involvement in urgent matters of concern such as water conservation, waste elimination/reduction, energy efficiencies/alternatives, etc.

 


What Sustainability Is


 

Sustainability is what individuals, businesses, organizations, communities, and even governments the world over must begin striving towards.

While needing to ensure a continuation of our current standards of living, sustainability is needed to ensure that future generations will not have to pay a price for the mistakes of generations that went before them.

Consider what might happen to the quality of life throughout the Niagara Region, if we were to suffer a shortage of clean water, or if our youth continue to leave the area for greener, more exciting pastures?

Sustainability …

"is the possibility that human and other life will flourish on the planet forever."
Source Link
Sustainability by Design: A subversive strategy for transforming our consumer culture by John Ehrenfeld

or …

"can be defined in terms of carrying capacity of the ecosystem, and described with input-output models of energy and resource consumption. Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do."
Source Link
The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration for Sustainability by Paul Hawken

Developing Sustainability aims to ...

"meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations of humans and other species to meet their own needs, while restoring local and global ecosystems."
Source Link
Bold additions to the U.N. definition added by Canadian author Guy Dauncey in his book Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change
A widely-used and accepted international definition of sustainable development is: 'development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' - Globally we are not even meeting the needs of the present let alone considering the needs of future generations.
Source Link
Sustainable Development - the UK Government's approach
 

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Sustainable Development implies ...

"the integration of economic and environmental planning: wealth continues to be created, but through processes that do not draw down the material resources on which we and future generations depend. We grow without depleting our 'natural captial.'"
Source Link
in Earth's Company: Business, Environment and the Challenge of Sustainability by Carl Frankel

Sustainable Communities are those that ...

"exist in social and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations."
Source Link
Fritjof Capra, 1992, The Tao of Physics

The sustainable city is ...

The sustainable city is:
  • A Just City, where justice, food, shelter, education, health and hope are fairly distributed and where all people participate in government;
  • A Beautiful City, where art, architecture and landscape spark the imagination and move the spirt;
  • A Creative City,, where open-mindedness and experimentation mobilise the full potential of its human resources and allows a fast response to change;
  • An Ecological City, which minimises its ecological impact, where landscape and built form are balanced and where buildings and infrastructures are safe and resource-efficient;
  • A City of Easy Contact, where the public realm encourages community and mobility and where information is exchanged both face-to-face and electronically;
  • A Compact and Polycentric City, which protects the countryside, focuses and integrates communities within neighbourhoods and maximises proximity;
  • A Diverse City, where a broad range of overlapping activities create animation, inspiration and foster a vital public life.
Source Link
Richard Rogers, 1997, Cities for a small planet

A Systems-based definition of sustainability ...

"a creative, integrated response to three 'imperatives'--ecological, economic, and social:
  • The ecological imperative is to remain within planetary biophysical carrying capacity
  • The economic imperative is to ensure & maintain adequate material standards of living for all people
  • The social imperative is to provide structuress, including systems of governance, which effectively propogate and sustain the values people wish to live by."
Source Link
David V. J. Bell, 2002 The Role of Government in Advancing Corporate Sustainability citing John Robinson & Jon Tinker from Reconciling Ecological, Economic and Social Imperatives: Towards An Analytic Framework (1996)

Futher insight available at the How and Why Webpages

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Disclaimer: The information provided through Sustainable Niagara, Inc. is without charge as a convenience to visitors. Any reference to products, services, links and other information does not constitute recommendation, endorsement or sponsorship. Nor does it particularly reflect the views and/or opinions of Sustainable Niagara, as an organization. We apologize for any links which may have become inactive over time.