Officially Half Way

I'm halfway through my Master's in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability and so excited to get out there and start working once I'm finished!

I'm working on a take-home exam that involves writing a proposal for developing a community sustainability plan and I'm getting excited! I sincerely hope to engage with interested and like minded people in the Okanagan who want to co-create a vision what success means and help the businesses and communities of the Okanagan area move towards sustainability success!

Debunking the Third World Myth

One of the most interesting videos I've seen for a long time....

Opinion on the heels of Human Needs

On the heels of Human Needs exhibit, I found an interesting article in my local paper, The Oliver Chronicle, about a proposed Wine Village development which is moving closer and closer to becoming a reality. As this occurs, it seems that the public discontent about it is growing......

I cannot comment about it from a sustainability perspective as I think Oliver has yet to do a lot of work in defining it's vision of success of sustainability. Only they can do that and perhaps one day I might be able to contribute to that process.

For now I can comment on the article from a Human Needs point of view as I am fulfilling my human need to participate, stand up for what I care about and have the courage to have a voice.

My Response to the Editor:

Dear Editor,

I would like to write in response to the recent article published in last week’s Oliver Chronicle about titled “Not everyone thrilled with ‘wine village’ deal”

I believe this current example is an important reflection point where “gaps” within our current process of public consultation, information dissemination and joint decision-making in Oliver can be highlighted.

I would like to ask Mayor Ron Hovanes and Les Lawther several important questions based on a few of the basic human needs we all share; Participation, Understanding, Creativity and Identity.

PARTICIPATION
1) In what ways might the current process of information sharing and decision making made within the Town of Oliver council and Oliver and District Community Economic Development Society be contributing to undermining the residents’ capacity for participation?

For example: if Town Council meetings have consistently low public attendance while important decisions are being made about the future development of land and community, have there been investigations made into how to enable a larger percentage of participation? A welcome solution might be evening time, well-advertised, public meetings in a third-party building such as the community center or high school auditorium to better enable interested Oliver and area residents to participate.

UNDERSTANDING
2) How can you better facilitate understanding of the Wine Village Plan?

For example: Lawther is quoted in the recent article as saying "There was the Rural Oliver Accord, there was the Wine Capital of Canada master plan, the wine village was incorporated into the OCP (official community plan)…"

I would like to know where could I read the amendments to the community plan? Is the community plan easily accessible to the public through a variety of mediums; paper copies in Town of Oliver office, electronic copy online, mailed out to residents who are known to have an interest yet might be physically unable to retrieve a copy for themselves*? *Obviously, it is not realistic to expect this service be provided for all amendments and I am using is to make a point.

I am currently studying in Sweden and I am a resident of Oliver. When I tried to find internet access to the Official Community Plan through the Town of Oliver website on the page titled “Land Use Planning > Development Primer > Official Community Plan and Zoning” I found information on how to apply to make changes to the plan but no link to the plan itself.

Perhaps contributing to enabling residents to better understand the process and changes might lead to more participation?

CREATIVITY AND IDENTITY
3) How can you better enable the residents of Oliver to work together with you to CO-CREATE a vision of success for the development of the Wine Village Plan?

For Example: In the Town of Oliver “Destination Wine Village Resort” presentation given on June 12, 2006 there was mention on page #3 about “SmartGrowth Principles” supporting the Wine Village Accord.

These principles are as follows:
1) Each community is complete
2) Options to the car are emphasized
3) Work in harmony with natural systems
4) Buildings and infrastructure are greener, smarter and cheaper
5) Housing meets the needs of the whole community
6) Good jobs are close to home
7) Agricultural land and small town character are maintained and enhanced
8) Everyone has a voice

These are all very important principles that were collectively established by local stakeholders as being important to our area. Perhaps the resistance and disharmony over the proposed Wine Village Plan could be solved through clearer and more public communication on how the co-created principles of SmartGrowth will be included in the Wine Village Plan?

Additionally, allowing for public participation and concern to be voiced or contributed to the plan will allow for a sense of identity within the residents of Oliver in regards to the proposed Wine Village Plan.

Sincerely yours,
Tracy Lydiatt
tracy@soulseeds.ca

All We Need Exhibit

All We Need explores the world as a global market through the human efforts to dream, imagine and live a happy life.

The exhibition shows, in particular through the fair trade example, alternatives in consumption and life styles. It provides reflections and proposals for action on the essential questions touching the future of mankind: which are our fundamental needs, and how can we satisfy them without endangering neither the survival of our planet, nor human rights?





Human needs on a lonely planet

Human needs are the same everywhere. Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, recipient of the « Right Livelihood Award » also known as the « Alternative Nobel Prize » has identified nine basic categories of human needs:

* idleness (Relax)
* subsistence (Survive)
* freedom (Choose)
* affection (Love)
* identity (Belong)
* protection (Protect)
* understanding (Understand)
* creation (Create)
* participation (Stand Up)


For the exhibition, a tenth basic need has been taken into consideration, the need for transcendence (Dream), through which human beings try to overcome the material reality of everyday life by imagining a better world and an existence beyond human life.

While basic human needs are everywhere the same, the way in which humans try to satisfy them varies considerably with the cultural background and, obviously, especially in relation with the standard of living.







The inhabitants of the Northern hemisphere persist in researching their happiness through a multitude of goods of consumption. Alas, too often, this puts at risk the rights of other inhabitants of the Earth. Behind all those products, there are stories and destinies, which tell about limited planetary resources and unfair trade. It becomes clear that beyond the point of saturation, the superabundance of goods is damageable to the general quality of life.







The exhibition suggests a series of alternative concepts, ideas and answers to the eternal question of how to live a happy life. A life without asceticism or renouncement, but guided by a spirit of equity and planetary justice and by realizing that humanity has in fact only one Earth. Thus, the journey through the world as a global market becomes a voyage of discovery about the eternal aspirations of humanity towards universal happiness.







I wanted to post the rice piles photo last and ask you to take a minute to understand what you are looking at. The rice pile on the right of the woman represents the amount of people in South America who live on about $1 a day. The rice pile on the left of the woman (which is actually slightly larger than the other one) represents the amount of McDonalds customers per day.

Sometimes it is easy to make choices when we are not confronted by the direct affect or volume of our combined common choices and how they might affect the ability for other people to meet their needs......I hope this post has helped bring some awareness and brought a moment of pause to your day.

We are all interdependent.

The Natural Step - A New Game

I am learning The Natural Step framework and how it help us plan in complex systems, moving us towards an attractive, sustainable society in the biosphere (aka- the Earth). Currently our society is unsustainable and is not a series of disconnected negative impacts (global warming, Katrina, famine, poverty etc.) but underlying systematic errors in societal design exist and need to be addressed.

So, we must redesign our society and consider the relationships between issues.

Currently, our societal model has a cylindrical shape; where as long as social and environmental damage accrued is equally balanced with economic benefits gained, the entire system remains "in balance". This model is incorrect and is unsustainable.

We define unsustainable by: steadily accumulating waste (in our biosphere-aka The Earth), and diminishing resources. Therefore the resource-potential for health and economy is systematically decreasing at the same time as the population increases.

More accurately, we are in a funnel where non-sustainable development is seen as entering deeper and deeper into the funnel, in which the space to succeed becomes narrower and narrower.
If an organisation "hits the walls" of the funnel, it might appear as any or all of the following:

(i) increasing costs for resources, waste managements, taxes, and insurance premiums;
(ii) increasingly strict legislation;
(iii) loss of good reputation;
(iv) over-corrections when concrete negative impacts surface;
(v) lost investments due to sub-optimized measures and blind alleys and
(vi) loss of market share to those who develop cutting-solutions.

To avoid hitting the walls of the funnel, organisations must stay on the cutting edge of solutions towards strategic sustainability.

So how do we do this? We learn how to play a new game.

Re-design our society within basic constraints of sustainability is the only way of solving our problems upstream at the principle level, where complexity is at it's lowest. To do this, we must become a new type of chess player. First we need to learn the basic principles which govern this sustainability game and then use them to plan our first moves strategically, and have a framework to rely on for making future decisions.

It's much like playing a game where we can co-create solutions together because we are all very intelligent individuals, so by default, we are so much smarter when we work together to solve problems!

Pre-strawbale building workshop

T-minus 3 days until Andreas and I head over to the Kootneys for a strawbale building workshop! I'm secretly so excited as I've always dreamed of being involved in building my own house but never thought it would be true!

We are participating in this workshop to learn more about building with straw and get some hands-on experience as well as connect with other like-minded builders/future home owners. I'm so excited as I've always been envious of boys and how they seem to just "know" how to make things. I think it's a secret right of passage for boys into manhood where someone pulls them aside and says, "Hey boy, it's time you learned how to make something. Then you will be a man."

So envy be gone....I'm learning too!

We will be involved in building a modified-post and beam house that is non-load bearing. We have been doing a lot of pre-reading and I was interested to learn that if the 200 million tons of "waste" straw produced in the United States each year would be baled and used for building, 5 million 2,000 sq.foot houses could be made! This statistic is from 1994 so who knows how much more efficient we've become since then?

Building with straw is a "new-old" idea as it's been practiced in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia for over 100 years. It seems that the idea is re-emerging on the North American building horizon and I'm happy we'll be part of it's emergence. Sustainably speaking building with straw decreases the amount of cement used (major CO2 polluter), reduces pressure on our timber resources, provides "breathable" walls for higher quality indoor air, uses passive solar techniques thus drastically reducing the heating and cooling capacity needed and most of all, uses a sustainably produced "waste" material (the straw itself).

So, needless to say, I'm excited! Stay posted for more updates and photos.

The Wind

A beautiful, funny, creative view!