Community and Sustainability: The Conversation Today

by Tim Pringle

Does the sustainability conversation have legs in today’s context? At a community level, there is always the uneasy balancing of economic, social, and ecological priorities. "Inconvenient truths" about climate change, our dependence on natural systems, and the vulnerability of human settlements have driven a significant shift in the conversation towards ecological priorities. Does concern over current financial straits threaten to shift this conversation in another direction?

At the Foundation, we’ve taken the position that sustainable land use practices are important to all land use practitioners, from stream stewards through local government staff, to real estate brokers. Our role has been one of encouraging research, education, supporting new initiatives, and listening to what practitioners are saying. Sometimes, as with the Green Values Vancouver Island (GVVI) initiative, we take a more active role in promoting the conversation. All of this is a slow process of course. It takes time for on-the-ground results to show up. What I'm seeing is that we're on the right track with GVVI.

Fifteen years ago the ecological side of the conversation about land uses and community strategies was just beginning to get profile. Organizations like the Nature Conservancy, Nature Trust of BC, and the Sierra Club were leading the way. But the conversation often has an edge. The core ideas and values were highly contested between the conservation and stewardship sector (C&S) and business and industry. The flash points included Clayoquot Sound, and later the Great Bear Rainforest campaign.

When I look back on where we were I’m encouraged to see the distance we've come. Things like the LRMP (Land and Resource Management Plan) processes have had a significant positive impact. Contesting parties realized that the conversation needed to change, that we needed to find common values, and to work from those. There is a good example of this in the coastal forestry industry. A north coast company is setting a new tone in its working relationship with First Nations, which in turn is having a positive impact on management of the land base. Across the province our conversations about sustainability are quite different from the ones we were having even five years ago. I’m seeing a lot of indicators of positive change as community leaders recognize ecological values as important to the well being of their communities.

Is the current economic situation having an impact on the sustainability conversation in BC's rural communities? Yes, but this is part of a number of things that are happening within that conversation.

One is that over the last decade a growing proportion of land use practitioners, particularly in local government, business, and the C&S sector have become aware that the ‘old business as usual’ isn’t working. Increasingly, they accept that economic gain is not a trump card played before social and ecological considerations get on the table. I’m seeing a growing urgency among engineers, planners, and others to get on with adopting and applying improved practices regarding use and conservation of our lands. Ten years ago I didn't see this kind of urgency and interest. It was hard to even have the conversation about what needed to change.

A second thing that I'm seeing is the redefining of what "sustainability" means for communities, local government, and industry. There are tools, like Smart Growth, for example, that can help some communities or situations move towards a sustainability goal. But that tool doesn't work in all situations. There are developers who are seriously looking for 'green' technologies and approaches, and there are those who use 'green' language and approaches as a kind of wallpaper to sell a product. There is a healthy scepticism, not about the need for sustainable approaches, but about the definition.

Another important change in the context is the role that the provincial government has taken. They have committed to sustainability strategies through things like the Green Cities Agenda and Climate Change Agenda made with local governments.

Most recently, I am seeing northern BC communities search for strategies to help them become more resilient. In October 2008 at Prince George, the Foundation sponsored the Reversing the Tide conference. We heard from communities wanting to focus on understanding their assets – people, land/resources, ingenuity, commitment to community. They are placing sustainability near the top of their agendas.

Late last fall we surveyed a number of land use practitioners about how they were responding to the abrupt slowdown in settlement-related activity. What I heard then, and since, is that many are seeing the slowdown as an opportunity to spend some time on the value questions in their communities. I'm not hearing what I heard a decade or so ago, that there is an either/or choice: either we have "sustainability" or we have "economic survival." There's a complexity now that wasn't apparent 10-15 years ago.

Increasingly, in the local government context, proposals for real state development will go through a more holistic review process that reflects how communities plan for and accommodate settlement change. That’s sticking; it’s not going away. Of course, the economic downturn means less money for developers to propose and local governments to review projects. But this lull doesn’t necessarily mean that planning will slow down.

In northern BC the need to plan for transition has been pressing for a decade or more. Economic sector trends have been driving change: industrial forestry and manufacturing is down; oil and gas have been up. A significant number of households have to consider relocating for employment. Northern communities want to engage in the ‘rural resiliency’ discussion and they’re interested in understanding holistic community change. These communities have, through the pine beetle experience as well as what has happened in resource industries generally, recognized that there are systemic challenges, and that previous economic development approaches are very limited. Victor Cumming talks about this from a community economic development perspective . What he describes is echoed in my conversations with people in the North: They're moving away from a model that relies solely on attracting new business, to one that is based in an asset assessment approach. Who are the people in our community? What kinds of skills do they have, or do they need to develop? What are our natural resources? Our amenities? What is our stock of built infrastructure? I'm hearing community leaders say, 'If we make ourselves more sustainable and 'greener,' if we have a strategy that shows we're committed to these values, we're more likely to hold and attract people than if we don't do that.'

Quesnel and Smithers are good examples of where this kind of thinking is taking shape. Prince George is another. Their Smart Growth on the Ground initiative is bringing the sustainability conversation into the community, influencing how the City is approaching its planning challenges. In both Smithers and Quesnel I'm seeing the community taking the position that they need to set their values first, and that appropriate economic stimulation will follow. They're not using the old model, where a community tries to do everything possible to suit an outside investor. I think that's a good signal, to see communities taking this kind of position. It'll be interesting to see, in our upcoming community forums, if other communities are taking this kind of leadership.

As Director of Special Programs I'm fortunate to hear and see first-hand some of the big changes taking shape, particularly in BC's rural areas, in the changing conversation about sustainability. The ideas are complex, and situations are often challenging. The importance of ecological thinking, about the importance of natural systems to the economic and social resilience of our communities takes time to show up in real, on-the-ground progress. What's encouraging is to see how many practitioners are now actively engaged in the conversation, looking for ways to take the ideas and make them real for their communities. Has the market slowdown had an impact on the conversation? Yes. In some ways it's underlining what northern communities have been learning over the past decade: that a community's ability to survive is more than a question of economics. From Dawson Creek to the South Okanagan, to the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island I'm seeing and hearing more support for the ecological viewpoint than ever. This bodes well for the larger "sustainability conversation" the Foundation has been involved with since the early '90s.


Tim Pringle is Director of Special Projects at the Real Estate Foundation of BC. Tim was the Executive Director of the Foundation for 20 years, from 1988 to 2008.

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