“If you don’t know where you’re going, all roads will lead you there.”

We often use this quote in our work, and I believe that 2011 represents a turning point for municipal governments that have completed or are close to completing their Integrated Community Sustainability Plans (ICSPs), and now have a better sense of where they need to go. At the same time, knowing where you have to go (e.g. zero waste, 100% renewable energy, etc.) and getting on with it are two different things. Municipal governments that want to lead the way will need to address a new set of questions and challenges related to organizational change and collaboration.

Fortunately, some municipal governments are working to address these challenges. As a learning organization, we at The Natural Step Canada continuously evaluate, improve, and adapt our services, and in this spirit, we have developed a new Service Cycle for Sustainable Communities to support municipal organizations as their sustainability journeys evolve.

There are three key questions we will help municipal governments address in our new Service Cycle:

• How can we plan for the long term sustainability and resiliency of our community?
• How can we embed sustainability into our municipal government’s corporate culture?
• How can we engage community stakeholders to help lead change toward sustainability?

At The Natural Step Canada, we are also proud of the tools and resources that we have developed to help communities better understand and apply sustainability, many of which are free. In 2010, we released an updated version of our popular ICSP Guidebook, as well as a Governance and Decision-Making Best Practices Scan. We also continue to offer an in-depth ICSP certificate course, in addition to our award-winning eLearning courses, which have been put to good use by municipal governments, community groups, and consultants to help advance sustainability in numerous communities in Canada and internationally.

Over the past year, we have been privileged to work directly with a number of municipal governments and partners who are “getting on with it,” in terms of both broad community planning efforts and sustainability efforts within the municipal corporation.

The Town of Williams Lake began the year by completing their ICSP using it to shape the development their Official Community Plan. The Town’s ICSP received praise from many circles and won the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Sustainable Community Award.

Working with a diverse group of organizations in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean Region, we designed and delivered an Early Adopters Program—a regional sustainability capacity-building project called Initiative pour la durabilité des communautés du Québec. This project was made possible with generous support from Rio Tinto Alcan, and was delivered in partnership with the Centre Québécois de Développement Durable and The Natural Step Canada’s Associates Esther Dormagen and Jean Plichon.

The City o fRivière-du-Loup, which developed its first ICSP a few years ago, decided to update its ICSP in 2010 by using the process outlined in The Natural Step Canada’s ICSP Guidebook to engage a variety of stakeholders in the community. Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue also began the process of creating an ICSP based on our ICSP Guidebook. And The Town of High River began the process of developing a Sustainability Roadmap by engaging with members of their community to gather input into its direction.

Here at home, The City of Ottawa continues to develop their regional sustainability plan, Choosing Our Future, in partnership with the City of Gatineau and the National Capital Commission. On the corporate municipal front, Ottawa also named sustainability as one of two corporate priorities, created a new sustainability department, and engaged hundreds of staff to provide input in the development of a Corporate Sustainability Roadmap.

We also had the pleasure of working with staff from Halifax Regional Municipality to help them assess different trial initiatives using a sustainability filter initially developed in 2008. And the Town of Markham’s council and senior managers participated in a sustainability training session to help develop a common language and to assess different aspects of their ICSP. 

In addition to our project work, we also enjoyed hosting a networking event at the GLOBE 2010 Conference, and facilitating 2 engaging workshops with our partner, Whistler Centre for Sustainability: Bridging the Planning to Implementation Gap at the FCM Sustainable Communities Conference and Sustainability Governance and Decision-Making at the Gaining Ground Conference.

Looking forward to 2011, we have high expectations for our existing partners and those new communities that join us along our new Service Cycle for Sustainable Communities (which we will launch formally in February). In the year ahead, we will continue to build the capacity of municipal governments and community groups to embrace the challenge of sustainability, facilitate the transformational change toward sustainability, and create role models that inspire change within the municipal sector.

If your community wants to be a sustainability leader, contact us today to learn about how The Natural Step Canada can help you plan for the long term sustainability and resiliency of our community, embed sustainability into our municipal government’s corporate culture, and engage community stakeholders to help lead change toward sustainability.

We look forward to working with you on your journey!