planted city

Adaptation: ‘Facing the Elements: Building Business Resilience in a Changing Climate’ (Report)

From Adaptation to Climate Change Team:

The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy (NRT) has just released a three-report series titled Facing the Elements: Building Business Resilience in a Changing Climate. This is the fifth report in the Climate Prosperity series by the NRT that emphasizes the critical, yet largely unexplored role of Canadian business in defining our ability to prosper in a changing climate.

Since 1988, the NRT has been Canada’s leader in fostering a stronger relationship between the environment and the economy. Its recent works are in areas as diverse as Climate Change Prosperity, Water Sustainability, Life-Cycle approaches to Sustainable Development, and Biodiversity.

Despite the pro-active work of the NRT since 1988, the federal government recently announced in its Budget that the NRT will be eliminated as of March 31, 2013. Notwithstanding this news, the NRT continues to release groundbreaking reports that outline the importance of better addressing climate change in Canada, among other topics.

Here is a snippet of its recent report Facing the Elements: Building Business Resilience in a Changing Climate:

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“Climate change means business. And businesses are already on the frontline of climate change. The effects of more volatile weather and gradual changes in climate conditions will touch all facets of Canadian business in the decades to come. Despite growing awareness of the risks and opportunities that changing climate presents, few firms are adjusting business strategies and practices to adapt to this inevitable reality. Canada’s future economic prosperity relies on the continued resilience of Canadian business in a changing climate. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRT) has spent more than a year considering how we can act and adapt – business and government together – to prosper through climate change”

Check out the rest of the article here and the report here.

Related:

- ‘Not thinking green will hurt Canadian businesses internationally: NRTEE panel’ (Postmedia News)

- ‘Canada axes green advisory body’ (The Guardian)

(Graphic source: NRTEE via ACT)

Wendell Berry: ‘IT ALL TURNS on affection’

From The National Endowment for the Humanities:

Wendell E. Berry, noted poet, essayist, novelist, farmer, and conservationist, delivered the 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Monday, April 23, 2012 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

The annual lecture, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

In his lecture, entitled “It All Turns on Affection,” Berry lamented the increasing divergence of modern man from the environment and local communities. Invoking the words of his mentor, the writer Wallace Stegner, Berry observed that throughout history Americans have been divided into two kinds:  the “boomers” who “pillage and run,” and the “stickers” who “settle, and love the life they have made and the place they have made it in.”

Inspired by a passage from E.M. Forster’s Howards End, Berry called for for a land use ethic that is shaped by a sense of “affection” for land and place. “And so,” he said, “I am nominating economy for an equal standing among the arts and humanities. I mean, not economics, but economy, the making of the human household upon the earth: the arts of adapting kindly the many human households to the earth’s many ecosystems and human neighborhoods.”  The full text of Wendell Berry’s lecture is available here. 

Check out the rest of the article here. Berry’s talk starts approximately 10:00 minutes into the video and you can check out media coverage of it here, here, and here.

(Photo credit: NEH)

Resilient Cities: Rethinking the Urban Landscape

From The New America Foundation:

The ability to bounce back, to absorb shocks, to persevere, to retain functionality over time, to endure, to adapt, to succeed, to survive, to sustain… so many verbs are conjured up by the term “resilience.” Whether we’re talking about our bodies, our minds, our communities, our institutions or our natural environment, the R-word provides a conceptual framework for designing a better tomorrow. Please join us for a wide-ranging inquiry on what it means to be resilient and what a resilient future could look like.

The discussion features:

Kaid Benfield – @Kaid_at_NRDC
Director of Sustainable Communities, Natural Resources Defense Council

Justin Hollander – @justinhollander
Professor, Tufts University
Author, Sunburnt Cities: The Great Recession, Depopulation, and Urban Planning in the American Sunbelt

Sander van der Leeuw – @ASUGreen
Dean, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Co-Chair, Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative, Arizona State University

Moderator
Andrés Martinez – @NewAmerica
Vice President and Editorial Director, New America Foundation

(Image credit: Common Current)

Building Urban Resilience: ‘Saga City - Our Communities Facing Climate Change’

From Saga City via Vimeo:

Urban planning has great effects on collective choices that contribute to climate change. By defining the shape of a community, urban planning determines part of its energy consumption, and thus, the quantity of greenhouse gases released by dwellers. Nevertheless, it remains largely out of the general debate on this issue. SAGA CITY invites you to learn more about these stakes through to story of the city of Colvert.

More here.

(Photo credit: Vivre en Ville via Saga City)

From CSR Wire:

Ethical Markets Media, LLC (USA and Brazil), released their 2012 Green Transition Scoreboard® tracking private sector investments since 2007 in green companies and technologies globally, now totaling more than $3.3 trillion.

The 2012 Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS) report finds Asia, Europe and Latin America catching up with the USA in total non-government investments and commitments for all facets of green markets.  2011 ended with a GTS total of $3,306,051,439,680, starting from 2007.  Given the many studies indicating that investing $1 trillion annually until 2020 will accelerate the Green Transition worldwide and the over 100 research reports and articles referenced in this years’ update, the”Green Transition Scoreboard® 2012: From Expanding Cleantech Sectors to Emerging Trends in Biomimicry” definitively shows green investments are becoming the norm.

More here.

(Graphic credit: Green Transition Scoreboard)

Infographic: ‘How Are Cities Tackling Climate Change’ 

From C40 Cities:

Earlier this year, C40 and urban sustainability experts Arup released a groundbreaking report detailing these actions and uncovering where mayors hold the most power to effect change. The research found that C40 mayors have strong powers to mitigate and adapt to climate change in sectors from transport to buildings to waste management. Those powers represent a significant opportunity, and one that many city leaders are already seizing.

40 cities across the C40 network have collectively taken 4,734 actions to tackle climate change–more than three quarters of which have been implemented since C40 was founded in 2005.

More here and here.

Word Cloud: Visualizing the IPCC report on Climate Change & Extreme Weather 

You can check out the report and more here.

(Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change via RealClimate)

Christian Parenti, author of ‘Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence’, in the conclusion of his article, ‘Why climate change will foster strange bedfellows’. You can read the rest of it over at CBS News.

(Photo credit: CBS News)

Global Sustainability | ‘Paul Gilding: The Earth is Full’

From TED Talks:

Have we used up all our resources? Have we filled up all the livable space on Earth? Paul Gilding suggests we have, and the possibility of devastating consequences, in a talk that’s equal parts terrifying and, oddly, hopeful.

Paul is an independent writer, activist, and adviser on a sustainable economy. 

You can read more about his work and ideas here and here.

(Graphic credit: Global Footprint Network)

Infographic | Climate Change & Cities: ’Forget Superheroes: Local Government to the Rescue’

From The Carbon Disclosure Project:

In 2011 CDP Cities collected climate change data from 48 cities around the world. Our first ever infographic celebrates the actions taken by local governments to ensure that cities remain safe places to live and do business despite the effects of climate change. 

More here.