Sustainable Communities - Principles and Actions

 

Some basic principles are necessary to move communities, in NYS and around the world, to be sustainable.

A major exciting coalition and campaign, “New York Renews,” has mushroomed out of the rainbow of folks and organizations that worked together on the People’s Climate March, the COP21 Paris summit, and follow-up campaigns. Some of the basic points of unity for NY Renews are:

The Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter is enthusiastically working with New York Renews and its 76 supporting organizations and other stakeholders to enact key legislation and advance major administrative efforts at the state and local level. There will be many opportunities for our members to participate in these efforts.

New York State has developed the “Climate Smart Communities” initiative focused on engaging and enabling cities, towns and counties to become as sustainable as possible. This means that localities evaluate their reliance on fossil fuels, efficiency in using resources, efforts to conserve energy, protection of green open space and other natural resources, and use and control of the built environment and more. There is an emphasis on local stakeholders coming together to develop plans and take action for community sustainability, including adopting climate action plans. What is done formally by local governments is intended to have a multiplier effect on major progress in all sectors of the economy.

I have written before that is important for us to urge our communities to become Climate Smart Communities (CSCs) and participate in some way to help them to do so. Already 183 localities in NYS have signed the pledge to become a CSC and seven have taken concrete actions to be formally certified as CSCs by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. It is important for suburban and rural localities to take this pledge, especially as some of these localities lack comprehensive planning and zoning, essential to ensuring sustainability.

Before the Paris summit, President Obama pledged that 100 US cities would sign onto the global “Compact of Mayors.” This compact is part of a world campaign to move cities to 100 percent renewable energy while emphasizing uniform, transparent reporting on their progress. Initiated by UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Compact of Mayors campaign is similar to but narrower in scope than NYS’s CSCs initiative.

The national Sierra Club recently launched its “Ready for 100” campaign, urging localities to shift to 100 percent renewable energy based on the Compact of Mayors initiative. Over 520 cities across the globe, with over 430 million people, have signed the compact.

The Atlantic Chapter and its Groups are escalating efforts with our members and supporters at the local and state level in these various campaigns. These grassroots initiatives linking with many diverse stakeholders, including environmental justice communities, are essential to move us toward genuine sustainability.

At the community level, there are many options for greatly increasing sustainability in all sectors. One major example is development of shared solar — community-distributed generation (CDG). Solar power would be produced centrally at a community site and shared by local governments, businesses, homeowners, renters and others. This community based solar-energy option can benefit low-income persons who rent and can also apply to buildings that are not suitable for rooftop solar.

Finally, 

“A sustainable community is one that is economically, environmentally and socially healthy and resilient. It meets challenges through integrated solutions rather than through fragmented approaches that meet one of the goals at the expense of the others. And it takes a long-term perspective — one that’s focused on both the present and the future, well beyond the next budget or election cycle.” (http://www.iscvt.org/impact/definition-sustainable-community.)