In discussing strategies for sustainability it is much easier to talk about the mechanics of curbside recycling pickups and mass retrofitting of triple-pane windows than about nurturing a new kind of citizenship. Consequently, little attention is given to civics, and the emphasis is usually on economic or technological innovations. In many rural communities and regions, provincial cities, and low-income urban neighborhoods, however, the practice of citizenship is alive and well. Within these apparently neglected communities, countless scores of local governments, ethnic associations, service organizations, church congregations, and environmental and social support groups have invested generations of anonymous effort to maintain local quality of life. The foundation for practices that can define a new civic sustainability is found in these so-called undeveloped places. The following steps to successful civic action emerge from studying the activities of these communities:
1. Perceive both danger and opportunity in crisis. List social and environmental crises that face your community. Identify the benefits that solution of the identified crises might bring.
2. Analyze the status quo. Take the list of crises made in Step 1 and link them to what are believed to be their root causes. Consider how the best attributes of existing government and corporate institutions can be adapted to better represent the need for social and environmental sustainability.
3. Educate and empower the community. Discuss all the informal support systems that your community presently maintains. Subscribe to journals that address issues of local concern, and invite speakers from other regions to relate their experiences in solving problems and realizing opportunity.
4. Survey the locale and region. Create a bioregional survey of your region and its constituent communities. Circulate it widely as an aid in decision-making. Update the survey regularly as experimentation with sustainability broadens.
5. Envision sustainable alternatives. List small projects that together would create a more sustainable regional culture under three category headings - projects that resist further unsustainable activity, projects that restore damaged ecosystems, and projects that create new, more holistic and democratic institutions. Then set priorities.
6. Do it, one step at a time. Organize project planning so that most projects completed in any year all relate to one another, creating an impact that no random assortment of projects can deliver. Be creative in getting the most out of limited budgets. For example, consider using postgraduate students to design and guide individual projects as part of their thesis requirements.
7. Monitor transformation. From the more than 200 indicators of social and ecological health that are currently monitored somewhere in North America, choose a representative sample that is most relevant to local cultural and physical circumstances to establish your "benchmarks." Publish an environmental sustainability report card, and compare your progress with experience in other regions.
Doug Aberley teaches in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia
