"Vancouver has the vision to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. To get there, we’ve defined 10 long-term goals, each associated with a 2020-target. After talking citizens and stakeholders, we’ve created a draft action plan to meet our proposed targets." That is how every short video presenting these 10 targets begins (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yNV...). These targets are :

1.Green economy

2.Climate leadership

3.Green buildings

4.Green transportation

5.Zero waste

6.Access to nature

7.Lighter footprint

8.Clean water

9.Clean air

10.Local food

During the next weeks, I will try to write about almost all these targets. If you are impatient to know more about it, here the official website of the project : http://www.talkgreenvancouver.ca/

Let’s talk about the first goal : "Green economy". Sean Markey, Assistant Professor in the Explorations in Arts and Social Science program at Simon Fraser University and Associate with the Centre for Sustainable Community Development and the Department of Geography, was a member of the Greenest City External Advisory Committee on the Green Economy target. He helped me to understand the different assets and difficulties of this target.

The figured goal of Vancouver is to "double the number of green jobs in the City by 2020, over 2010 levels". On the official website, they explain the actual situation : "Vancouver has about 12,000 green jobs in 8 sectors. These account for 3 percent of Vancouver’s jobs, in industries ranging from clean technology and education to green building and materials recovery ; from local food and urban agriculture to transportation and infrastructure. Green jobs also include jobs in conventional businesses and traditional sectors that contribute to green processes or operations."

Reading these explanations, I immediately thought that the definition of "green" was not obvious. "It poses some challenges to put on that definition a database, because they have a target in the number of green jobs or green enterprises", noticed Sean Markey. That’s why they had the good idea to use the official definition of the UNEP : "restoring or preserving environmental quality, reduce energy, materials and water consumption, and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution." Nevertheless, it’s still a challenge of the project to find how to count these green jobs, how to create a baseline to determinate if they are making progress or not.

So as to create these jobs and make this kind of companies settle in Vancouver, the solution according to Sean Markey is to "pay attention to it, network among the different sectors". The project team discussed about what the cities can really do, because they don’t have that much power. They can facilitate networking processes, convene sectors to get together and talk, provide seed funding, create different bio laws for different types of industrial activity and zoning, for different types of manufacturing activities... So there are still many things that cities can do but the most important, says Sean Markey, is to recognize it, to try to get the different sectors work together. The sectors themselves are clusters, even if there is competition, they also can collaborate and benefit together as a whole sector. To put it in a nutshell, for the city, it takes a lot of communication.

Unfortunately, the development of new companies in Vancouver could endanger the targets of GHGs emissions’ reductions. That is something that the city must reconsider along the process because even if the economic base will become greener and greener, it will still become larger and larger, so it’s going in the wrong direction. But it’s too early in the process to evaluate this negative side effect.

The second risk is the one of green-washing. Companies might announce "we are settled in Vancouver, so we are green". It’s a complicated issue because it is not the city’s responsibility. The city cannot say "that’s green, that’s not" because they don’t even have the resources to do so. Sean Markey considers that it is the sector’s responsibility, it has to be seen in a much larger scale. There should be a There should be a nationwide regulation for Canada. He completes : "One of the critical facts that is behind all the reports showing the bad environmental performance of Canada, is a poor regulatory system, around what companies can and cannot do. So the nation can improve, not only Vancouver."

Vancouver is now almost a brand, it has a reputation. A survey shows that Vancouver is the most livable city in the world, and the city is making the connection between livability and sustainability so that the region continues to grow, so that it remains as a region where people want to live and where companies want to invest. So the municipalities all around the world are not in competition just for the economic growth but more generally to be a quality place to live. And that will be the biggest benefit of the project of Greenest City : be an attractive city, a significant world city.

Sean Markey finally concludes about the Greenest City team and the work they have done up to now : "They would be the first people to acknowledge that it is not perfect but they are just starting and it’s good start."

See you soon, Be green, Ben