"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 begin each short video presenting these 10 targets which 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

After spending two months in Vancouver, I conclude this canadian episode by writing one last time about one of these targets. I advice you, one last time, to visit the official website of the project.

No, today is not only the day of the big games Lyon-Marseille, Manchester United-Chelsea and Nadal-Djokovic. Today is also the day I close an important chapter of my project, the canadian and vancouverite one. I chose to finish this step by writing about a long-term goal that crosses many others : lighter footprint. It brings a new viewpoint of environmental problems. To understand what are the assets of this new vision, I met Emmanuel Prinet, franco-canadian who was my first contact in Vancouver. He was in the External Advisory Comittee for the lighter footprint long-term goal and works for an NGO called One Earth.

The logical objective of Vancouver is to achieve a one planet Earth ecological footprint. For now, Vancouver’s population consumes three times as much natural resources as what the Earth can produce and absorb the waste of that production (it means a three planet ecological footprint). By 2020, the city has set the objective to reduce Vancouver’s per capita ecological footprint by 33% over 2006 levels.

Ecological footprint "represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste" (wikipedia). And I think what is really interesting with this tool is that it enables to compare different ways of life. "For 2006, humanity’s total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.4 planet Earths", 2,7 for France, more than 4,3 for the USA and 3,8 for Canada (3,4 for Finland).

Ecological footprint is about what is renewable (lands, food, water...) because it’s from these elements that we can live sustainably. "Carbon footprint" is also often used : it estimates how much land and sea area is needed to absorb all carbon emitted by a population, an activity or a person. It’s part of ecological footprint and represents around half of it.

A tool made in Vancouver

Vancouver using ecological footprint is not something neutral. The creator of this tool is William Rees, professor at the UBC (University of British Columbia, one of the two universities of Vancouver) and colleague of Emmanuel Prinet in One Earth. Of course, William Rees was in the External Advisory Comittee for the lighter footprint long-term goal.

Thanks to this tool, the Greenest City team identified sectors that are the biggest consumers of resources and the most influent (see the drawing below), and they wondered how their actions could reduce the ecological footprint of these sectors. And, actually, these actions have a limited influence. Inhabitants have a very important role to play, that’s why the city comunicates so much.

They thought a lot about what encorages people to act, because projects after projects, global summits after global summits, things don’t really move on, behaviors don’t change, there is still social injustice and environmental damages. Giving information to inhabitants and companies is not enough because habits are too strong. According to Emmanuel, we need to change habits and then values will change.

The carbon tax

According to William Rees (UBC), 3 factors encourage people to change their behavior :
 coercion ;
 natural disasters and other major disastrous events ;
 education, social training, but it works only on the long-run, for a generation ;
 money, raising prices. That’s why the provincial carbon tax is really interesting.

According to Emmanuel, carbon tax is the greatest lever for the city because it enables to change behaviors. Yet, he thinks there are two major problems to this tax :
 it should be socially progressive ;
 it doesn’t have any influence on individual behaviors because it is too low. For example, oil price fluctuates more than the amount of the tax.

"Reductions must be achieved among the five largest components of Vancouver’s ecological footprint : food ; transportation ; consumables ; buildings ; waste." 4 of these components have a specific long-term goal. But for consumables, the issue is more complicated. The region and the city know they have a very little power on consumables sold by private supermarkets that have their own way to operate : economy of scale (not possible at a local level because there wouldn’t be enough items produced) and other mechanisms so that production costs are as low as possible. To have an influence, the city should collaborate with other north american big cities and other provincial and federal governments. And that is quite unlikely.

"Implementing the other nine Greenest City action plans will get us an estimated 8-10% reduction in ecological footprint. To achieve the remaining 23-25% reduction will require significant action from the rest of the community, particularly in the areas of food and consumables." I think these sentences from the official website of the project of Vancouver Greenest City are a perfect conclusion for this second great stage of my trip, in Canada (I have written about 9 out of the 10 long-term goals, I didn’t achieve in meeting someone about the clean air goal). Even with the most ambitious and enthousiastic political institutions, environmental problems cannot be solved without inhabitants’ actions, without our commitment.

I hope you appreciated the canadian episod and especially the Vancouver’s part as much as I enjoyed writing these articles.

Here are my next short-term steps :
 writing a report about what I learnt in Canada, that I would join to an article ;
 writing an article to make a balance of my canadian stay ;
 I will leave France in a few days for Romania (one month working in an NGO) before finishing this whole project with a last and unexpected short stay in Copenhagen.

See you soon (from other scenes), Be green (still and always), Ben