Visioning a "Sustainable Chicagoland"

Coming up in November!

Taking the Natural Step
Saturday November 12, 2-4 pm
At North Park Village Nature Center, 5801 N. Pulaski, Chicago. Free.
Turn left at the first T intersection.

Learn about the potential of locally applying the 2004 book The Natural Step for Communities, which is based on the experiences of creating over 150 sustainable communities in Sweden. Their processes and principles are being studied as a basis for developing eco-muncipalities in Wisconsin and other places in the United States.

The presenter, Gladys Bryer, is past chairman and current member of the Evanston Environment Board, and has been working to get The Natural Step approach incorporated into Evanston's planning process. She is substituting for Betsy Bouchard, the originally scheduled presenter, who can't return to Evanston yet due to severe illness in her family.

Supplementary Notes and Links
<<>> http://www.natural step.org The TNS strategy is to craft agreement on basic principles, and use that agreement as the basis for getting as many folks as you can to help realize them. "Find fundamental principles of indisputable relevance, and thereafter ask the advice of others on how to apply them. (TNSCom p5)

http://www.newdimensions.org/online-journal/articles/natural-step.html
A Conversation with Karl-Henrik Robert, by Michael Toms [Slightly modified ...RB]
Health, life and economy rest on four fundamental principles, restrictions, or system conditions, followed by nature.
[Three THOU SHALT NOTs - tightly specified] …three restrictions which are non-negotiable and easy to reach consensus on: If we do not squander Earth's mineral resources; if we do not produce persistent unnatural compounds; and if we do not systematically expand our hard technosphere of society onto green land, nature will make it. It will eventually reconstitute itself. [& One THOU SHALT - open, minimally specified. What is just?] …we must meet human needs in a just and efficient manner.

Since we are now five billion People on earth, trying to become ten, it is as if humanity were running into a funnel, where the walls of the funnel are those four restrictions -- progressively squeezed by decreasing resources and increasing population/consumption.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=818 Karl-Henrik Robert interview. "My epiphany came one day when I was studying cells from cancer patients. …cells are the unifying unit of all living things. You can't argue with them or negotiate with them. You can't ask them to do anything they can't do. … In August 1988, when I wrote the first effort to frame a consensus, I believed that my colleagues would agree wholeheartedly with what I had written, it was so well thought through. Actually, it took 21 iterations to reach a consensus among this group of 50 ecologists, chemists, physicists, and medical doctors."

TIMELINE (Most from NSCom p30)
1972 - book Limits To Growth published. <> 1980 - Suomussalmi, Finland - 1st eco-municipality <> 1983 - Övertorneå becomes first eco-municipality in Sweden <> 1987 - Brundtland Report released (UN World Commission on Environment & Development) argued that the world was in urgent need of both environmental protection and economic development. <> 1989 - TNS Framework for Sustainability developed <> 1990 -1992 14 more Swedish "counties" picked up eco-municipality idea <> 1991 - city of Hanover, Germany, asked William McDonough to write out the general principles of sustainability for the 2000 World's Fair. These became the nine "Hanover Principles" <> 1992 - Eksjo's TNS report helped shape the UN Rio's Agenda 21 guide. <> 1993-98 - 55 more Swedish "counties" picked up eco-municipality idea. All now use the TNS Framework
<> 2000 - Sustainable Sweden Assn founded - driving force in sus/dev worldwide. Tours. http://www.sustainablesweden.org/

<<>>
http://seattle.gov/environment/documents/Seattle%20EMS%20Benchmark%20Report%20Whole.doc
p35 1996 Manningham City NE of Melbourne, AU decided to introduce a TNS based ISO 14001 environmental management system. ...will be one of the first local government municipalities in the world to gain ISO 9000 (Quality) and ISO 14001 certification. TNS was responsible for education and communication and Green Innovations would implement the ISO system.

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?2842&src=\ September/October 2005, Vol. XVI, no. 5
Building Sustainable Cities: Scandinavia's "Eco-Municipalities" Show the Way ...Dane County [Madison] and Ashland, Wisconsin; Duluth, Minnesota; and Vandergrift and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, all of which are planning to incorporate sustainability principles and practices into their regions. Other visitors, from Santa Monica, Minneapolis and Whistler, British Columbia, are already guided by sustainability.

http://fair.wiscpsa.org/news.html July 11, (2005) the City of Washburn, Wisconsin, voted to become the first eco-municipality in the U.S., opening the door for employees to receive training on how to reduce the city's ecological footprint.

><>< http://www.sustaindane.org/main/sustainable_sweden_summary.htm Madison WI. The Natural Step for Communities study circle is a nine session course designed to help participants understand the Natural Step framework and how it can be applied to sustainable development in their community. Evanston may offer it again in the future. It's been helpful in getting their sustainability initiatives moving. http://evanstonsfuture.org

http://www.naturalstep.org/learn/docs/guides/tips.pdf
There are also steps for Individuals