Progress Report - Spring 2007 - Next Steps
From Common Energy UVic
[edit] To download the final version of our Progress Report please click here: Going Beyond Climate Neutral: Planning for Climate Change Leadership with the University of Victoria. The information on the rest of this page is a DRAFT version of that final report.
This is the final section of the Spring Progress Report - 2007. It describes the next steps that Common Energy will undertake to move UVic beyond climate neutral. In general, this will mean collaboratively fleshing out the ideas in the Ideas for Achieving the Goal section so that they are ready to be implemented, and prioritizing them so they can guide our work over the coming years. Moving BCN is an ambitious goal and there is a lot of work to do. We will only get it done by engaging a broad network of committed people with a clear plan for action.
What follows is just a sketch, and it focuses on the creation of the plan as opposed to the development of Common Energy into an inter-institutional network.
[edit] Quotes
"A Renewed Mission for BC: To be a campus of learning; to nurture active citizenship and community engagement; to be a leader in knowledge discovery, creation and innovation; and to be connected, sustainable and alive to our place and responsibilities in the world." Geoff Plant, Access & Excellence: The Campus 2020 Plan for British Columbia's Post-Secondary Education System [1]
[edit] Planning Projects
Over the coming months we will develop the ideas in this progress report into a plan to move UVic beyond climate neutral. Teams of people in our network will use these ideas as the foundation for a new round of engagement at UVic and in the region. They will form Planning Projects that will collaboratively produce sections of the plan through workshops, small group work, and the wiki. By September, these brief sections for the Going Beyond Climate Neutral Plan will be circulated broadly in advance of a large Going Beyond Climate Neutral conference that we will hold on September 28th, 29th, and 30th. That conference will bring the network together to finalize the plan and begin its implementation.
The key to this stage is not pouring time into the creation of exhaustive research proposals. It will be getting out there and talking with the people who are going to make this plan a reality: students, staff, faculty, and regional partners.
To help the teams that will undertake the Planning Projects we have created a Project Planning Tool. It asks the team the following questions:
- What is the need that the project will address?
- What is the problem that we are trying to solve?
- What do we need to know to solve the problem?
- Who should we ask to get that information?
- How are the decisions that effect this problem made?
- Who do we need to engage to make this change?
- What is it going to take to solve this problem, and what's our plan for doing it?
This process gets the participants to focus in on the deep causes of the problems that they are working with. A clear understanding of the nature of the problem generates the best list of facts and areas of knowledge that must be understood to solve the problem. Speaking with people who are working in the area is a fast way to learn and builds networks by engaging people with common ground in the project. Based on their insight into the problem the question becomes: how do we turn these ideas into practice? How are decisions made in this area? This, in turn, leads to an understanding of the people who need to be engaged to create solutions to the original problem. The process is iterative - as the team works their way through the list they will almost certainly refine and improve their understanding of the problem and what is necessary to solve it.
As our Working Groups and other teams use this process we will expand our network and build momentum for the Going Beyond Climate Neutral conference in September where we will transition our focus to the implementation of the plan.
[edit] The Knowledge Base
Developing the Knowledge Base will require many people collaboratively working to aggregate information and synthesize it clearly and concisely so people can read what they need to know, and follow links for the rest. The development of the Knowledge Base will provide a foundation for the work of everyone involved in the project, and an excellent resource for everyone else.
As we undertake the Planning Projects we will develop the Knowledge Base with the things that we learn and the information that we find. Over time, the Knowledge Base will become the product of dozens of classes with CE Curricula, and a much broader network of people working on climate change.
After all, why bother keeping all our good information locked up in our personal computers? Or sending it over emails that are quickly misplaced or forgotten when the information is needed?
The goal is to turn the Knowledge Base into an open source user's guide for preventing catastrophic climate change and building sustainable societies.
[edit] Developing Common Energy
While this progress report has focussed on Common Energy's work at UVic there is a lot of other work going on. We have not gone into much depth about the development of Common Energy UVic and UBC or the plans for creating a self-organizing inter-institutional network. That network will integrate the work of BC's universities and colleges, as their local organizations move them beyond climate neutral, to rapidly share good ideas and resources that will support everyone's plans and actions develop sustainable cities and regions. After all, the purpose of the organization is to be part of creating a future climate that supports diverse life and prosperous societies, and the more that we collaborate across the province and beyond the more likely we are to be successful in that goal.
On the first weekend of June we held a governance retreat for Common Energy itself. We decided that Common Energy will make decisions through a modified form of formal consensus, and that membership in Common Energy will be based on participation in its work. Over the coming months we will also develop resources for other climate change groups and work with the Sierra Youth Coalition's provincial network in BC. Our question for that network will be something like this:
How can we work together to make universities and colleges catalysts for the rapid development of sustainability in their cities and regions?
We will hold a conference in October and initiate a Common Ground process to answer that question. There will be a follow up conference in January at which we will finalize and begin implementing our plan to answer that question.
If you would like the fund this work your donation would be much appreciated by a lot of very hard working people.
[edit] Connect with Us
This project is going to succeed because people like you are going to connect with us.
Here's our core question again:
How can we do more to solve the problems of climate change than we do to cause them?
You can help us answer that question. Start by emailing us at info@commonenergy.org to tell us what interests you and share your ideas.
Remember, it comes back to creating these sorts of things:
- A regional transportation network that connects people and places with rail, buses, and the paths and infrastructure for cycling and walking;
- A vibrant local economy providing well paying, secure employment, and an innovative cluster of green businesses developing knowledge and technologies for export;
- Delicious, sustainably grown regional cuisine that brings healthy, affordable food to our tables from prosperous local farms and urban agriculture;
- Quality, energy efficient buildings that keep us comfortable in an urban environment that has been ecologically restored and revitalized;
- A system of financial trusts that make it easy to connect the people and projects that can develop a resilient energy supply and reduce our environmental impact with the investment they need to become a reality;
- People engaged in the practical and collaborative work of creating a region that is sustainable through active participation in our governance processes;
- A university that helps make everything in this list happen, and by doing so engages its students, staff, and faculty while producing innovative research and leading by example.
[edit] Navigating the Report
This was the final section of the Spring Progress Report - 2007. The first section was Progress Report - Spring 2007 - A New Approach, and the second section was Ideas for Achieving the Goal.
[edit] References
- ↑ Geoff Plant. "Campus 2020 Thinking Ahead: The Report," (Ministry of Advanced Education, April 2007)http://www.aved.gov.bc.ca/campus2020/ (Accessed May 26th, 2007) p. 12
