Top-down, bottom-up… everyone working together!
It was an amazing journey, into the world of Ecological Footprinting – its theory, practice, people and partnerships. The Global Footprint Forum 2010 was my first introduction into the people and places that have created such an energy and momentum around the use of the Ecological Footprinting tool.
From the Head of Safety, Health & Environmental Sustainability for the mega giant Nestlé and Advisors for the Ecuador National Secretary of Planning and Development through to inspirational grass-roots educators, researchers and concerned citizens we had gathered together to share our successors and collaborate on new opportunities to achieve the same goal, to halt then shirk our every increasing Ecological Footprint. The conference was alive with ideas and energy, optimism and a healthy dose of cynicism which I feel is helpful.
It was however unfortunate that as so often happens, those who are labelled the ‘experts’ with high-level national policy programs absorb the spotlight and fail to hear the experiences and opportunities from those working on the ground building resilient communities and creating support and ground-swell in favour of these high-level initiatives.
This is not to say that these high-level projects and ideas are not great and may be extremely effective, however there is no one-stop shop for any tool or mechanism to achieve the change we need to reverse our footprint trend. We need multiple tools, for different people in different places who have different cultures and different amounts of influence on a variety of people and organisations. We need a top-down bottom-up approach that inspires people to share ideas, actively listen and engage with their peers and be open to changing their thinking.
Reflection on my experience at the Forum to me highlights the challenges we face as we battle to redirect our path towards a sustainable one. How do we inspire people to let go of their egos, give recognition for everyone’s efforts and support those around us when we are all ultimately aiming to achieve the same goal?
Thank you to all those amazing individuals that I had conversations with, who inspired me to have faith in the chaos and reflect positively during the 6 day event.
Check out York, UK
The Stockholm Environment Institute, the City of York Council and the University of York have been working together to educate and inspire the residents of York to lower their ecological footprint. York Green Streets Report is an interesting read about how to communicate the need to reduce our consumption to different groups of people from York. We will draw on this work to inform our own work using the 8 Tribes methodology. I will visit York and SEI in mid July, 2010 to draw on their experience using the Ecological Footprint at the community level.
Notes from Sienna
Global Footprint Forum 2010 was held in Colle di Val d’Elsa, Italy from the 7th to the 12th of June. The conference hosted by Global Footprint Network and Sienna University brought together a large number of leaders in the footprinting field. Check out the keynote speakers and their presentations on the conference link. The conference was predominantly looking at the Ecological Footprint methodology, practice and the leading best case studies from around the world. The conference manuscript covering all presentations is available for download from the Global Footprint Forum website.
I was chosen to provide a poster for the academic conference entitled ”Footprinting New Zealand Lifestyles“ and a presentation “The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development to Complement the Ecological Footprint“. These papers cover our initial results from the Footprinting New Zealand lifestyles and urban form research project. Check out the Otago Polytechnic website for more details.
My next post will look at a couple of the case studies from the conference in more detail.
Presenting my poster at Footprint Forum 2010
