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Sustainable development includes fight- ing poverty, increasing social inclusion (including advancing the status of wom- en) and protecting the environment.


negotiations, between 3,000 and 4,000 other gatherings were going on between business people, mayors, civil soci- ety organizations and others, presenting myriad opportunities to make specific commitments. We’re moving to a different dynamic.”


Sowing Seeds The inclusive atmosphere is reflected in another new U.N.- sponsored international sharing website, FutureWe Want.org, featuring visions and videos relating to sustain- ability and solutions to dire environmental problems, such as turning global warming-inducing methane from China’s farms into a usable energy source; predicting periods of drought in Ethiopia to prevent humanitarian crises; and investing in solar power to bring electricity to 1.4 billion people around the world. More than 50 million people worldwide have submitted ideas for a more sustainable world, ranging from ways to increase public education to plans for stopping industrial pollution and better managing waste. “The huge public engagement in the conference is


exciting,” says Pascale, “because that’s really how progress will happen. People have to force their governments to take action.” The NRDC dedicated website is part of a coordinated ef-


fort to hold governments, businesses and nonprofits account- able and inform the public. The new U.N. websites facilitate a thriving discussion of what sustainability means and how it can be put into practice. “We want to continue the overall campaign and build


upon it,” says Pascale. “Whatever frustrations people have with businesses, nongovernment organizations (NGO) or govern- ments, we need to harness that energy and keep that dialogue going to give people a voice in making sustainability happen.”


Results-Oriented Role Models


State-based examples of sustainable development in action speak to widespread needs in the United States. Here are examples of five models worth replicating.


PlaNYC: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s an- nouncement of PlaNYC, on Earth Day 2007, signaled an his- toric moment. The people’s vision of a cleaner, healthier New York City, one that could accommodate 9 million predicted residents by 2030, aims to be a model for urban sustainable development. Its original 127 initiatives leave few sustain- ability stones unturned, including cleaning up brownfields, building more playgrounds and parks, increasing public transportation and bike lanes, implementing aggressive recycling, enforcing green building standards and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Two-thirds of the initial goals have already been achieved; the latest update calls for 132 initia- tives, including a new set of annual milestones. Speaking at the Museum of the City of New York in 2009, Daniel Doctoroff, the former deputy mayor of economic development and rebuilding for the Bloomberg administration, called PlaNYC “one of the most sweeping, most comprehen- sive blueprints for New York ever undertaken.” Most critically, all of its stated commitments are achievable (see Tinyurl.com/ PlaNYC-goals).


Evergreen Cooperative Initiative (ECI): Businesses and com- munity groups in Cleveland, Ohio, determined that they needed to solve the problem of joblessness in low-income areas by creating living-wage jobs and then training eligible residents to fill them. They developed a new, cooperative- based economic model, based on green jobs that can inspire other cities with similar economic woes. The ECI is a community undertaking in which anchor insti- tutions like the Cleveland Foundation, University Hospitals and the municipal government leverage their purchasing power to help create green-focused, employee-owned local businesses, which to date include a green laundromat, the hydroponic greenhouse Green City Growers, and Ohio Cooperative Solar, which provides weatherization and installs and maintains solar panels. The solar cooperative will more than double Ohio’s solar generating capacity from 2011 levels by the end of 2012 (see EvergreenCooperatives.com).


CALGreen: Updated building codes may not generate much excitement until we consider that U.S. buildings account for a lion’s share of carbon dioxide emissions (39 percent), and consume 70 percent of the electricity we generate. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) reports, “If half of new commercial buildings were built to use 50 percent less energy, it would save over 6 million metric tons of CO2


an-


nually for the life of the buildings—the equivalent of taking more than 1 million cars off the road every year.” The California Green Building Standards Code (CAL-


Green), which took effect in January 2011, sets the highest green bar for new buildings in the country. It requires that new buildings achieve a 20 percent reduction in potable water use, divert 50 percent of their construction waste from landfills, use paints and materials with low volatile organic compound content and provide parking for clean-air vehi- cles. Multiple key stakeholders have been involved through- out the process, including the California Energy Commission and the Sierra Club.


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