News from June 2009

EALT busy with June’s International Congress and related events

June 30, 2009

June has been a busy month for the land trust. The City of Edmonton hosted the ICLEI World Congress, a gathering of over 700 global leaders oriented to Advancing Local Action for Sustainability. Attendees included government, research, business and community leaders who directly influence social, environmental and economic policies for local government.

EALT was invited to participate in the ICLEI’s Mobile Workshops during Eco-Edmonton Day, arranged to connect with relevant sustainability issues (http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=8568 ). In the Community Workshop, the goal was to showcase some of the emerging and established projects currently operating in Edmonton. We discussed “Partnerships in Conservation for Sustainable Communities”. This revolved around our partnership project related to a development near Big Lake. Our partners were a developer (United Communities) and the City, who provided seed funding for our initiative. Our objective was the interpretation of innovative conservation initiatives within a residential development (e.g., bioswales, reverse housing, etc). We did this by developing interpretive materials targetting residents, and are involved in interpretive signage for the actual site. click here for Big Lake brochure

EALT was also invited to present at Pecha Kucha night, where the theme was Sustainable Design. Pecha Kucha is an interesting concept developed in Japan, which involves each presenter having only 20 seconds to discuss 20 slides for a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds, so messages have to be very concise. ICLEI delegates were invited to join regular attendees. The Shaw Centre was packed, and we were happy to present on the topic of “Sustainable Design: Let’s Conserve What we Value” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mastermaq/3635041376/).

We wanted to convey that planning is not only about where to put infrastructure, residential and industrial areas, transportation routes and growth nodes, but also about identifying places and spaces we value, and planning to keep them and conserve them – something our region desperately needs, and where a land trust can be an innovative partner. We are delighted we have had such positive feedback from this presentation.

Anyone interested in this topic can contact us for more information or comment.

Edmonton and Area Land Trust