Councillor Lise Burcher and June Hofland and I were invited to attend a lunch at the FCM conference along with a number of communities who are showing leadership in sustainability planning. Mayor Ken Melamed of Whistler was our host.
Whistler is a municipal leader in adopting the Natural Step as a framework for sustainability. Guelph invited Mayor Melamed to speak to a business audience in January of this year about the Natural Step. Locally, the Cooperators has adopted the Natural Step as a framework to advance sustainability practices in their business.
At the lunch, a researcher from the David Suzuki Foundation discussed their work on quantifying the economic benefit of natural systems and the services they provide urban areas. They see the new greenbelt in Southern Ontario as an important model to ensure that we balance development with the protection of natural areas and are working to quantify the benefits of the greenbelt to communities.
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