Sustainability Reporting Program

Thanks to significant new contributions, the Sustainability Reporting Program has the resources to complete the design of Canada’s first sustainability report on the Internet. New support from Environment Canada and the Laidlaw Foundation allows us to have a team working on an ongoing basis. The York Centre for Applied Sustainability at York University continues to provide partnership funding for graduate student assistants, as well as advice and support from David Bell and other members of the centre. The team has completed a design for the SRP web site, and is seeking comments.

Point your browser to: http://www.interlog.com/~xx

What you will find is a working design for our web site. As yet, we have very little content, because we first want to get feedback on our lineup of ideas. In a few cases, we have put in some information that we had prepared, such as a list of key members.

On the home page, click on the instructions button for a list of what parts of the site have material.

Then, click through the folders to see the way sustainability information can be presented.

The newest and most significant round of funding is $25,000 from Environment Canada. This was a combined contribution from the Ontario Region, and from the Strategic Planning and Policy Coordination section and the Indicators and Assessment Office. Thanks to John Mills, Michael Goffin, Craig Ferguson and Anne Kerr for this crucial funding. The Environment Canada funds triggered an $8,300 grant from the Laidlaw Foundation, which has pledged one dollar for every three dollars raised elsewhere to a total of $30,000 from Laidlaw. This is new money from both organizations, which have previously provided seed funding for the SRP.

The Environment Division of Statistics Canada has expanded its role in SRP by providing financial support for a special consultant, Craig Gaston, to help our researchers navigate the StatsCan databases. This is a valuable contribution because of the great volume of information that exists at StatsCan in various forms and in different divisions. The search for trends means digging into older sets of data which would be a laborious process without the assistance of Mr. Gaston, who recently retired from StatsCan. Thanks to Claude Simard for providing this support.

We now have an operating team with the expertise to create the web site. Working with Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief Michael Keating are:

• Mary MacDonald, Senior Associate—Policy and Development. Mary has over 12 years experience in environmental management systems and the sustainable development field. She is currently an Affiliated Scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute, and a Principal with Bingera Associates. She has developed programs and provided technical training to support national sustainability on four continents, most recently in partnership with the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank. She has written numerous articles and two books, including Agendas for Sustainability: Environment and Development into the 21st Century, Routledge 1998. As Director of Policy and Research for the Earth Council, she collaborated with over 70 organizations from around the globe in a five-year review of the Earth Summit. Mary was research coordinator for the book Canada and the State of the Planet by Michael Keating. This project evolved into the Sustainability Reporting Program.

• John Chenery, Associate—Communications and Design. John has worked for over 20 years in communications and media. He is a former Director of Communication with the Earth Council. Before joining the Earth Council, he designed and launched the Green Arrow Guide, a web site specializing in sustainable tourism in Central America. He has served as a senior consultant on web site design to the InterAmerican Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and coordinated a volunteer program bringing students to Costa Rica to work on conservation and sustainable community tourism. Prior to taking up sustainability projects, he was an editor and journalist on newspapers and magazines in Australia, the United States, Great Britain and Latin America.

• Michelle Fernando, Research Assistant—Michelle is a graduate in environmental studies from the University of Toronto and is currently pursuing graduate studies at York University's Faculty of Environmental Studies.

• Deborah Middleton, Research Assistant—Deborah is an architect with a background in sociology. She is also doing graduate work at the Faculty of Environmental Studies.

In addition, our team includes advice and logistical support from: Gustavo Moran, Grant Sheng and Dianne Zecchino, all of the York Centre for Applied Sustainability, and Natasha Teoli, Pollution Probe.

This is another critical phase for our project. Based on advice from our Steering and Advisory committees and from other experts, we have produced an initial design for a sustainability reporting system on the World Wide Web. We are now testing that design with our advisors.

We need comments and advice on:

• The design and proposed content for the web site.

• Suggestions for the best sources of information, preferably in other web sites. [Please suggest URLs for good sites.]

• Comments on how the web site can be of help to you.

In many cases, we are getting comments by e-mail, phone and personal contacts. In addition, we are holding short meetings in Ottawa and Toronto this month to consult with a number of experts who are in the same location. The Ottawa meeting will take place June 16 at the Conference Board of Canada with support from the Conference Board and Environment Canada. The Toronto meeting is tentatively scheduled for June 25 at York University.

The SRP continues to meet with possible collaborators, funders and partners. During May, team members made a presentation to Laidlaw’s Children’s Health and Environment Forum, and met with representatives of the Policy Research Initiative of the Privy Council Office (responsible for the Canadian government’s Project on Trends), the Conference Board of Canada, the Canada Millennium Partnership Program and Environment Canada. In early June, Michael Keating made a presentation on the SRP to an Environment Canada national policy forum.

The plan is to use our modest resources to develop the first phase of our web site. We will revise the general design for our web site by the end of June, and decide which parts of the site will be developed in phase one. This will set our research and web construction agenda for the summer. The goal is to have a working web site with a limited number of elements in operation and ready for a public launch by the fall. This will initiate Canada’s first web-based report on national sustainability trends. We will work with partners at the provincial level, and develop links with local projects and with the education system to ensure the information reaches a large audience.

For more information, please contact:

Michael Keating

Executive Director, Sustainability Reporting Program