Our Services - Community Sustainability Initiative
Sustainable community development is an integrated process that strengthens a community’s social, economic, and environmental assets to bring people closer to living within the sustaining capacity of local and global ecosystems.
- Federation of Canadian Municipalities
Becoming More Sustainable
CIEL offers two tools and innovative processes that help communities assess and proactively address sustainability issues in their community:
- Green Light Community Check-up – featured at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities 2008 Sustainable Communities conference - helps a community assess whether its ready to proceed to comprehensive sustainability planning in five key areas: economic, social, cultural, governance and environmental sustainability (more below). If a community attains a “green light”, it is ready to proceed. With a “yellow light”, it may have to proceed with caution, perhaps addressing some key issues. If a community gets a “red light”, it should address some key issues before undertaking a full comprehensive sustainability plan.
- CIEL’s comprehensive Community Sustainability Initiative (CSI) is a comprehensive assessment and planning process that builds on Green Light, engaging technical and elected officials, using innovative and engaging public meetings, and educating the community in the process. In the end, the CSI helps the community produce a usable Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP). An ICSP is a comprehensive sustainability planning process, and something required by other levels of government to access federal Gas Tax moneys.