Access video recordings and other resources from our Ecocity Peer Network webinars and presentations to the Climate Caucus below.
Ecocity Peer Network Webinar Series
Explore how local governments and their partners can advance sustainable lifestyles as a way to act on climate, justice, and biodiversity.
Cities will play a critical role in addressing the mounting ecological and climate impacts that are being driven by the over-consumption of Earth’s resources.
Given the urgency and scale of our climate and ecological challenges, we need to explore opportunities to advance transformative change at an unprecedented speed. Lifestyle changes play a pivotal part in this transformation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently noted that a focus on lifestyles and behaviour change can contribute as much as 40-70% of the emission reductions needed by 2050, with the right policies, infrastructure and technologies in place, while also improving health and well-being.
This webinar supports the work of the Ecocity Peer Network, hosted by the BCIT Centre for Ecocities. Our goal is to create socially just cities that are in balance with nature.
Speakers:
Vanessa Timmer | Executive Director, OneEarth Living
Blake Robinson | Urban Futures Studio, Utrecht University
Cora Hallsworth | BC Institute of Technology’s Centre for Ecocities
Resources shared during the webinar
- IMAGE Sustainable Lifestyle (Utrecht University & OneEarth Living): This project is developing qualitative modelling and compelling visions and narratives of alternative future sustainable lifestyles scenarios.
- Cities Stockholm+50 High Level Forum on sustainable consumption – Wednesday 1 June 2022 (recording): One of the first global city events to debate the systemic importance of consumption-based emissions and cities.
- Carbon footprint misconceptions (Ipsos): The latest Perils of Perception study by Ipsos looks at how the general public in 30 markets around the world perceive environmental action; revealing many misconceptions.
- Motivations for Lighter Living (OneEarth Living): A resource guide based on studies that reveal dominant motivations for “smart consumption” to help mainstream lighter living actions.
The following resources can be used to learn how to shape and tailor sustainable lifestyles messages for different audiences and contexts as well as strategies for generating internal alignment and engaging the public:
At the Centre we are focused on helping to create socially just cities that are in balance with nature. Key metrics that we use to help inform this transition are the ecological footprint and ‘consumption-based’ greenhouse gas emissions. This webinar explored how local governments and their partners can meaningfully engage stakeholders with these important consumption-based sustainability metrics.
Featured speakers
Brad Badelt, Assistant Director, Sustainability, City of Vancouver
Brad shared how City of Vancouver used the ecological footprint to inform their Greenest City Action Plan, and its Lighter Footprint goal, and the connections between the lighter footprint and their current Climate Emergency Action Plan.
Rebecca Newlove, Sustainability Manager (top) and Glenys Verhulst, Sustainability Planner (bottom), District of Saanich
Rebecca and Glenys shared details on how Saanich incorporated consumption-based emissions results into their Climate Plan; and how they are sharing and encouraging stakeholders to act on consumption-based emissions and ecological footprint results through One Planet Saanich.
Dr. Vanessa Timmer (top), Executive Director and Co-founder and Dagmar Timmer (bottom), Managing Director-Strategic Initiatives and Co-founder, OneEarth
Vanessa and Dagmar presented on how sustainable consumption framing can effectively engage stakeholders in supporting community-wide progress on sustainability. They also shared global examples of best practices.
Cora Hallsworth, Manager of Municipal Programs, Centre for Ecocities
This webinar was moderated by Cora Hallsworth. She also showed how the Centre is supporting cities in engaging with Consumption-based sustainability metrics.
Resources
Centre for Ecocities
City of Vancouver
- Greenest City Action Plan
- CityStudio
- Overview of CityStudio and City Scholars Programs
- Green Grants
- Project Green Bloc
District of Saanich
One Earth
Other Lifestyle and Behaviour Change Resources
- Ipsos Perils of Perception & Perils of Perception (Climate Change)
- Seth Wynes & Kimberly Nicholas (links and graphics of top impacts)
- 1.5-Degree Lifestyles
- Cambridge Sustainability Commission, Scaling Behaviour Change
- WBCSD Sustainable Lifestyles
- Love Food Hate Waste
- Share Reuse Repair Initiative
- UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2020
- Oxfam, Extreme Carbon Inequality
Dr. Jennie Moore, Cora Hallsworth, Ryan Mackie and Alex Hebert from BCIT were joined by Jeremy Caradonna from the Province of BC’s Office of Mass Timber Implementation and Patrick Enright, Senior Green Building Engineer at the City of Vancouver. They discussed the significance of embodied emissions in our buildings, how they are measured, and innovative policy responses that any local government can implement.
The full recording of the webinar is available at the end of the resources.
Download the slide deck from the webinar [PDF].
Resources
BCIT
Zero Energy Buildings – BC Energy Step Code Courses and Passive House Training
City of Vancouver
Zero Emissions Buildings
Climate Emergency Action Plan/Embodied Carbon Strategy [PDF]
Building Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) Tools
Athena Impact Estimator
Tally
One Click LCA
EC3
BEAM
LCA (Life-cycle Analysis) Publications
Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF)
The Zero Emissions Building Exchange (ZEBx)
Builders for Climate Action
Urban Equation Embodied Carbon White Paper [PDF]
UBC Embodied Carbon Pilot [PDF]
Social Life Cycle Assessment
LCA of Electric Vehicles
LCA of EVs in Canada [PDF]
Embodied Emissions Policy Publications
City Policy Framework for Dramatically Reducing Embodied Carbon
Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF) Embodied Carbon Policy Toolkit
Learn about the Centre and our work helping cities find ways to lighten humanity’s ecological footprint and live within the planet’s ecological carrying capacity.
The webinar focused on the ecoCity Footprint Tool – and how its use helps a city assess its energy and materials dependence relative to climate stability thresholds and ecological carrying capacity.
We shared our learning about the top actions a city and its citizens can take to close the sustainability gap, through urban restructuring and lifestyle changes related to food, buildings, consumables and wastes, transportation, and water.
We profiled our work with 10 BC communities and about our future plans to continue contributing applied research, skills and tools to support the creation of Ecocities.
We also talked about how the work of the Centre is leveraging and contributing to BCIT’s world renowned research in building science, technology and ecological restoration.
Climate Caucus Presentations
Ryan Mackie delivered a presentation on carbon budgeting and science-based targets to the Climate Caucus on October 25, 2023.
The Climate Caucus is network of 600+ current and former local elected leaders and over 1000 allies, leading the transformation needed for communities to thrive within planetary boundaries.
Ryan shared how current greenhouse gas emissions targets and carbon budgeting stand up to the latest climate science, and the importance of a consumption-based approach. He also shared an assessment of our progress so far on the transition to net zero.
Watch the presentation on YouTube
Cora Hallsworth delivered a presentation on Consumption-Based Emissions Inventories (CBEI) to the Climate Caucus on March 2, 2023.
The Climate Caucus is network of 600+ current and former local elected leaders and over 1000 allies, leading the transformation needed for communities to thrive within planetary boundaries.
Their members were interested to learn about how a consumption-based approach to evaluating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can help deepen action on climate change, and also bring equity into focus.
Human-induced climate change, as with much of our impact on natural systems, like biodiversity loss and pollution, is driven by unsustainable levels of consumption. Yet, typical municipal GHG emissions inventories and plans do not include the impacts of all consumption that is occurring within the boundaries of a community. They miss the impact of all the products and materials we import into our communities. The CBEI helps shine a light on all the consumption-related GHG emissions caused by a population regardless of where they occur worldwide.
Resources
- Using the ecoCity Footprint Tool for creating CBEIs and ecological footprints.
- Cora’s slides from the webinar.
