Media Clipping — September 19, 2007, The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax

Moving beyond green PR

Goals fine, but environmental progress takes work, conference told

By David Jackson

If everyone in the world lived like energy-consuming, waste-producing Nova Scotians, we would need four planets to sustain us all, an environmental conference in Halifax heard Monday.

But Ron Colman, executive director of GPI Atlantic, also said that the province is well-positioned to cut back on consumption and become a model for sustainable development.

He said the MacDonald government's Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, passed this year, is a good start and the government must now take the steps necessary to actually achieve those goals.

"If you just have a goal . . . and don't do anything more, then it's just PR. Nothing more than PR," Mr. Colman said in an interview after his presentations. "And actually, better not even to do the PR, better not even to set the goals, because if you set the goals and then you don't really make them, then all you create is disillusionment and despair."

The legislation lays out targets in many areas from cutting greenhouse gas emissions to sending less garbage to landfills.

Mr. Colman said it would be helpful to talk about sustainability in a way average citizens can understand — by asking what kind of a world will be left to their children.

Mr. Colman said that government has a crucial role to play. He cited a national poll that shows Canadians want government leadership on the issue and he said a key method is financial incentives like tax credits to support changes in industries like forestry and agriculture.

GPI Atlantic is a non-profit organization committed to the development of the Genuine Progress Index, a measure of sustainability and well-being.

Mr. Colman said there are profound challenges to overcome, but he thinks it can happen in Nova Scotia.

For example, he pointed to the huge change that started in the 1990s related to how people handled their waste and the fact that it took only five years to divert half of it away from landfills.

Mr. Colman said one of the biggest challenges is in just how society measures progress. He said the calculation of the gross domestic product, the total of all the goods and services produced in a jurisdiction, isn't good enough because the more fossil fuels people burn and the more trees that are cut down, the more the economy grows.

He explained that there needs to be a qualitative element, like his genuine progress index, whose components include leisure time and volunteerism.

Environment and Labour Minister Mark Parent said it will take co-operation across government departments, the business community, non-governmental organizations and ordinary Nova Scotians to achieve sustainable prosperity. And he said it would come with short-term costs.

"What is the cost of not doing anything?" he said. "There may be upfront costs, but in the long run, there's gains."

The conference, hosted by the provincial departments of economic development and environment and labour, wraps up today.

(djackson@herald.ca)

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