Centre for Ecocities

Upcoming Webinar: Exploring Buildings’ Embodied Emissions

January 22, 2021 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

Join us to learn more about the importance of Life Cycle Assessment and the embodied emissions of buildings. We will be 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 will discuss the significance of embodied emissions in our buildings, how they are measured and innovative policy responses that any local government can implement.

Featured Speakers

Dr. Jeremy L. Caradonna is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery, and Innovation. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Widely published on sustainability, transformative change, and organic food systems, Jeremy now works on green-building strategies for the Province of British Columbia.

Dr. Caradonna will present on the concept of embodied emissions, the basics of lifecycle assessment (LCA), and work he is doing with Athena Sustainable Materials Institute to advance the methods of whole-building LCA in Canada.

Patrick Enright is a Senior Green Building Engineer with the City of Vancouver’s Sustainability Group, where he works on green building policy for new large buildings. Patrick is a professional engineer with years of experience in the building industry, including a number of years in Vancouver with a mechanical engineering firm in design and energy modeling.

Mr. Enright will share details of Vancouver’s Embodied Carbon Strategy for buildings and their target of reducing embodied emissions by 40% by 2030, as part of the City’s Climate Emergency Action Plan.

Dr. Jennie Moore is working with cities around the world finding pathways to radical GHG emissions reductions and reduced materials consumption. Her work in cities starts with her love of nature. Addressing the source of what is driving demand for natural habitat through the restructuring of cities and changing economic assumptions is her approach to leverage impact.

Dr. Moore will also discuss how embodied emissions of buildings are used in the ecoCity Footprint Tool to build a community’s consumption-based emissions inventory.

This is the second webinar for the Ecocity Peer Network. In our first webinar we shared results from testing the ecoCity Footprint Tool with 10 British Columbia municipalities, and shared plans to launch the Lighter Footprint App. These tools will help communities and individuals understand and act on their ecological and carbon footprint. You can view the previous webinar below:

2020 Year in Review

December 22, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

We are pleased to present the inaugural annual report from the BCIT Centre for Ecocities.

Our Mission is to help cities and communities close their sustainability gap. We deliver on our mission through applied research, education, and advisory services.

We achieved a great deal this year despite the onset of the global pandemic. We built partnerships, developed relationships, and worked with municipalities, students, faculty, and other collaborators to drive transformative change locally and globally.

We are excited to create new ways to serve cities, BCIT’s students and faculty, and others around the world who can benefit from ecocity focused applied knowledge and training. Whether through micro-credential courses or other accessible real-world learning, we see a path ahead filled with opportunities to help cities and their citizens achieve sustainability in all its dimensions.

Ecocities Now Book Released

December 16, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

Ecocities Now: Building the Bridge to Socially Just and Ecologically Sustainable Cities

We are pleased to announce the publication of Ecocities Now. The purpose of the book is to publish the ten best papers submitted for presentation at the International Ecocity World Summit held in Vancouver, October 7-11, 2019. The objective is to accelerate knowledge dissemination about the development of ecocities through attention to what constitutes an ecocity, what cities around the world are doing, what Vancouver as an emerging ecocity is doing, and how education can play a role in preparing the next generation of ecocity practitioners.

The work uses the Summit’s overarching theme and sub-themes as an organizing framework and aligns with the International Ecocity Standards that serve as a diagnostic tool to help cities assess their progress on the path to becoming ecocities. The Ecocity Standards are also proving useful to communities in developing locally relevant pathways to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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World Soil Day

December 4, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

December 5th, 2020 is World Soil Day – the United Nations Observance that celebrates healthy soils for a food-secure future. This years’ campaign “Keep soil alive, Protect soil biodiversity” focuses our attention on the workers that live in the soil – from tiny bacteria to agile millipedes and earthworms – all of which contribute to processes that are indispensable to life on Earth.

These days biodiversity loss is a worry – and soil is also affected. Soil is home to more than 25% of our planet’s biodiversity. There are more living creatures in a single teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on Earth. Soil organisms are responsible for many critical ecosystem services, on which humans depend: from supporting plant growth, to storing carbon and being a vast reservoir for pharmaceuticals. But soil biodiversity is under pressure! Unsustainable soil management affects life below ground (from www.fao.org/world-soil-day).

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Did you miss Dr. Jennie Moore at TEDxAbbotsford?

November 25, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

Did you miss Dr. Jennie Moore talking about Getting to One-Planet Living at the TEDxAbbotsford: Perception virtual conference on November 18th? We have good news – the talk was recorded and you can watch it below.

More than 300 participants joined Dr. Moore and the other speakers. The majority were local from the Lower Mainland, but with the event being virtual this year participants joined in from other parts of BC, Canada and from other countries. Talks were followed with a very good question and answer session. Participants asked about the most important actions for one-planet living, what citizens and their governments can do together, and some of the deeper systems changes that governments and other institutional actors could address.

Join Dr. Jennie Moore at TEDxAbbotsford November 18th & 19th.

November 6, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

Join Dr. Jennie Moore and other speakers online November 18 and 19 at 7:30pm for a virtual conference of short powerful talks covering all sorts of topics — from science to business to global issues. Dr. Moore will be discussing the Anthropocene, getting to One-Planet Living and Vancouver’s Ecological Footprint on November 18th.

Things are a little different for TEDxAbbotsford this year, but they are devoted to spreading impactful ideas and we need them now more than ever. This new format will allow guests to engage with speakers in a way that hasn’t been possible at live events in the past through breakout rooms and guided discussions. They will also showcase a digital art gallery, in collaboration with the Abbotsford Arts Council.

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Did you miss our Webinar on the ecoCity Footprint Tool Pilot Testing Results?

November 6, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

We have good news – the webinar was recorded and you can watch it here. You will learn about our Centre for Ecocities and our work helping cities find ways to lighten humanity’s ecological footprint. We profile the ecoCity Footprint Tool, the Lighter Footprint App, and our work with 10 BC communities. We show how these tools can be used to help cities and individuals assess options to close the sustainability gap, through urban restructuring and lifestyle changes related to food, buildings, consumables and wastes, transportation, and water.

Stay tuned for future webinars. In the new year we will host webinars on: engaging community action, carbon budgeting, understanding the urban metabolism and life cycle assessment.

Next Week is our Webinar: ecoCity Footprint Tool Pilot Testing Results

October 26, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

Carbon Reduction Through Sustainable Consumption & Lifestyles Workshop

Join us in November to learn more about the ecoCity Footprint Tool and Lighter Footprint App. We will provide an overview of results from testing the Tool with 10 British Columbia municipalities and demonstrate the App. The App uses output data from the Tool to support individuals interested in learning about how they can reduce their personal carbon and ecological footprints.

November 2 from 9:30-11:00 am PT

Register here

BCIT Centre for Ecocities receives international award of recognition for its positive impact

October 2, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

Ecocity Builders and the Centre have received the 2020 Incredible Impacts Award, presented collaboratively by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) and the BestCities Global Alliance.

The Incredible Impacts Award celebrates international conference legacy initiatives that lead as examples of excellence within the global meetings industry and serve as a platform for positive societal impact beyond the conference. The Centre for Ecocities is a legacy of the Ecocity World Summit 2019 (Summit) and is committed to support the vision of Ecocity Builders, the owners of the Summit Series, to provide tools and training to cities locally, and around the world, to help them become ecologically healthy. As one of three award recipients this year, the Centre is recognized for its innovation and impact made in areas of sustainability, accessibility, and ecology. This award also marks the Centre’s first international award of recognition.

BCIT Centre for Ecocities Director Jennie Moore joins UN-Habitat Taskforce for the creation of a Global Urban Monitoring Framework.

September 23, 2020 by Christine Pinkham Leave a Comment

Dr. Jennie Moore has joined the Global Monitoring Framework Task Team, an UN-Habitat coordinated task force to assist in development of a Global Urban monitoring Framework for SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

The framework will be an important contribution to international standards and methods for the compilation of urban/city level statistics and data. It aims to harmonize existing urban indexes and tools, to propose an agreed universal framework to measure the urban SDGs and the New Urban Agenda (NUA). It will also serve as a monitoring tool for the UN-Habitat Flagship Program SDG Cities and be a very useful tool for the preparation of Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) and preparation of urban data for the Common Country Assessments with the UN Country Teams.

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