An Integrated Community Sustainability Plan for Charlottetown

  The City of Charlottetown is preparing an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP).  The ICSP will define the city’s vision, goals and actions to become more sustainable and healthy.  This is an opportunity for communities to access funding by the Federal government (fuel tax money) and an additional amount by the Provincial government.  The goal is to finalize this so-called Green Initiative by the end of 2009.
aaAs a member of the Island Nature Trust board, I had the pleasure of attending three meetings.  The planning process started with a public meeting which was facilitated by a consulting team (Stantec) followed by two stakeholder workshops.  In the first (public) meeting citizens were asked to think about core values of the City and the meaning of sustainability.  For example, what opportunities are there to build from and what some of the current sustainable initiatives in Charlottetown are – Public transportation, for instance.

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  The ICSP consists of 4 pillars: Economical, Social, Cultural and Environmental.  In the two environmental stakeholder meetings there were good discussions on a variety of topics such as alternative energy, water safety, public transportation, sustainable housing, increase in green spaces, house retrofits, sustainable building incentives, wildlife corridors, and environmental education.  In these meetings the group prioritized four environmental goals:
1.    Protect and restore our water and watersheds
2.    Reduce our ecological footprint
3.    Become a carbon neutral City
4.    Increase food security (grow and buy local)
aaThere was abundant discussion on how to narrow down these general goals and a number of attainable objectives were produced.  Now it’s up to the consulting team to once again summarize the outcome of the discussions and present it to City Counsel.  After approval, the implementation of this plan will be monitored by Infrastructure Canada.a

By Fiep deBie, Nov 2009