History of Sustainability in Alberta's Planning Processes

In 1992, the Alberta Round Table on Environment and Economy (ARTEE) established nine basic vision elements and over 59 indicators for measuring Alberta’s sustainability into the future. Oversight for this program was placed in a department that had it’s budget cut in 1994, however the recent regional planning process under the Land Use Framework has revived the use of indicators in the development of a cumulative effects management framework and the development of specific objectives for sustainability in communities. The need for a Land Use Framework is predicated on the assumption that “we can’t do it all, everywhere, all the time, anymore” and that the impact of human activity on the landscape is causing loss of natural capital.

A Minister’s Council on Municipal Sustainability was developed in 2007 to address the rapid growth of communities in Alberta spurred by economic growth. The Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) and the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC) were brought together with the cities of Edmonton and Calgary to develop recommendations for enhanced regional cooperation and coordination. These recommendations relating to community and regional sustainability planning included the development of inter-municipal development plans that include cost/revenue sharing, the use of a “final offer arbitration system”, the development of regional agencies to coordinate planning, the use of “double majority” systems to support a consensus based decision model for regional entities, regional service delivery agencies that are self funded (levees, fuel tax, etc.).

Regional Planning & Sustainability

Over the past several years we have seen the development of the Land Use Framework, the Calgary Metropolitan Plan (CMP), and the Capital Regional Plan (CRP). The Land Use Framework, introduced in 2009, will be introducing seven Regional Plans over the next five years to Albertans. These Regional Plans will include regional objectives and thresholds for agricultural land fragmentation, recreation, historical and cultural preservation, infrastructure, water resources, and biodiversity.

Integrating these regional objectives into community sustainability planning and municipal statutory planning documents will require a basic understanding of the planning and management tools at the regional and provincial level. The Alberta Land Stewardship Act enables specific tools that can be used by municipalities to meet regional sustainability objectives. The CRP and the CMP are simply inter-jurisdictional sub-regional planning documents designed to address population growth through collaborative infrastructure planning, density objectives, water, and land resource management.

Communities that are currently engaging concepts of sustainability are using terms like ecological footprint, smart growth, genuine wealth, and managing for the triple bottom line.

Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) and Integrated Sustainability Planning (ICSP)

AUMA’s Integrated Community Sustainability Planning Guide incorporates elements of the Natural Step, Smart Growth and Genuine Wealth Principles. Each of these planning guidelines are based on assumptions of negative impacts of natural resource depletion, human interaction with environmental systems, relationships between infrastructure and economic systems, and the integration of community values.

It’s important to note that many communities in Alberta are choosing to define their own principles, their own vision, and their own strategy for developing sustainability plans. Many of the processes being used consist of a hybrid of approaches and often reflect the diversity and complexity of the communities themselves.

Integrated Community Sustainability Plans are intended to be guided by sustainable community policies captured in Provincial Land Use Policies (PLUP) and adopted by the Municipal Government Act (MGA). Community sustainability planning as enabled by the current PLUP should:

embody the principles of sustainable development…(and) make efficient use of land, infrastructure, public services, and public facilities, which promote resource conservation, which enhance economic development activities, which minimize environmental impact, which protect significant natural environments, and which contribute to the development of healthy, safe and viable communities (PLUP, p.6).

The formal introduction of sustainable community planning to Alberta municipalities arrived in an agreement signed between Alberta and the Government of Canada in 2005 for Integrated Community Sustainability Plans funded through federal gas tax subsidies. This new funding offers communities the opportunity to re-write municipal development plans (MDPs) with funding and resource support from the province through AUMA.

In 2008, AUMA approved a formal partnership agreement[1] for municipal cooperation with the province to further articulate the need for “integrated” planning between municipal-provincial or municipal-regional jurisdictions. While larger urban municipalities have the resources to develop plans and participate in inter-municipal and regional planning with existing staff planners, there are hundreds of rural communities without the capacity to develop collaborative planning processes. In response to this, 13 Regional Sustainability Planners were brought into employment with AUMA to coordinate regional sustainability plans throughout rural Alberta. The regional planners have been working since early 2009 with rural community leaders to develop multi faceted regional plans focused on environmentally friendly municipal infrastructure (transit, energy, water, etc.).

These planning processes have, for the most part, incorporated the Natural Step’s Integrated Community Sustainability Planning (ICSP) process – which is currently the most rigorous tool available for Community Planners in Alberta for the development of sustainability plans.

The Natural Step is a principle-based community-planning program that is predicated on the scientific evidence of human societies impact on natural systems. Not dissimilar from the philosophy and principles employed by the determination of Ecological Footprint, the Natural Step program uses a funnel metaphor to relate to communities the idea that the systemic root of the problems we face are increasing exponentially and are thus exponentially decreasing the ability of natural systems to provide the goods and services we need in communities.

Using a systems approach, the Natural Step program identifies 4 principles for a sustainable society as contributing to the reduction and eventual elimination of our contribution the accumulation of mined materials and substances, physical degradation of natural systems, with attention to the current and future needs of communities.

AUMA’s Municipal Sustainability Planning (MSP) Guide translates The Natural Step’s backcasting approach into 5 phases of community planning (structuring the process, creating a shared understanding of sustainable community success, undertaking a community based issue analysis, action planning, and implementation and monitoring).

This planning framework serves as a guide for planning and entails developing descriptions of success and comparing these to current realities. The performance of a gap analysis between the vision of the future and the current reality is process of identifying actions and performance measures that can be implemented and monitored.

Sustainability Resources by Sustainability Resources is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at www.sustainabilitycircle.ca.