Sustainable Community Indicators – Experiences, Lessons Learned, and Evolving Opportunities in the United States

Purpose and Goals:

To review the concept of indicators from sustainability and community perspectives, share community experiences and lessons learned in the United States, and identify opportunities for community practitioners and policymakers at all levels to improve and use sustainability indicators for measuring and monitoring progress.

Desired Outcomes:  

Participants will gain a basic understanding of sustainable community indicators and up-to-date information on their use in the United States; and will help develop recommendations about opportunities to link indicator efforts more closely to the use of science for sustainable communities, to integrate indicator efforts at multiple levels, and to use indicators to inform management and policy decisions.

Potential presenters:

• Maureen Hart, President, Sustainable Measures          
• Gerry Gray, Vice President of Policy, American Forests

Session Format:  

Presentation by subject matter experts followed by facilitated discussion with participants.  Proposed agenda:

• 9:00 a.m.  Welcome and Introductions (Ruth McWilliams, facilitator)       
• 9:15 a.m.  Overview of Sustainable Community Indicators (Maureen Hart, presenter) (Concept, experiences, lessons learned)       
• 9:40 a.m.  Recommendations for community practitioners and policymakers (Gerry Gray, presenter) (Using science, integrating efforts, informing management and policy)       
• 9:55 a.m.  Global implications (Maureen Hart, presenter)       
• 10:00 a.m.  Discussion (Ruth McWilliams, facilitator)       
• 12:00 p.m.  Adjourn

Resources:

• Earth Summit Agenda 21 (June 1992) (United Nations Division for Sustainable Development) (see Chapter 8 on Integrating Environment and Development in Decision-Making, Chapter 10 on Integrated Approach to Planning and Management of Land Resources, and Chapter 40 on Information for Decision-Making)       
• Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators (Second Edition, 1999) by Maureen Hart       
• Measuring Community Success and Sustainability: An Interactive Workbook (available from the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development)        
• Recommendations for Improving the Scientific Basis for Environmental Decision-making: A Report from the first National Conference on Science, Policy, and the Environment (December 2000) (National Council for Science and the Environment (includes topics on Environmental Indicators, Information Systems, Sustainable Communities, and Sustainable Resource Management)       
• Sustainable Communities: Task Force Report of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (Fall 1997)       
• Understanding Community-Based Forest Ecosystem Management (2000) by Gerald J. Gray, Maia J. Enzer, and Jonathan Kusel       
• Communities
  • Austin, TX: Sustainable Community Initiative  
  • Boston, MA: Sustainable Boston  
  • Boulder, CO: Boulder County Healthy Community Initiative 
  • Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Sustainable Calgary  
  • Center for Neighborhood Technology (Chicago, IL) 
  • Chattanooga/Hamilton County, TN: Life in Hamilton County, 1998: Indicators of Community Well-Being 
  • Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Edmonton Social Planning Council 
  • Franklin County, ME: Sustain Western Maine 
  • Hamilton Wentworth, Ontario, Canada: Vision 2020
  • Hennepin County, MN: Indicators of Community Sustainability
  • Kaua'i, HI: Ho'okipa Network of Community-Based Organizations
  • Lansing, MI: Sustainable Lansing
  • Olympia, WA: Sustainable Community Roundtable 
  • Pierce County, Washington: Benchmarks
  • San Francisco, CA: Sustainability Plan for City and County
  • Santa Barbara, CA: Community Environmental Council Santa Barbara South Coast Community Indicators
  • Santa Monica, CA: City of Santa Monica
  • Seattle, WA: Sustainable Seattle
  • Sierra Nevada, California: Sierra Business Council
  • Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Healthy City Office 
  • Truckee Meadows, NV: Quality of Life Indicators
  • Upper Valley, NH/VT: Vital Communities of the Upper Valley
  • Waitakere, New Zealand: City Council
• States
  • Colorado – http://www.sustainablecolorado.org/ 
  • Florida – http://sustainable.state.fl.us/ 
  • Maine Development Foundation – www.mdf.org/meip 
  • Minnesota Planning – www.mnplan.state.mn.us/mm/index 
  • New Jersey Future – www.njfuture.org 
  • Oregon Progress Board – www.econ.state.or.us/opb
• Other Resources
  • Sustainable Measures, Inc. – http://www.sustainablemeasures.com 
  • AtKisson and Associates – http://www.AtKisson.com 
  • Communities By Choice – http://www.communitiesbychoice.org 
  • Crossroads Resource Center – http://www.crcworks.org/crossroads 
  • Friends of the Earth Scotland – http://www.foe‑scotland.org.uk/campaigns/sustainable‑scot/ 
  • International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives – http://www.iclei.org 
  • International Institute for Sustainable Development – http://iisd1.iisd.ca 
  • Lowell Center for Sustainable Production – http://www.uml.edu/centers/LCSP/
  • Mountain Association for Community Economic Development – http://www.maced.org
  • Natural Step – http://www.naturalstep.org/
  • Northwest Policy Institute – http://weber.u.washington.edu/~npcweb/
  • Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition – http://www.opc.on.ca/ohcc/
  • Sustainability Institute – http://www.sustainer.org
  • Sustainable Communities Network – http://www.sustainable.org
  • Redefining Progress – http://www.rprogress.org
  • World Business Council on Sustainable Development – http://www.wbcsd.ch/
•  Key Websites
  • American Forests –  www.americanforests.org (includes information about Understanding Community-Based Forest Ecosystem Management)       
  • Great Lakes Forest Alliance – www.lsfa.org (includes information about its forum on Communities and the Forest and its project on Sustainable Forest Management)       
  • National Archives and Records Administration – http://clinton2.nara.gov/PCSD (for information on and reports of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, including the work done on sustainable communities)       
  • National Council for Science and the Environment – www.cnie.org (includes Recommendations for Improving the Scientific Basis for Environmental Decisionmaking)       
  • North Central Regional Center for Rural Development – www.ag.iastate.edu/centers/rdev (includes information about Measuring Community Success and Sustainability)       
  • Sustainable Measures – www.sustainablemeasures.com (includes information on Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators)       
  • United Nations / Commission on Sustainable Development – www.un.org/esa/sustdev (includes Agenda 21)       
  • USDA Forest Service / Cooperative Forestry – www.fs.fed.us/spf/coop (includes information about Rural Community Assistance and Toolkit for Sustaining Community Capacity (see topic on Measuring Progress))       
  • USDA Forest Service / Inventory and Monitoring Institute – www.fs.fed.us/institute (includes information about the Local Unit Criteria & Indicators Development Project underway involving six national forests)       
  • USDA Forest Service / Sustainable Resource Management – www.fs.fed.us/sustained (includes background information as well as specific information about various indicator efforts)

[Note:  Additional information will be available at the conference, including information about the International Sustainability Indicators Network and a project underway in the United States on “Linking Communities to the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicatorsâ€�]

Session Organizer:

Ruth McWilliams
National Sustainable Development Coordinator
USDA Forest Service

Presenter Bios:

Maureen Hart, President, Sustainable Measures, North Andover, Massachusetts

Maureen Hart, the President and founder of Sustainable Measures, is an internationally known expert on sustainability indicators and the author of the Guide to Sustainable Community Indicators and the related web site on measuring sustainability (www.sustainablemeasures.com).  Both the guide and the web site are being used by many communities and organizations working on understanding and measuring progress toward sustainability.  She is also the Director of the International Sustainability Indicators Network (ISIN).  ISIN, which is hosted by the Sustainability Institute, is a non-profit organization of sustainability indicator practitioners and experts.

In addition to developing and presenting training courses on sustainability and indicators, projects Ms. Hart has been involved in include providing technical assistance to community indicator projects, evaluating indicators and indicator sets, and research on measuring sustainability.  She has consulted with businesses and business-related non-profits on sustainable production indicators and is an affiliate of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.  She consults with foundations and other grant-making organizations on defining strategies for and evaluating decisions relating to funding sustainable development related projects.

Ms. Hart has worked on sustainability issues with communities, non-profit organizations, federal, state, regional, and local governments, foundations and the private sector including the US Environmental Protection Agency, the USDA Forest Service, the US Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development Indicators and numerous state and local environmental agencies.  She has an MS in Hazardous Materials Management from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Tufts University and a BS in Interdisciplinary Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gerald J. Gray, Vice President for Policy, American Forests, Washington, D.C.

Gerald J. Gray is Vice President for Policy and oversees the Forest Policy Center at American Forests.  He has extensive experience working with Congressional staff, federal agencies, private conservation groups, and forest industry on issues related to the protection and sustainable management of public and private forests. His current work seeks to promote community-based initiatives to restore and maintain healthy forest ecosystems in both urban and rural areas. 

Prior to joining American Forests in 1988, Gerry worked as a state forest resource planner with the Division of Forestry, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and with the U.S. Forest Service, Northeastern Area, State and Private Forestry.  He holds a Doctor of Forestry degree from the University of Minnesota (1987), a Master of Forest Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (1982), and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University (1978).

Questions? conference@NCSEonline.org