Foundation grants will finance the opening round in effort to move Duluth/Superior into a new era of ‘sustainable’ economic and social growth.   3/15/2008 by Wayne Nelson

(Photo: The former mining community of Canmore, Alberta has reinvented itelf as a sustainable community through the Swedish “Natural Step” program. Sustainable Twin Ports is attempting to replicate the process.)

Canmore, a picturesque community of 15,000 nestled in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, has remade itself since its principal industry for nearly a century, coal mining, ceased operations in 1979.

In recent years, Canmore has even had the dubious distinction — for some — as Canada’s fastest-growing community with all the related development pressures. In 2001-05 its population grew nearly 12 percent with many of those newcomers second home seasonal residents. Canmore has the highest number of physicians per-capita in the province and become a booming “quality-of-life” community and tourism center.

Canmore’s big break came shortly after the mine closure when Calgary, Alberta — 70 miles to the east — was selected to host the 1988 Winter Olympics. In the shadow of Canada’s world famous Banff National Park, Canmore was resuscitated by the international exposure that came when it was selected as the site for all Nordic events in the 1988 winter games. Canmore has since provided the backdrop for several major feature films, most recently, “Brokeback Mountain.”

To bring order to its rapid transformation, Canmore became a “green” community, reflecting its embrace of “The Natural Step” a Swedish methodology that integrates environmental protection into a strategy for building a sustainable economy.

Canmore has tapped a geothermal energy source and embraced sustainable building design. A new municipal services building that opened in 2004 was awarded LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver certification.

Closer to home, advocates of The Natural Step are going to tap into that Canmore experience as they launch the opening round in an initiative for bringing the principals of sustainability to future development in both Duluth and Superior.

Sustainable Twin Ports was created in late 2007 with the merger of two other groups. One was Sustainable Duluth, a grassroots group that surfaced in 2005 as the city was updating its land use planning rules for the first time since the 1950s. In November, it merged with the “We Mean Green” team that’s part of the Knight Creative Communities Initiative, a broader year-old effort underway to guide the future of Duluth/Superior.

Their merger to become Sustainable Twin Ports set the stage for grants that will finance the launch of the effort to remake Duluth/Superior as a greener community. Sustainable Twin Ports has won pledges totaling $180,000 over the next three years from three Duluth-based philanthropic organizations, the A.H. Zeppa Family Foundation, the Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation’s Fund for the Environment and the Wildey H. Mitchell Family Fund.

“This is a foundation-funded effort . . . the first of its scope in the United States,” said Jerry Hembd, director of the Northern Center for Community and Economic Development on the UW-Superior campus. Hembd also is one of 31 “community catalysts” named in 2007 in the Knight Foundation-backed initiative to push the broader community development effort.

March 4 launch

Sustainable Twin Ports launched its sustainability project March 4 at Minnesota Power Building in a session hosted by three local development groups, The Northland Works, a workforce development initiative, the Area Partnership for Economic Expansion (APEX) and the Knight Community Catalysts.

That session will culminate with a call for volunteers from 10 to 15 Duluth/Superior organizations — public, private nonprofit and for-profit — to serve as ”early adopters.”

The early adopter process is judged to have been key to the eventual community-wide embrace of sustainable development in Canmore.

In the Duluth/Superior initiative, up to five employees of each “early adopter” institution selected will be trained in the sustainability principles of The Natural Step over a one-year period. In that training they will develop implementation plans for their organizations.

These early adopter organizations also will help develop strategies for broader community engagement and begin to disseminate the lessons and knowledge they gain to the general public.

The Duluth/Superior initiative will use trainers from Canmore in the “early adopter” phase, said Mary Dragich, a Sustainable Twin Ports steering committee member.

She said it’s too soon to know whether a mature Sustainable Twin Ports effort will resemble either the initiative or results in Canmore. “There are many other Natural Step networks out there. We’ll have to see what the various organizations can show us,” she said.

The Natural Step origin

Swedish oncologict Karl-Henrik Robért founded The Natural Step process in 1989. The four core principles of The Natural Step — since adopted by the American Planning Association as a best practices framework for sustainable development — embrace social as well as economic values into a development approach. They are are:

• reducing use of fossil fuels, scarce metals and minerals;

• reducing dependence upon chemicals and synthetic substances;

• leaving a lighter footprint on nature; and

• taking better care of people through more equitable sharing of natural resources.

The cities of Washburn and Ashland were the first in the region to embrace these principles, becoming “eco-municipalities” in 2005. The city of Duluth and Douglas County have since passed resolutions adopting them as planning and policy making guides, and the two units of government are being sought as “early adopters,” Hembd said.

The Canmore experience

In Canmore, nine early adapters were selected: the municipal government, its citizens’ environmental advisory review committee, the public library, a seniors association, the tourism bureau, and several businesses, including an independent insurance firm, the city’s Radisson Hotel & Conference Center, a high-end ‘green’ home builder, a large residential developer and a pizza manufacturer. Midway in the 20-month process, the waste management district that services Canmore and Polar Pin, a for-profit promotional advertising product manufacturer, were elevated from observers to early adapter status.

Dragich noted Nike, Starbucks, Ikea, Wal-mart, and McDonalds have been among early adopters in other initiatives, including the Oregon Natural Step Network. She indicated particular interest in the Oregon network, and the 10-year-old Alliance for Sustainability, a Chequamegon Bay group that played a major role in the decisions by the cities of Washburn and Ashland to become eco-municipalities. Dragich said Sustainable Twin Ports may rely heavily on the Alliance for Sustainability and the Oregon Network as it develops its own model.

Nevertheless, Canmore’s embrace of The Natural Step over a 20-month period has produced extensive details of the experience that Sustainable Twin Ports already is studying.

Canmore’s May 2006 final report to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which provided $148,000 as the project’s primary funder, provides an amply documented account of Canmore’s experience in its move toward sustainable development. The 146-page report includes individual case studies for eight of the early adopters, which provide a guide for what’s ahead for organizations that participate in the Sustainable Twin Ports opening round. Here are excerpts from some of those studies:

• The pizza company, Rocky Mountain Flatbread Co., developed an action plan that is overhauling virtually every aspect of the business, from its handling of food waste and selection of industrial equipment and restaurant furniture to new human resources practices designed to reduce employee turnover.

• The independent board that governs Canmore’s public library joined as an early adapter to help incorporate green features into a planned expansion to serve a growing community, and to better serve as an information hub in the city’s journey toward sustainable development.

• The Radisson has reduced its water consumption; expanded recycling programs and built a new recycling center; and searched for new markets and revenues to recycle kitchen grease as an input for production of biodiesel. On the human resources front, it now provides child care service to employees and has added employee incentives for walking or carpooling to work.

Hembd said the deadline for applications from Duluth/Superior organizations to be early adopters is set for April 22, Earth Day. He said Sustainable Twin Ports also will hire a project coordinator and secure office space in downtown Duluth before May 1.

UW-Superior is serving as the project’s fiduciary sponsor.

• Investment in colleges, universities totals $270 miliion since 2000 -8/25/2010
• Despite recession, Range Readiness Initiative continues -8/17/2010
• Wide Open Future -8/10/2010
• Highway design change sends customers elsewhere -8/3/2010
• Visitors make Bayfield a business destination -7/27/2010