Earth Hour: Environmental Hero or Villain?

Last Saturday (March 23^rd) was Earth Hour. It’s an event where people all over the world turn off their lights for an hour, in an effort to reduce carbon emissions and raise awareness about climate change. As an environment student, I can’t help but question the real impact that this event has. I’ve always been skeptical environmental movements like earth hour though… as are many other people. If you google “the impact for earth hour”, one of the first articles that comes up is about how earth hour will not cut carbon emissions (here its is: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7527469/Earth-Hour-will-not-cut-carbon-emissions.html). The article claims that turning off lights for an hour will not likely lead to less energy in the grid. Not to mention, once the lights go back on, power stations will need to fire up quickly, which might actually result in an increase in emissions. These are valid points, I don’t deny that. But Earth Hour is not just about the hour itself, it’s about raising consciousness about climate change. The Earth Hour website makes it clear that we must take action beyond the hour itself, and it does that by sharing  stories from around the world of people who are making a difference. (http://www.earthhour.org/page/about/about-earth-hour)

After stirring for a while on how I feel about Earth Hour, I’ve decided that it is in fact a very positive environmental “movement”. Although the impact of the hour itself might not be huge, it’s the awareness and call to action that the hour creates which really matter. Also, it empowers people and inspires them to take even more steps towards reducing their emissions. Participants realize that doing something about climate change is as easy as turning out the lights! Simple changes in lifestyle do make a difference, and Earth Hour really demonstrates exactly that.

Earth Hour is also great because it’s done it cities all over the world. Earth Hour reminds us that climate change is a global problem that requires global solutions. On a personal level, Earth Hour also reminds me that the poorest of the world influence climate change too… and that cities must be center in the fight against climate change. Cities are, of course, the source of almost all carbon emissions on earth, which makes them the source of the problem but also key to the solution.

So, do you support Earth Hour? How do you think cities, which are the target participants of Earth Hour, are going in influence climate change?

A new approach to advertising

I’ve been wanting to write a post about marketing for a while now, because it’s been a big part of my studies this term. To put my own twist on marketing though, I want to talk about advertising in slums. I found a really cool article about how advertising in Rio De Janerio is evolving... take a look at it!

http://adage.com/article/global-news/rio-slums-undergo-a-marketplace-makeover/235257/

As Rio’s Favelas get safer, marketers are finally venturing into these previously inhospitable communities. This is especially important, considering that Rio will be hosting the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. As I learned in my class my Regional Planning and Economic Development class last term, sometimes it takes a big event like the Olympics for a city to improve itself.

An ad agency called NBS has opened in Rio’s Santa Marta favela, and has attracted big names like Coca-Cola. They want to talk to the community in order to develop the brands that they take on as clients, but they also want to create social good (each brand in the area has to contribute in some way). For example, Coca-Cola offers entrepreneurship courses, and banks in the area offer micro credit. One of the most amazing displays of this agency’s work is Akzo Nobel’s project where they donated paint and trained locals to revitalize 2000 buildings across Brazil.

I think companies like NBS need to be the future of advertising, not just in developing countries, but all around the world. They create benefits for not just their clients, but the community as well. Clients get the advantage of tailoring their advertising to their potential customers, get to get their message across in new ways, as well as access to a greater customer base. Communities get to take advantage of the products/services that the brands offer, as well as the brands' contribution to their community (whatever form that may take). Not to mention, this new way of advertising could start to combat the problem of consumer immunity to marketing. People will start to feel connected to the brands that advertise to them, and might begin to trust advertising again.

So what’s your opinion on advertising with a social motive? Can marketers here in Canada learn  from NBS?

A ramble about the state of the world

This post isn't really related to the theme of my blog... just something I wanted to talk about. So, at some point over the Christmas break this year, I was watching TV with my family and I can't remember why but a show we watched (I think it was about millionaire/billionaire lifestyles) got me really frustrated with the world in general. I decided to write down that frustration, and ended up with a poorly worded page-long thing about why I hate the human race. I'm not terribly proud of what I wrote and it feels like its a huge rant, but an informed rant nonetheless. I wanted to share it and see where people agreed/disagreed with me and what reactions they had to it. It is a little long, so don't feel obligated to read the whole thing. Well, here it is:

"Let’s face it: Life can suck. The human race sucks. We’re destroying our planet and live in a hugely unequal world. Even though we can see this destruction and inequality happening before our eyes we aren’t really doing anything about it. It can make a person who cares, like me, feel terribly frustrated. I want to help and change my own lifestyle, but I feel kinda small in a world of 7 billion other people. I feel like no matter what I do I won’t make a difference. And then you hear “one person can make a difference” all over the media and it makes you feel guilty for not being that “one person”. The truth is, the world isn’t going to change overnight if one person decides to buy a hybrid car or to give money to some charity. What we need is a massive social movement.

We need to realize what consumerist zombies we’ve become. I know change is hard, because it would mean that those with power and money (aka: most of the Western world) will have to give things up, and this would inconvenience them. I’m completely okay with admitting that the reason I have not made significant changes in my life is because making those changes would mean I can’t have all the things I want. It makes me question my own morality… I’m all for helping others and bettering the environment, but why is it that as soon as I helping involves lowering my own standard of living I’m a little more hesitant? The reason, I’ve decided, is that most people to have good intentions and want to make a difference, but we also want to have the best lives possible for ourselves and for the people we care about. The issue is therefore changing people’s mindset. We need to make the rich realize that taking action to help the environment and the poor will benefit everyone, so lowering their lifestyles just a little will be good for them in the end. In the world I am living in right now, I don’t see that happening. It’s a slightly depressing conclusion, but I just can’t see the polluting, unequal lifestyles of the West going away anytime soon. Why? Because we like the status quo.

We like having “stuff”. We’d like everyone to have “stuff” like us, but getting them “stuff” is too hard. There’s several problems with that view. First of all, more “stuff” is not what we need. Having a huge suburban house to fill with things we don’t need is not the good life. Second of all, consuming more “stuff” will only worsen the environmental crisis we already have. Shipping food, clothes, toys or microwaves from some country with cheap labour so we don’t have to pay full price is incredibly unsustainable for the environment and perpetuates poverty. Third of all, we could indeed give the poor “stuff” if we really want to. As a development student, I’ve heard statements like “we could solve world hunger with the money Europeans spend on ice cream in a year”, and I do truly believe those statements.

In my opinion (and I do not exclude myself from this at all), the Western world spends a lot of money on things we don’t really need, and we believe that this means we have a higher standard of living. The “World Happiness Index” is a function of consumption… how screwed up is that? So, how could we possibly get that social movement I was talking about in order to change this status quo? I don’t have the answer of course, and I don’t think anyone does. My conclusion is again, kind of depressing. I think it might take a major disaster for the rich to wake up and realize we are killing our earth and each other. I also think that there may be a few people, maybe from my generation, who will find a way to drill the harsh reality of the current state of the world into the minds of the rich and make them change.

Maybe it will just take one passionate person to make everyone realize that we need a major shift in how we live our lives. And you know what, I know I’m not the only one who cares. When it comes down to it, we all care about each other and want to make life on this planet better. So what’s it gonna take to get people to realize that we can’t keep living the way we do and that we need to work together to figure out how we should live? It’s a question that may not be answered in my lifetime, but it’s something the human race is going to have to figure out sometime soon. In the end, I’m skeptical but optimistic about our future. I think we do have the ability and will to figure out how to live sustainability  but it’s gonna be really hard getting there. Sustainability may just be the biggest challenge the human race has ever faced; now we just need to raise up and accept that challenge."

Transit in Ecuador

A classmate of mine wrote a blog post about the importance of transit, which inspired me to write a post on transit as well (thanks Sumbal! Her blog is sumbalwrites.blogspot.ca). I decided I want to talk about transit in small town Ecuador because I did a project on it when I lived there. It amazed me that my host brother and sister made the hour-and-a-half trek from Guyallabamba (the town of 7000 I lived in) to Quito every day to go to university. What amazed me even more was how many other people did the exact same thing. This is a picture that my host brother put on facebook the other day, referencing La Flota Pichincha (the name of the bus system in the community). The caption translates to “Get on! It’s empty!”.

It’s been a while since I wrote the assignment, but I do remember the reason I chose the issue of transit was because of the inefficiencies I saw in the system. There’s only one route that goes through Guyallabamba, which goes along the main road in town and then to Quito. It was accessible for me, as my family lives a little off the main road. I know for some of my co-workers at the preschool I worked at had a far walk to get to the bus. There’s no extra buses at peak times, meaning people often couldn't get on the bus and buses were filled to the brim and very unsafe because of that. Also, many buses are not up to safety standards or don’t work properly (which is especially important considering the hilly, mountainous terrain they have to drive through). There’s also the issue of fare and fare collection. Everyone, regardless of demographic, paid the same fare which was collected by a bus boy who came around and asked you where you were going and told you your fare.

Once you get to Quito though, transit becomes much more efficient. There’s designated bus lanes in the middle of the road, and rapid light rail transit that I found easy to access with multiple connecting routes which made getting from one end of the city to the other fairly easy. You pay fare to get into the bus terminal/station, which made loading/unloading very fast. There’s still a lot of traffic, as depicted in this picture of an intersection in the historical district of Quito on a regular day (which I actually visited!). I thought the traffic was managed chaos though.

It seemed to me that the government, both provincial and federal, had focused on Quito’s transit while somewhat neglecting small town transit (which I would argue is just as important and affects just as many people). I’m now asking myself why that might be and what might make the government start focusing on small town transit. Am I right in thinking small town transit is important? How do you think we as development practitioners should approach transit?

Also, here’s another blogger’s post about using transit as a tourist in Quito… it gives you great idea of how their system works. They have a slightly different opinion then me on the system’s efficiency, which I appreciated: http://finaltransit.com/blog/2011/12/19/quito-public-transport-bus/

Resilience and development aid

In my resource management of the built environment class, we focus on what a developer needs to consider to build in a way that doesn’t have adverse ecological effects; which when I think about it is exactly what I want to do as a carrer (but in a developing country setting). One term we have defined/used in the course is resilience, which is the ability of a natural system to recover from a disaster. The term resilience is important in the aid community too, which I never really considered until I saw this article on the IRIN homepage today

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97584/Understanding-resilience

The United Nations Development Programme and the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs are trying to figure out how development actors can improve environmental resilience, which is a little tricky considering there is no standard definition of resilience or way to measure it. The problem according to them, which I very much agree with, is that we define resilience in terms of responding rather than preventing disasters. The costs of preventing the damage from a disaster often greatly outweighs the costs of repairing the damage. In my mind then, development practitioners should focus on prevention, while keeping in mind that prevention isn’t always possible and emergency relief is needed sometimes.

The article says “resilience can potentially act as a bridge between emergency response and long-term development aid, tackling the vulnerabilities that make people susceptible to shocks”. Resilience is about aid that helps communities build better to prevent the need for emergency aid all together – which makes so much sense. Development to me is about making sustainable changes in communities not just putting band-aids on problems, and preventing disasters seems like a pretty sustainable strategy to me! But that raises the question, is emergency humanitarian aid just a band-aid solution that we should stop? Should we not give aid to countries in environmental crisis then? I think the trick is to deal with emergencies in a way that allows for transition to development, which means humanitarian and development aid must be co-ordinated together. This is going to require agencies to do things differently and be more flexible, which is really hard to do (which is probably why this type of collaboration hasn’t happened yet).

So, how do YOU think resilience should be defined, and how does that effect the work of aid organizations in your opinion?

Disaster Preparation 101

I read a really interesting article today so I thought I’d talk about it! It’s about how NGOs and the United Nations are using “fun” to teach children about disaster prevention. Check it out here:

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97558/Games-cartoons-boost-youth-disaster-preparation

I guess I’d never thought about how children are more affected by disasters than adults, but it makes intuitive sense. I do wish the article explained why youth are more affected though. I also wish it had got into detail about the reasons why the Asia-Pacific regions is very disaster prone… which is something I have a bit of background in thanks to a course I took about natural disasters. The Asia-Pacific region is a perfect storm (no pun intended!) for disasters of every variety, but floods especially. The entire region is very close to sea level and is very flat, making it very easy for hurricanes and typhoons to flood huge areas. There’s also the issue of major cities developing close to the coast and with no consideration of floods… but that’s a whole other rant I could go on.

What I like about this article is it highlights how important disaster preparation is, but also how easy it is to do. Simple games, cartoons and art can help youth prepare for disasters… that’s pretty amazing! Here's an example of a cartoon for disaster prevention in Thailand

I think these disaster preparedness strategies work so well because they approach learning in a fun and participative way. Kids aren’t board, sitting in a room listening to someone tell them what to do in a flood. Games are engaging, fun and get the message of disaster preparedness across in a realistic way. The strategies let youth socialize, discuss the issues with their friends and family, and empowers them. These children don’t want to feel like disaster victims, they want to help their communities in disaster situations. These approaches to disaster preparation give them the opportunity to do just that.

Another important point that this article makes is that disaster education shouldn’t be exclusively in schools, because the children who aren’t in school need to be reached too. These children often live in overcrowded slums which are susceptible to all kinds of disasters, so getting to them is even more critical. What other fun teaching strategies can you think of, and what are your thoughts on these strategies in general?

Gentrification... Is Johannesburg doing it right?

Growing up in a suburb of Toronto, I’ve seen the problems of suburbanization and of “the big city”. The city has poverty, crime, and infrastructure issues. One urban development issue I’m really interested in is gentrification. Basically, gentrification is when a poorer area of a city is revitalized and becomes richer. The biggest problem with gentrification is it makes the area unaffordable for the low-income/poor residents who lived there. Think of Queen Street West, or Regent Park.

It’s scary to think that almost half of Toronto lacks adequate social services such as transit. Half the city are renters, most of them living in old high-rise apartment buildings. The area of the city with raising incomes are being invested in and rehabilitated. Living costs are increasing and driving people out of the downtown core. Should a city shut out the poor like that? Is it right that Toronto, or any city for that matter, is so divided? I think gentrification is a huge problem, on many levels. Integration of poor and rich is constantly cited as a way to deal with economic, social and political problems. Of course there’s also the core issue of misspending public money. You would think that tax money would go to improving public services and helping those in need… not towards investing in the rich part of town. Gentrification is a problem of the wrong voices being heard in decision making in my opinion. Maybe if those in power heard the stories of the poor affected by gentrification, then they would think twice before investing in the newest up and coming neighbourhood. Another solution to gentrification might be creating policy which forbids it… which would require serious advocacy. You could also keep the rent of current residents at the same rate so they aren’t bought out. You could provide the poor in these revitalized neighbourhoods with services, employment, and options for relocation. But these solutions are band-aid, they don’t deal with the core issue of inequality.

Gentrification isn’t just a problem a North American problem of course. Johannesburg in South Africa is experiencing it too…  by trying to revitalize its downtown Central Business District. The area was known for high crime rates and being a “whites-only” area during apartheid, which deterred businesses and people. Buildings remained empty, and people were leaving for the suburbs. The city wanted to fix that, and bring people back to the area by revamping it. Not to mention the added pressure of being hosts of the World Cup. Historical buildings have been turned into condos, which will hopefully bring in new residents.

The underlying causes and problems of gentrification in Johannesburg are fundamentally different than Torontos. Johannesburg’s gentrification is meant to bring people back to an area that they were once afraid of. In Toronto though, gentrification is driven by profiting developers and attracting the wealthy to a previously poor area. Whereas gentrification in Johannesburg is trying to bring people in, it’s pushing people out in Toronto. Does this mean Johannesburg is getting gentrification right, and Toronto isn’t? Could we learn from their urban planning? What experience do you have with gentrification, and what do think could be done about it?