What if growth is not the solution?

I was just revising a presentation for one of my classes on the topic of economic growth, in the presentation I present a few alternative approaches to assessing "success" on the national and international level. Proponents of steady state economics and the degrowth movements suggest that in "(over)developed" economies there is no longer a strong correlation between  economic growth and the well-being of that society. Much like choice and wealth - going from having nothing to something is certainly a good thing, but the relationship is not always a linear one. In biology, growth is good to a certain point, and then it's not a good thing... people are starting to understand that the same is likely true with economic growth.

That being said, I pulled up all references to economic growth  in the recent US Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates, as I believe it drives home the point just how deeply ingrained the idea of growth as THE path to wellness is in North America - and how challenging it will be to challenge this underlying assumption at the policy level.

 

Concordia University Year end Design Exhibition

Formation poster (click to get details)

I'm going to be participating the year end design exhibition with a number of other graduate students. Some of the projects are pretty darn cool, I suggest you stop by this weekend and check it out. 

Friday April 20-Sun 10am-6pm 1515 Ste. Catherine St. on the 6th & 7th floors of the EV building. 

Vernissage is 6pm-10pm on Thursday, April 19th. 

International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas
WHERE: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
WHEN: May 13-19, 2012
SPEAKERS INCLUDE: David Suzuki, William Rees, Mary Evelyn-Tucker, John Fullerton, Alain Gras, Joan Martinez-Alier, Serge Mongeau, Elizabeth Peredo Beltrán, Juliet Schor, Peter Victor, François Schneider

WANT SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE?
MONTREAL CONFERENCE TO EXPLORE ALTERNATIVES TO GROWTH

Sustaining our future means rethinking the relationship of economic growth to human well-being and environmental integrity.  The International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas meets this May in Montreal to explore the possibilities of a post-growth world.

From May 13-19, 2012, Montreal will host academics, activists, artists, environmentalists and indigenous peoples for the International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas.  A fixation on economic growth is at the root of our environmental issues and social inequalities. Degrowth challenges traditional economic paradigms that fail to account for environmental and social costs and are obsessively driven by GDP and other flawed measures of well-being. Degrowth aims to achieve human happiness and well-being with less material consumption.  Family, music, art, culture, community, and meaningful employment are some values that drive more qualitative increases in well-being.

These issues are a priority for many people around the world, as demonstrated most recently by the Occupy Movement.  A new way forward that increases both environmental and social justice is essential.

Building on degrowth conferences in Paris in 2008 and Barcelona in 2010, the conference will place the décroissance movement that began in Europe in the context of the Americas.  The Conference will be hosted jointly by Concordia University, HEC, Université de Montréal, McGill University, and UQAM. Registration is now open at http://montreal.degrowth.org

For more information, or to schedule an interview, please contact Bob Thomson at montreal(at)degrowth.net

Punishing participation: the rise of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and Academic freedom

Thought I'd post this invitation to a public lecture, as it might be of some interest...

The Special Individualized Programs of the School of Graduate Studies and

the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment are pleased to present:

Punishing participation: The “reputation” of Canadian mining companies, the rise of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and Academic freedom

A talk by Dr. Alain Deneault (Department of Political Science. Université de Montréal)

Wednesday, April 3, 2012, 1:30-2:30 PM

Sir George Williams Campus, Hall Building, Room H 1269

Corporations increasingly use litigation to suppress criticism by citizens.  Known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), these lawsuits also target scholars.  Drawing on the legal sociologies literature and the case of Canadian mining companies, this talk will examine the disciplining effect of SLAPPs on academic freedom and on democracy more broadly. 

International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas

Next May, Montreal universities will host the first International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas. This conference presents an opportunity for students and the general public to interact with scholars, artists and professionals interested in reshaping society into one that is more just and sustainable.

"Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio, the linkage of sustainable development to economic growth requires profound rethinking. It has not offered a convincing solution to one of the most dramatic crises in history: how to avert ecological collapse while enhancing social justice and improving life’s prospects. In advance of Rio plus 20, our Conference seeks to challenge and move beyond the sustainable development agenda. A degrowth perspective will help us visualize and build towards a truly prosperous world." Read more...

There is an open call for proposals with the intent to "build a degrowth movement in the Americas with rigorous examination of issues, involving academia and social movements, arts and sciences, thought and living experiences. For this purpose it will be a "slow" one-week long conference to experience degrowth." Read more...

The Clinton Global Initiative for Universities

Again from a recent email I received, this may be of interest to some folks out there: 


"The Clinton Global Initiative for Universities is an initiative created by ex-President Clinton to engage the youth of the world to commit to social justice and concrete action that could help people in their community, and in their world.

The main activity of the Clinton Global Initiative for Universities is to raise awareness about the CGI U general meeting. In 2011, the meeting assembled thousands of student leaders, dignitaries, and national youth organizations together to discuss issues of global importance. The speakers included Mandy Moore, Sean Penn, and Bill Clinton himself.

Students can apply to this meeting by committing themselves to solving a social issue. This can be in conjunction with efforts that they are already putting in to solving either problems at the local, national, or international level. CGI U aims to foster these commitments, and then help support them with any resources available at our disposal.

While applications and commitments are on hold for CGI U 2012 as the final meeting date and place are being set, interested applicants can apply for the campus representative team at http://www.cgiu.org/about/campus_representatives.asp."

Course in Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Canada and the Global South

Montreal's Social Justice Committee is coordinating a new Certificate course on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Canada and the Global South.


From an email I received today:

The SJC invites you to take part in a new certificate course: 
Economic, social and cultural rights in Canada and the Global South 



What are economic, social and cultural rights? What are the agreements in place to protect them? What are groups doing in Canada to defend these rights at home and abroad? 

This five-week popular education course will serve an introduction to economic, social and cultural rights. Participants will learn from guest speakers, share their knowledge, and work together to develop strategies for social change.

September 20 - October 18, 2011, Tuesday evenings at 6:00pm
Cost: $35 (Contact us if a sliding scale is needed)
Location: Centre St-Pierre, 1212 Rue Panet, Montreal (Metro Beaudry)
Wheelchair accessible. Childcare available upon request. Food and drink provided. 
To register, and  for more information on participating speakers, visit www.sjc-cjs.org.
 Course schedule:
Each week guest speakers will explore specific issues related to economic, social and cultural rights, and discuss their work defending these rights in Canada and the Global South.

Week One: Introduction to economic, social and cultural rights with a focus on the right to an adequate standard of living•    Equitas on the history of economic, social and cultural rights
•    Project Genesis on anti-poverty activism in Montreal
•    Social Justice Committee on how debt and international trade affect global poverty

Week Two: The right to work and labour rights•    PINAY on the rights of migrant Filipino women workers in Quebec
•    Children’s Care International on child trafficking and international child labour

Week Three: The right to health and social security•    Head & Hands on young people's access to sexual health care and education in Quebec
•    Handicap International on anti-landmine agreements and the rights of the disabled globally

Week Four: The right to family life•    LGBT Family Coalition on the legal and social recognition of LGBT families in Quebec
•    Canadian Crossroads International on women’s rights and gender-based violence in Africa

Week Five: Self-determination and the rights of indigenous people•    Chief Ghislain Picard on Plan Nord and the self-determination of First Nations in Quebec
•    Father Ernie Schibli on Canadian mining and the rights of indigenous people in Latin America

This project is made possible by generous donations from the Human Rights Program, Canadian Heritage and L'Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI).

Business Beyond Tomorrow Conference

Later this week (March 11th-12th) three of Montreal’s business schools, John Molson School of Business, Desautels Faculty of Management and HEC Montreal, will be hosting “Business Beyond Tomorrow”,  a sustainability conference for business leaders, professors, and students to share ideas on how the corporate world can develop and implement initiatives for a more sustainable future.

I'll be acting as a moderator for a panel discussion on Green Building. The whole event promises to be interesting as there are a number of great speakers and participants. Seems like an excellent opportunity to be involved and to meet people who are working in and on corporate sustainability

Oil Sands / Tar Sands: A Balanced Discussion

Tomorrow evening I'll be participating in a public dialogue about the Alberta oil/tar sands industry. I was invited to speak by Concordia's David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise. 


The talk was initially part of Concordia's MBA Speaker series, and was simply a presentation by the President of the Oil Sands Developers Group as part of a continuing, government backed $25 million PR campaign, until the DOBCSE decided that this was a topic that needed some perspective. As a result, Cam Fenton from Climate Justice Montreal and myself were asked to share our thoughts on the developments in this industry from an environmental and sustainable business perspective. 


All are welcome. 


Price: $3 in advance, $5 at the door, includes snacks.
Concordia University, Hall Building H-767, 1455 De Maisonneuve W.

Wednesday, March 2 · 5:00pm - 8:00pm

Click here for the facebook event page. 

Integrated Design Charette

On Monday November 1st, at the at the EQuilibrium™ Housing Forum — True Stories: Sustainability in Action - I've been granted the opportunity to present the the Integrated Design Process for the Abondance, Le Soleil project. I'll be introducing the concept of a design charrette and it's role in the implementation of a systemic, facilitated integrated design process. The conference presents to people in the larger building community the successes and challenges of the development of three net zero home building projects in the province of Quebec. 

The fundamental importance of the integrated design process was one of my personal take-away lessons form having participated in the development of the Abondance Montreal project. Not only were we able to understand the project from a variety of perspectives and work out complex design issues as a group - but when challenges arose (and they always do in construction projects), the sense of collective ownership and commitment to the team that was developed through the collaborative design and development process was invaluable in over coming challenges. It's a civil and incredibly democratic way to work.


If you weren't aware there are these advanced homes in the province - you can actually visit the projects to learn more about them. Visiting these sites provide an excellent opportunity to witness the culmination of many years work the teams involved.

Sheryl WuDunn: Our century's greatest injustice

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Sheryl WuDunn, gives a compelling speech on the importance of gender equity gerneally, but most specifically in the developing world. "It may well be that the highest return on investment in the developing world is the investment in girls' education"

Overcoming the tyranny of common sense

Sir Robinson is charming, insightful man who has now given two fabulous talks about creativity and learning. So he's basically one of my growing lists of nerd-heros.

He's calling for a revolution in education - one that is personalized and creates the conditions for meaningful and passionate learning.

EcoBooth design facilitation follow-up.

Photo from M. Bernier

In February, I was fortunate enough to act as the facilitator for a green building charette at École Polytechnique de Montréal.  Clearly the students got busy shortly thereafter - because by the end of the semester, they had a completed building on their campus. Defying at least part of the cardinal law of real estate development - thou shall double your budget and timeline in half the time planned - they put this little gem together in no time (e.g. about two months from our meeting in February). No word on the budget - but there appear to be many sponsors for the whole project, so I hope that means this little project won't be haunting departmental budgetary meetings for too long.  

The challenge was to design, develop and build a booth for a parking lot attendant that a) does not have to be connected to an energy grid; b) must be thermally comfortable for the occupant; c) while not occupied the internal temperature must stay between 0 and 40°C; and all while being d) collapsible and transportable. No small feat, for a little building. 

What they developed is called S.P.A.R.K. - or Solar Powered Autonomous Renewable Energy Kabin - if you want to get all technical. Engineering students and their clever branding! As you can see from the picture, the booth is powered by three 210w Kyocera solar panels, which have been paired with 6 batteries, to allow for energy storage. The wee building will produce 645 kWh annual and is able to store 8.3 kWh.

The students investigated three separate envelop designs and compared their cycle of life impacts on the environment, before choosing to compose the walls of Roxul R22, Enermax pannels and MDF, the ceiling of Pare-air Tyvek, Celfort 300, MDF, and the floor of fibre cement board. The generous fenestration is triple glazed, and allows for substantial solar gains.  

What an awesome project! Congrats to Prof. Bernier for offering his students this practical learning experience and here is hoping they have many green buildings in their futures. 

Desautels Management Leadership Seminar 2010

I'm going to be talking about Sustainable enterprise and the entrepreneur at the 2010 Desautels Management Leadership Seminar this Friday afternoon. I'll also be acting as a judge for one of their case competitions Saturday afternoon - I suspect I'll be prodding students on strategy and sustainability, but we'll see.

One = one.

Today a group of students introduced the concept of the Time Bank to the class. A Time Bank supposes a time-based currency, whereby the time that people spends providing services that are of value to the community (i.e. visiting with the elderly, teaching new Canadians English/French, mentoring children etc) earns time that one can spend to receive other services. It's similar barter, but without the need for a direct reciprocal exchange between participants. Further, everyone's time is valued equally - no matter if you are a novice or an expert.

Beyond just introducing the idea to the class - these students actually set up a website for the class (which I will place here once they send me the link), and have started getting students talking about how they could provide meaningful (and possibly less ones meaningful) services for one another. I look forward to seeing where this can go - in the class and beyond.

Here is a video of Professor Edgar Cahn (featuring Jon Snow's wonderful tie), founder of Time Banking, clearly explaining the concept:



It seems like a really lovely concept - and one that does not appear to be well represented in Canada. On the TimeBank.org website there are only a few Canadian Time Banks listed - the Lower Mainland, one in London (this appears to be more a community resource centre website), plus the NDG Time Bank, here in Montreal. Apparently the use of these in the US has really sky-rocketed with the recent economic crisis - though I'm hoping for those who experience it, this could result in a permanent shift in the way people view the exchange of meaningful services.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Today was one of those days - a day when the fortuitous coming together of a number of key factors reveals something which would, from that day forward, forever appear incredibly obvious to you. The factors in question were 1) fatigue, 2) motivation theory, and 3) a student led dialogue session.  

I like having the freedom to allow my students to walk around the class, like it's theirs. I like having them lead a good portion of the class, like it's theirs. I like to imagine that this motivates them to learn more, to retain more, to consider the sometimes challenging topics that we cover in that particular class. Sometimes they might not learn exactly what I was hoping they would, but sometimes they learn something much deeper. I always learn something, even if it's just that it's okay to let go and let someone else, someone less "experienced" be in charge.

Every week in my Social Context of Business class, a group of students develop and implement some kind of class activity to help their colleagues better understand the topic of that week - be it ethics, or consumerism etc.  This forces the group in question to develop a solid understanding of the topic at hand, in addition to creating some interesting ways of sharing this information with the class. Examples of such exercises include scavenger hunts, the development of barter systems, quiz shows, dialogue sessions, and puzzles. Fun is often a key element of this half of the class.This week they had their peers experience a controversial topic from multiple perspective - I feel it was a highly effective exercise.

It's not like this in all my classes. In some of the coordinated classes I teach, there seems to be a pressure to teach the topics from a given text, in a given fashion. Perhaps as a result, I feel a little less passionately about teaching those topics - I leave the class less inspired. It only just now occurred to me why, precisely, I cannot and will not continue in this vein.

This morning, in one such coordinated class I lectured on the topic of intrinsic motivation. I did this by standing in front of the class and talking about it. "More autonomy, more responsibility etc.... lead to better outcomes," I explained. This I explained by standing in front of class, using examples, real and fabricated to illuminate the topic. I can't imagine a less original way to cover a topic that relate to something as interesting as what drives people. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that, given the power dynamic between student and professor, every class presents the opportunity to put this concept into practice - to give these bright, curious people a chance to develop ways to improve their own learning.
 
This realization made me understand why the structure of my "Social Context" class seems to be so effective in bringing students together around complex ideas. It's because they do it themselves - it's not imposed on them. I trust them as bright and original thinkers to come up with a variety of solutions to the challenge of real  education. At it's root, part of the reason I implemented this structure to this particular course in the first place was because I too was entrusted with more autonomy in the creation of the course. The course coordinator has given me the freedom to cover the topics that I feel most relevant to the subject, in the ways that I feel most effective. I feel this freedom has challenged me to become a better educator, and the freedom I grant my students seems to encourage them to be better learners. It's like a motivational cyclone - kind of out of control, but powerful nonetheless.

The EcoBooth: Design Charette Facilitation

Today I was privileged enough to participate as a facilitator in a green building design charette at École Polytechnique de Montréal. The charrette was called by Professor Micheal Bernier in order to expose his students to the concept of a design charrette and to allow them to interact with industry experts. The fundamental goal of the day was to refine the design of an off-grid parking attendant booth, which will be constructed by the students prior to the end of the semester. Such a conceptually simple building, so much learning to be had.

Students struggled with balancing the degree to which the building would be insulated, in order to reduce energy demands, with the reality that this would be a small building with it's door often ajar.  Further, there was some hope to use a multiplicity of energy systems (e.g. wind and solar), so as to reduce dependence on one source of energy (e.g. the sun). The greater the variety of sources of energy, the less you have to bank on storing said energy for long periods of time. As it turns out, the specification of the building being totally off-grid, in addition the the location of the booth being between a number of large institutional buildings made this a particularly challenging issue. It will be interesting to see what the final product looks like.

Overall, this was primarily an academic exercise, as the students had been working on the particular design exercise since September. Ideally, a charrette would be called at an earlier date - to initiate a creative undertaking, for example, or to try to develop a shared vision for a project. Given the amount of learning required for the students to actually undertake this project, they had only recently developed sufficient expertise to really use the knowledge provided by industry experts this afternoon. It will be an excellent experience for those students interested in pursuing a career that involves regular integrated design sessions, such as those that are part of most complex or particularly sustainable designs.

As a total aside, I noticed that only 4 of the 33 students in the class were women. This kind of strong gender divide is something I never see in business school. Some things are slow to change, I suppose. 

What Teachers Make

For all the others doing that teaching thing...

Desautels Business Conference on Sustainability 2010: A Catalyst for Change

On Friday November 29th, I'm participating in a round table discussion on the "Moral Obligation of Management Education" as part of the 2010 Desautels Business Conference on Sustainability. The conference will be held January 28-30 at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. The theme is "A Catalyst for Change".

"Students and professionals from all over North America will be getting together to discuss current issues about sustainability, focusing on the three realms of sustainability that affect and are affected by today's business practices: social, economic and environmental." get more details at the website.