How do you motivate more than half of a state’s cities to participate – enthusiastically – in a comprehensive sustainability program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? How do you find private funding for public programs? What about getting a disparate board of directors to take a productive path forward to find potential water supply solutions, amid public controversy?
Encouraging behavior change among the public, engaging stakeholders, and paying for efforts – especially when budgets are tight – are the often elusive keys to reaping benefits from programs designed to improve the environment and our quality of life.
Seem like the impossible dream? I assure you it can be done, and we’ll be showing you how at three conferences this September. If you’re planning on attending any of these conferences, please register for our sessions and we’ll see you there.
It’s hard to feel like you can affect things at the local level, but the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is about connecting the dots and trying to ensure that individual projects do their part to reduce cumulative impacts like global climate change.
Acting Locally
In my work with cities and counties around the bay, I see different approaches being used to address the requirements of AB 32. We strategize daily with clients to define the appropriate approach and methodology to suit their circumstances and the needs of the project, such as:
Calling the impact unavoidable and adopting overriding considerations
Quantifying the volume of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and identifying ways to reduce them through design
Pointing to plans and policies that that address the issue city-wide, providing cover for individual projects
While the rules related to targets and timing continue to be written, projects make their way from design through review to entitlement and on to construction. In this interim period there are a lot of permutations at the shaggy edge beyond the crisp language of policy. And as so often happens in California, the courts eventually weigh in and, case by case, develop the body of law that will govern the way we do business.
The intent and process that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), established back in 1970, are still solid and worthwhile. At the same time, I believe we need to work with government on ways to reduce the time it takes for projects to move through the planning and environmental process and to create environmental documents that don’t leave the public dazed and confused.
Bring NEPA/CEQA Documents into the 21st Century
Design software advances and communications technology improvements over the last 40 years have significantly shortened the timeline from idea to implementation. The ability to access and assemble data has been greatly streamlined. Although some activities can’t be streamlined with technology, such as surveys for endangered frogs or testing for buried archaeological resources, almost everything else can be.
What hasn’t moved into the 21st century is the way NEPA/CEQA documents are assembled. They continue to be tomes of thousands of pages of technical jargon, graphs, and tables – and for the most part, unintelligible to the lay reader.
What takes time is assembling all the data into reports following detailed templates and guidelines that have been developed over the decades by various state and federal agencies. These templates and guidelines are intended to ensure the technical requirements of NEPA and CEQA are met.
However, one key issue they miss is the need to present information in a timely manner and in a way the public can understand. After all, the heart of both NEPA and CEQA is to facilitate “public” involvement in decision making.
Imagine if day after day, you woke up with a different face. How would anyone recognize you? How could anyone be expected to trust you? You’d have to start at square one, reestablishing each and every relationship, each and every day.
Yet that is exactly what occurs if your project doesn’t have a unified brand identity.
Like a friendly face, a brand identity can engender respect and good wishes for your project. It can get you out of PR scrapes faster than you can say “Mel Gibson.” And it can lead to the kind of familiarity that gets you invited into your target’s lives like an old, trusted friend.
So how do you create a brand identity? Well, unless you have a high-quality creative resource in house, you’ll need to find one. If you need a great recommendation, please e-mail me (wink, wink).
California salmon and other anadromous fish have been in crisis for more than 20 years, probably due to any number of factors, from changing ocean conditions and less rainfall, to dams, development, agriculture, invasive species, and overfishing.
Recently, the PBS program Quest did an interesting segment on the challenging science of restoring salmon to the San Joaquin River – the second longest river in California. This project is the largest river restoration project in California’s history.
For nearly 20 years, CirclePoint has been helping federal and state agencies address water and fisheries conflicts in the San Joaquin Valley. Since 2007, we have been supporting the federal Bureau of Reclamation and four other agencies implementing the 2006 San Joaquin River Settlement, which calls for restoration of salmon to the river and water management actions to reduce the impacts to the critical farm economy of the San Joaquin Valley.
As we all know, these days times are tough and jobs are hard to come by. But even during this bad economy, many companies are still looking for smart, talented employees to help deliver top-quality service and products to their clients. CirclePoint is no exception. And an important part of our recruiting strategy has been our successful internship program.
During the last month, much of the world was riveted by the FIFA World Cup 2010 games in South Africa. Not only did roughly 400,000 or so people visit South Africa to attend the games and cheer on their favorite teams, but millions of people across the globe watched the games remotely on their television or computers and participated in a series of victories and defeats that culminated with Spain winning the coveted trophy.
Sharing the Ups, Downs and Trash Talk
Whether watching the game in South Africa, or gathered with others on a couch at home or in a favorite watering hole, many took to their Facebook and Twitter feeds to share their emotions during each yellow card, red card, and goal.
With the anticipation of each game, Facebook was flooded with comments from users expressing who they wanted to win the next match. I know I was rooting for Spain in the final game and updated my Facebook feed as soon as the elusive goal was in the net.
I grew up eating vegetables and fruit grown in our backyard, fish that was freshly caught by me or other members of my family, and nuts and berries grown on my grandfather’s farm. That dramatically changed with the arrival of McDonald’s, TV dinners and readily available frozen fruits and vegetables by the time I reached my teenage years.
Fortunately, I think my taste buds remembered the intense flavors of fresh food, because when I moved to San Francisco in the 1970s I became an instant fan of what was termed “California cuisine,” which promoted fresh, locally grown ingredients.
I am glad to see that this sustainable approach has become much more mainstream since then – enough so that we’re seeing ideas like community gardens and agricultural uses being incorporated into residential/commercial development projects in the Bay Area.
Seeking mobility solutions in the Bay Area today can be as frustrating as when you’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic, getting stuck in a stopped train, or being whipsawed around by the jerky stops and starts of a bus. The challenge of getting projects built at times seems insurmountable – the roadblocks unending and the likelihood of some contingent of naysayers almost a certainty.
You know as I do that there is no single silver bullet to address these mobility challenges. In fact, in the Bay Area, we’re pretty much trying almost everything from the traditional to the innovative. This flexible and adaptive approach should be supported as it advances “the toolbox” of solutions for the travelling public as well as the movement of goods and services.
What am I talking about? Here are a few examples to demonstrate the vast and exciting diversity of transportation projects in our region.
Believe it or not, I don’t think these scenarios are completely outrageous—except that Tony would more likely drive the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid.
We are surfing the “green wave” in the Garden State, thanks to Sustainable Jersey. Sustainable Jersey is a municipal certification program that is turning heads across the country and, more importantly, changing behavior and achieving measurable results at the local level.
In just over a year, 49 percent of New Jersey’s 566 municipalities have registered with Sustainable Jersey and are pursuing comprehensive sustainability programs at the local level. Thirty-four communities have achieved certification. Check out the Participating Communities Map.
These initial results have really inspired me, so I thought I would share a few key strategies that can be applied to other behavioral change programs.
