Projects and Participants

Sustainable Toronto seeks to encourage and support collaborative efforts with special emphasis on non-profits, local government and universities. It proposes to achieve this objective through a series of complementary projects, each of which aims to link research and action:

ProjectsDescriptions in Brief

Project 1) Seeds of our City - FoodShare

In this project directed by FoodShare, gardeners from eight sites across the city are exchanging seeds and stories, and documenting the food they grow and how they use it. The participants in the project reflect Toronto's multicultural population. Seeds used by these gardeners represent the link between bio-diversity and cultural diversity. The unique plants grown in community gardens, and the variety of methods used, connect people to their rich agricultural histories. This contributes to a healthy and sustainable local food system. The information collected through the Seeds of Our City project will be used to advocate for more agricultural space in the City of Toronto, for better access to organic gardening inputs such as compost and to encourage ethno-cultural groups and local farmers to grow culturally appropriate food. This year we have two students through the Sustainable Toronto project working to gather information from the gardeners, organizing summer events, administering a gardener survey, and compiling research results.

Project 2) Monitoring for Sustainability - Citizens' Environment Watch (CEW) and The York Centre for Applied Sustainability (YCAS)

This partnership between Citizens' Environment Watch and the York Centre for Applied Sustainability's combines CEW's work in community-based environmental monitoring with the YCAS Map Reflections project in designing an web-based monitoring and assessment system. The collaborative project is producing an accessible, educative tool for students and citizens to use in housing, analyzing and sharing their environmental monitoring data. CEW provides hands-on learning experiences to community, student and citizen groups in Toronto, Peterborough-Kawartha, and Niagara-Welland regions through education, training and monitoring primarily focused on biological indicators of watershed health. The Map Reflections tool provides the data collection, analysis, visualization and reporting system that facilitates the sharing of results with other citizens, students and organizations. This collaborative project fosters local stewardship, informed decision-making, experiential learning, and exploring methods of geographic inquiry while focusing on biological indicators of sustainability in Southern Ontario. This project has further formed a partnership with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), and has recently attracted the attention of Environment Canada's Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (EMAN).

Project 3) Ontario's Community Right to Know Initiative - Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy (CIELAP)

In response to the devolution of the MOE's responsibility for monitoring and assessing water quality in Ontario, the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy is assessing the state of surface and ground water quality, demonstrating the decline in detection of contaminants and associated danger to public health, and proposing an optimal framework for sustainable surface and ground water management. Data are being collected from a variety of sources and will be communicated to the public through a number of communications tools.

Project 4) Promoting Education & Awareness of the Links between Health and the Environment - Health Promotion and Environmental Protection Office of Toronto Public Health

The Health Promotion and Environmental Protection Office operates within Toronto Public Health to promote enhanced and sustainable environmental quality and health, and to prevent or reduce adverse health outcomes resulting from exposure to health hazards. Their project under Sustainable Toronto is to develop a strategic framework to evaluate Toronto Public Health's communication strategies. A needs assessment is currently underway, as well as a review of new and current health promotion strategies and their appropriateness for Toronto Public Health and the Toronto community.

Project 5) Professional Development for Sustainable Learning - Learning for a Sustainable Future

Learning for a Sustainable Future (Ontario) promotes sustainable development education throughout the formal school systems in Ontario, facilitating and supporting the establishment of partnerships among teachers, administrators, school boards, students, parents and other stakeholders through hosting 2-day Professional Institutes. These Institutes typically include a motivational speaker, success stories, and discussion of local issues on Day One. On Day Two, the issues are narrowed down and actions are proposed and planned by the participants to address sustainability. Through the Institutes, communities are discovering their power to effect change, businesses are recognizing the need to balance economic development with the need to protect environmental assets and social needs and values, governments are helping to ensure that people share in the decisions that affect their lives, and high school students are identifying community service opportunities. Ten of these Institutes have been planned in Ontario communities over the three years of the Sustainable Toronto project.

Project 6) Building the Management Capacity of the Environmental Non-Profit Sector - Sustainability Network

The Sustainability Network (through the work of their GA) directed the research and publication of this directory, which is now completed and available on-line and in hard copy. It reasons that addressing the challenges of sustainability issues in Ontario calls for joint and cooperative efforts by the province's environmental groups and ethno-cultural communities. Networking and communication links between environmental and ethno-cultural groups are urgently needed. As yet, little research has been focused on determining ethno-cultural communities' interest in environmental issues. This directory helps assess Ontario's ethno-cultural communities' interest in environmental issues and concerns, and identifies groups with such an interest. It is also designed to help environmental groups explore the possibility of building strategic partnerships with these communities, and presents some critical issues involved in making links with ethno-cultural groups.

Project 7) Understanding Shifts in Canadian Environmental Governance - Dr. Douglas MacDonald, Environmental Studies Program (ESP), Innis College, U of T

The relaxation of law-based regulatory capacity has significantly weakened levels of environmental protection. This loss of government capacity has been more than compensated for by new pressures on producers, arising from both economic interests and changing consumer and corporate values. Hence, we function now in a new environmental policy dynamic which we must understand. To this end, this project (led by Dr. Douglas MacDonald at Innis College, assisted by Dr. Keith Stewart from the Toronto Environmental Alliance) is examining the case study of Canadian climate change policy (which is based almost entirely upon voluntarism) in order to: (1) allow NGOs like TEA to better function in this new dynamic; and, (2) to advance recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the new world of environmental governance. To date, research has involved the collection and analysis of primary and secondary literature on the national policy process.

Project 8) Building Effective Leadership   - Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA)

In the second year of this project, TEA is developing two annotated bibliographies. The first is on urban environmental governance best practices and the second on public participation, consultation and collaboration best practices. The GRA is conducting a case study of one TEA's campaigns, selecting Pesticides. The study will include examination of what led to the decision by Toronto City Council to eliminate pesticides on public green space, how the public was involved in the campaign, an analysis of how to build public capacity on the pesticide issue, and an examination of urban environmental best practices to determine other directions to expand the campaign. The GRA will also develop a list of local experts and their areas of expertise for non-profit groups to draw on for information, to recruit to speak to the media or make deputations to governments.

Project 9) Sustainability Tool-Kit for Governance  Environmental Studies Program (ESP), Innis College, U of T and  York Centre for Applied Sustainability, York U

For this project, York University and the University of Toronto, in collaboration with the City of Toronto's Sustainability Round Table governance working group, is planning and will host a series of workshops (local and national) leading to an international conference. Partnerships are being formed with ICLEI and FCM, among others, to assist in the delivery and to develop background materials. It is expected that conference proceedings and academic papers arising from discussion within the conferences will be published. The workshops/conferences will produce a set of tools for use by the City of Toronto to infuse sustainability principles into the governance structure of the City. To date, research has been done to determine the current governance structure(s) in place in the City of Toronto and to learn about sustainability governance initiatives in other jurisdictions. A list of potential attendees has been compiled and contact has been initiated with potential partners to host the local, national and international conferences/workshops.

Project 10) Understanding and Facilitating Community Based Research - Dr. Beth Savan, Sustainable Toronto, Innis College, U of T

This newest project under the umbrella of Sustainable Toronto is investigating impediments and incentives affecting Canadian community-based research (CBR), and their root cause. Its objectives are to recommend mechanisms to overcome obstacles to the proliferation of CBR; to more effectively engage Canadian scholars interested in participating in CBR; and to construct a network of CBR initiatives on community sustainability across the country. The research for this project hypothesizes that applied and non-scholarly publications may not be heavily weighted in criteria for academic hiring and promotion. As well, the need for off-campus meetings and supervision of students in non-academic placements may create practical problems for university scholars. Finally, the demand for regular meetings to bridge cultural differences separating academic and community groups and to devise shared research goals and methods may be time-consuming and frustrating.

Meeting Our Objectives

As a result of these ten projects, the overall objectives of Sustainable Toronto will be met. More specifically:  

research, teaching and curricula at the two universities will be improved and the decision-making and problem-solving capability of communities enhanced by expanding the knowledge and capacity of community organizations and university partners to understand sustainability, and particularly how sustainability practices work and how they can successfully combine economic development, environmental protection and social equity;

mutual learning and horizontal collaboration between community organisations and universities will be enhanced by facilitating networking among universities, the City and community organisations working on sustainability issues, such that not only will stronger research partnerships emerge across these institutions but also research will be conducted that meets the needs of the communities served by these institutions;

the social, cultural and economic development of communities will be contributed to by providing resources and expertise to help communities gain knowledge and experience in leadership and management to open up potential employment opportunities and initiate and/or enhance linkages with other communities, researchers and youth; and undergraduate and graduate students’ education and employability will be enhanced by providing students from University of Toronto and York University with unique research, training and work experiences that will inform and implement sustainability in a variety of settings