The Sustainable Leadership Forum

What the First Annual Survey of New Jersey Business Sustainability tells us

By Matt Polsky and Pooja Aravkar

None of the world’s leading companies pursuing sustainability are U.S.-based, reports Oekom Research, a German company in its annual Corporate Responsibility Review. What could we do about this in New Jersey? Researchers from the Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) Institute for Sustainable Enterprise(ISE) can offer some ideas. The mission of ISE is to “bring people together to learn how to live and manage sustainably by solving problems and capitalizing on opportunities in ways that simultaneously enhance economic, social, and environmental vitality.” It is the intellectual hub of sustainable business thinking in New Jersey.

ISE’s 2010 report Developing and Implementing a Sustainable Growth Strategy for New Jersey provided several guidelines for developing a “Green Economy” – an economy that includes and extends beyond clean energy, potentially penetrating all business sectors to protect and restore the environment while creating economic growth. The report, which urges all sectors to practice corporate social responsibility and aim towards greater levels of sustainability, concludes that “New Jersey has a unique opportunity to play a leadership role.”

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Posted by Admin under: Sustainable Business.

The Great Transition (and Our Place in It)

We are, whether we like it or not, moving into an age of great transition.

This transition is beginning to take hold just about everywhere in the world — though in some areas more rapidly than others — at both a global and a local level.

It is accelerating, in part because the effects of climate change are already being felt — in the form of droughts, fires, floods, and hurricanes — in a growing number of areas; and in part because the recognition is dawning on even the elites that we really are overburdening the planet and exhausting many of the most readily-available resources. In the face of these new realities we are slowly but inevitably adjusting to what Bill McKibben calls “Eaarth,” a new and different planet, where the conditions we’ve experienced for the last ten thousand years are changing very rapidly.

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Posted by Admin under: Climate Change; Community Development; Ecology; Economy; Energy; Entrepreneurship; Fossil Fuels; Future; History; Hurricane Sandy; Leadership; Permaculture; Regeneration; Resiliency; Science; Story; Sustainability.

Rebuilding New Jersey’s Shore Communities

This article was originally published in the Dead River Journal on February 12, 2013 – see http://deadriverjournal.org/regenerating-nj-shore-communities):

Through our new nonprofit, the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions (CRCS), we have begun the work of rebuilding NJ’s shore communities in a more sustainable way. As part of the basis for this work, we’ve published the following article, originally posted January 12, 2013, and most recently revised February 11, 2012: RegeneratingNewJerseyShoreCommunitiesJan2013r

We’ve also been sharing the following message with a number of Shore-based and statewide nonprofits:

CRCS is looking to partner with other nonprofit and civic organizations to host a series of community dialogs regarding the long term sustainable reconstruction of the NJ shore. Our team has substantial experience and expertise in community engagement, urban planning, anthropology, organization development, project management, leadership development, finance, and permaculture, as well as the broad topics of sea level rise, coastal ecosystem integrity, and climate change.

While we are a newly registered entity, CRCS comes out of work that we’ve done for a number of years through the Institute for Sustainable Enterprise at Fairleigh Dickinson University, the Center for Leadership in Sustainability, and through several other nonprofits.

As set forth in our non-profit charter, CRCS was created to:
Provide local communities with educational services on the effects of climate change and other related issues that can affect their long term ability to regenerate their ecological and economic systems,

• Provide local government institutions with assistance to undertake actions and initiatives to reduce and ameliorate present and expected extreme weather and other climate change effects,
• Help small businesses and non-profit organizations obtain funding and other resources to undertake actions and initiatives to reduce and ameliorate present and expected negative climate change effects in low and moderate-income communities, including communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy.
• We are inviting inquiries and expressions of interest from shore-based and statewide nonprofits such as yours to work with us to organize these kinds of community conversations, with the intention of launching an on-going process of sustainable design and redevelopment for coastal communities.

We invite your participation in working with us to host these community dialogs. If you are interested, please contact me at jcloud@crcsolutions.org.

We are also seeking funding to expand this program, and to assist communities in implementing the elements of sustainable design and redevelopment at the Jersey Shore. If you can assist us either directly or by joining with us in fund raising, please let us know this also.

Posted by Admin under: Climate Change; Community Development; Ecology; Economy; Emergency; Events; Future; Hurricane Sandy; Organization; Permaculture; Resiliency; Sustainability.

Seeking Sustainable Growth in NJ in the Wake of Sandy

This article was originally published on December 30, 2012 in the Dead River Journal (http://deadriverjournal.org/seeking-sustainable-growth-in-the-wake-of-superstorm-sandy/)

The Center for Regenerative Community Solutions and Regenerative Community Ventures, Inc. have recently circulated a position paper on “Laying a Foundation for Sustainable Growth in New Jersey in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy” with policy makers and community leaders in the state. Here is a final version, and several excerpts. The authors are co-founders of the Center for Leadership in Sustainability, the Sustainable Leadership Forum, and Acumen Technology Group, LLC. Jonathan Cloud is Senior Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Managing Partner, Acumen Technology Group, LLC. Victoria Zelin is Principal, Regenerative Community Ventures, Inc., a licensee of Unified Field Corporation.

Superstorm Sandy has dramatically altered NJ’s economy as well as its geography for years to come. While there may be a short-­?term “bounce” from the money spent on reconstruction, the thinking about how that rebuilding should be carried out is already moving very quickly toward the view that it needs to be substantially more hurricane-­? proof and disaster-­?resistant, more resilient, and — in a word — more sustainable.

This paper sets out some considerations and recommendations for creating a foundation for sustainable growth in New Jersey, describes some of the initiatives we are taking through our new nonprofit organization, the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions, and makes specific suggestions for policies and programs for state and local government to support these and similar initiatives from other organizations.

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Posted by Admin under: Climate Change; Community Development; Ecology; Economy; Emergency; Events; Future; Hurricane Sandy; Permaculture; Resiliency; Sustainability.

Reflecting on the 2013 Financial Permaculture & Local Economy Summit

Returning from a week of intensive work on the Verde Gardens foodshed, using the framework of Financial Permaculture, I find myself once again inspired by what people can do together to begin building a more sustainable future.

The design goal of the program was to provide Earth Learning with a plan of action for its Verde Gardens projects, which a 22-acre permaculture farm, a regional food hub, and a market café/kitchen complex adjacent to the farm in Homestead, FL.

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Posted by Admin under: Community Development; Entrepreneurship; Events; Food; Forum; Money; Permaculture; Sustainability.

Choosing a Sustainable Future

In a recent conversation with our daughter, it struck me just what an enormous challenge it is that we are facing. We are always poised, momentarily, between a past that we can no longer change, and a future that, starting from here, offers us a certain range of possibilities.

What’s clear is that if we look at where we are as a species today the prospects for life on this planet are, as a direct result of our actions, in clear and present danger. It’s possible, given the historical conditions, that no other outcome was possible; but in any case we are here now — and facing a precarious future on any number of fronts, from climate change to mass extinction to ocean acidification to receding glaciers and melting ice caps and rising sea levels and toxic waste accumulation and continued fossil fuel combustion.

If we continue on our present course, we will inevitably end up where we are headed, which is the more or less permanent alteration of the total biosphere as an ecological system. But this future is not foreordained (if you believe it is, then no meaningful action is really possible): from where we stand today we can look out at a range of possible futures, and can choose which one we wish to pursue — taking into account the inertia of the present system, but recognizing also that change is inevitable, accelerating, and responsive to new realities. Humans will respond, uncertainly and incoherently at first; but as we bring together many different perspectives we will seek to forge a coherent alternative to the present system.

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Posted by Admin under: Forum; Future; Global; Leadership; Policy; Science; Story.

Financial Permaculture and Local Economic Vitality

On January 21-25, 2013, Earth Learning, the Financial Permaculture Institute, the Economic Development Council of South Miami-Dade, and Miami Dade College will host the 2013 Financial Permaculture and Local Business Summit, bringing together community investment and financial experts, permaculture designers, and local sustainability entrepreneurs to build greater resiliency in the local and regional economy of South Florida. During the 5-day event participants will work with the Miami-Dade Community, principally around strengthening the local food system, addressing the issue of “food deserts” and supporting the development of a 22-acre farm, food hub, farm-to-table cafe, and commercial kitchen. as part of Verde Gardens, a 145-unit community for formerly homeless people in Miami.

As one of the facilitators and keynote speakers, I’ve been giving some thought to the kinds of challenges we face in making our communities more resilient, more self-sufficient, and more sustainable. Here are some recent thoughts:

Financial Permaculture

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Posted by Admin under: Community Development; Ecology; Economy; Food; Forum; Money; Neighborhoods; Resiliency; Sustainability.

Doing Business Differently

This item first appeared in Dead River Journal, 11/29/2012:

We know that the new economic and ecological realities we face require us to do something different in business, which in some cases also means doing business differently.

Certainly it’s possible to use a conventional business model to manufacture and install solar panels, build windfarms, etc., and we certainly need these kinds of things “at scale,” as they say, sufficient to offset the energy we get from coal, oil, and nuclear. But other kinds of businesses — local, community-based businesses focusing on food, energy conservation, community banking, and other elements of local “economic, social, environmental, and cultural development” — these it seems need a different approach to doing business altogether.
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Posted by Admin under: Community Development; Ecology; Economy; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Neighborhoods; Permaculture; Sustainability.

DATE CHANGE: Solar-Powered Party Saturday, December 15, 2012

Friends,
Please forgive our mistake — the party is Saturday, December 15, 4-9 pm (not Sunday the 16th). The revised invitation is below. We hope we get your RSVP that you can attend — we don’t need to know what you will bring — the food always seems to be extraordinary, and balanced!
– Victoria Zelin (my mistake) and Jonathan Cloud (blameless in this regard!)

We’ll be hosting our holiday potluck —”Bringing Solar Power Home for the Holidays”— on Sunday, December 16 Saturday, December 15, from 4 p.m. on. RSVP to rsvp@slforum.org.

A year ago, in announcing our holiday event, we wrote: “Whether it’s speaking to skeptical relatives about global warming, or changing your own habits, practices, and beliefs about what’s sustainable and what’s not, the holidays bring out a lot of emotional reactions. These can be a source of frustration — or of wisdom if you accept that we’re all on the path, and have a lot of work to do to reverse-engineer the mistakes of the past.” What a difference a year makes.
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Posted by Admin under: Community Development; Emergency; Events; Fossil Fuels; Future; Inspiration; Sustainability.

Sustainable Neighborhood & Community Conversations (III)

In view of the impacts of the storm(s), and the fact that we’re having a Solar Open House at our home today from 2-6, we’re postponing our regular monthly conversation for this month until next week (Saturday, November 17, 10-12 EST).

I hope you will all be able to participate on that date, as we do in fact have a number of new developments and initiatives we can discuss — and we’d like to hear your latest updates as well. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to hear from all of you, and sharing your experiences of working to transform society in many different ways.
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Posted by Admin under: Community Development; Events; Neighborhoods; Resiliency; Suburbs; Sustainability.

Even Conventional Economists are Starting to Recognize the Problem of Suburbanization…

In the light of our ongoing discussions on creating more sustainable neighborhoods and communities, some comments in a recent article touting “the real Jersey comeback” in NJ Spotlight caught our attention:

Analysts, developers, and academicians all saw hopeful signs, however faint, for New Jersey’s economy and housing market, but told a state conference in Atlantic City that the highly suburbanized state is poorly adjusted for longer-term changes….
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Posted by Admin under: Community Development; Economy; Land Use; Neighborhoods; Suburbs; Sustainability; Transportation.

Transforming Neighborhoods and Communities II

Access the audio recording of this session here.

And here’s the link to the presentation for Saturday, October 13, 2012:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SPCwoIIDu5sNZy3ECTOh9j9R8SB3dNncEjlFmAGt4n0/edit

Background:

As promised, we are continuing our dialogue on Creating More Sustainable Neighborhoods and Communities this Saturday, October 13 at 10 AM Eastern:

Conference dial-in number: (559) 726-1200
Participant access code: 850034

This number can be dialed from Google Voice so there should not be any long distance charges; it can also be dialed from Skype at freeconferencing.5597261200 (then provide the access code).
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Posted by Admin under: Community Development; Ecology; Economy; Energy; Events; Landscaping; Neighborhoods; Resiliency; Sustainability.