Environmental Sustainability

May 6, 2013

Get inspired by the future!

Imagine a car-free city, where pedestrian and cyclists have free rein, moving about the streets freely and safely. Suwon City in South Korea is about to discover what an ecomobile city looks and feels like. Suwon City, in partnership with ICLEI and UN Habitat has collaborated to make the EcoMobility World Festival a reality. The neighborhood of Haenggung-dong in the centre of Suwon will be made into the world’s largest “green” transport showroom, giving Suwon’s residents and festival attendees a peek into a car-free world.

The Equator Principles: An Effective Tool to Govern the Sustainability of Project Finance

This project analyzes the effect of the Equator Principles (EP) for project finance on both the sustainability impact of projects and on the risk assessment procedures of financial institutions that have adopted the principles (EPFI). Based on the results, researchers will develop policy recommendations for improving the outcome of the EPs.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

‘All the facts’ support Keystone pipeline, Harper tells U.S. audience

Joanna Slater
The Globe and Mail

CIGI Chair of Global Systems Thomas Homer-Dixon comments that there is a “deep contradiction between Canada’s plans for the development of the oil sands and the climate reality we are facing around the world.”

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Study of Controversial Dam Reveals Hidden Dependence on Rainforest

Science

Kathryn Hochstetler, CIGI chair of governance in the Americas, comments on new research findings that vast forests are necessary to keep rivers flowing and turbines spinning. "The idea that protecting tropical forest is necessary for sustainable hydropower is a new argument," she says.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Harper Seeks to Build Keystone XL Support on U.S. Visit

Andrew Mayeda, and Theophilos Argitis
Bloomberg

“The decision to go to talk to Americans is to say this matters a great deal to us, it is hugely economically important to us,” says CIGI Distinguished Fellow Fen Osler Hampson, commenting on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's visit to the U.S., where he'll discuss the Keystone XL pipeline.

FGEPG Workshop: How to spend the money?

Jul 08
Researchers from CIGI’s Financing Global Environmental Public Goods project and invited experts will identify worthy environmental global public goods projects and the associated self- interested beneficiaries to mobilize lobbies and proponents.

FGEPG Workshop: How to raise the money?

May 15
Researchers from CIGI’s Financing Global Environmental Public Goods project and invited experts will review development/climate financing issues and innovative financing mechanisms, to assess of ideas for financing global public goods.

Financing Global Environmental Public Goods

This project explores the three main tracks to overcoming the barriers to sustainable development: how to raise the money; how to spend the money; and, how to design and govern the executing body.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Thomas Homer-Dixon NYT Editorial: "The Tar Sands Disaster"

As It Happens, CBC Radio One

Thomas Homer-Dixon, CIGI chair of global systems and Canadian author of The Ingenuity Gap and The Upside of Down, wrote an editorial in this past Sunday's New York Times, entitled "The Tar Sands Disaster" -- one that is bound to heat up the debate around the politics of Alberta bitumen. He discusses his argument with As It Happens.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The oil economy and Canadian democracy

Q, CBC Radio One

Thomas Homer-Dixon, CIGI chair of global systems, discusses his recent New York Times op-ed on the Keystone XL pipeline with Q on CBC Radio One.