Barriers to innovation and change: the “greening” of city of Toronto

Jan 8, 2009

Barriers to innovation and change: the “greening” of city of Toronto

Thank you to Stewart Elgie for pointing our attention to Moira Welsh’s December story in the Toronto Star on “Toronto’s green report card”

This story neatly illustrates not only some quantitative sustainable goals set by Toronto Mayor David Miller, but also evaluates the city’s performance on these goals, and in the process – which is highly pertinent to our study “Making it happen” - identifies a number of barriers to change.

Clean air: 30% lower GHGs by 2020 and 0 smog days
Barriers: budget cuts and delays, delays in approvals, planning and building,e.g. bike lanes.

Less waste: 70% waste diversion by 2010
Barriers: Collecting and processing organic waste and recycling it generates 20,000 tonnes of plastic bag containers. The capacity of the Toronto organic processing plants was exceeded requiring shipping to other facilities in Quebec which uses 1000 diesel fuelled trucks. New plants being considered will not have the capacity to process all organics, especially from apartment buildings.

Clean Water: “Blue flag” designation for Toronto’s 14 beaches (i.e. open 80% of time)
Barriers: need to further reduce burden on city sewers in “wet” years, and have targetted homes disconnect downspouts from sewer system to reduce sewage overflowing.

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Our project: Making it happen - the transition to a sustainable society

This blog is a continuation of a project at the University of Ottawa Telfer School of Management dealing with innovation, public policy, and climate change. We are not developing another vision for a sustainable society. We want to focus on the implementation and the barriers to change and innovation, hence the title "Making it happen". (See Post “The start of a new project”)

We have divided the project into two broad steps. The first step is to review various sustainable visions for regions. See our following Posts:
Setting sustainability and environmental targets (1): Recent announcements on GHG emissions
Setting sustainability and environmental targets (2): the dimensions of sustainability
and
Setting sustainability and environmental targets (3): Ottawa’s “Choosing our future”

The next broad set of activities is to parse out what needs to happen if we are to achieve these visions and identify the barriers - institutional, social, behavioural - to make the change happen, i.e. “What’s stopping us from becoming a sustainable society?”

The intent is to design improved policy interventions.

So, in addition to continue looking at sustainable visions, our posts have examined through past examples and case studies how various technologies and changes are implemented. And we will look at barriers and obstacles.

We invite you to share your experiences with the difficulties of implementing new technologies and changes to address the challenge of climate change, and how these can be overcome. Post a comment!

Our Team

ANDRE POTWOROWSKI is an adjunct professor at the Telfer School of Managemnent at the University of Ottawa, and a management consultant in environmental research management, innovation, and environmental policies. He has been working in the environment field since the mid-70s, when he was part of the original Conserver Society study at the Science Council of Canada. He is president of TMA Technology Management Associates, and Managing Partner, Science and Technology of the Professional Development Institute

TOM BRZUSTOWSKI, Chair of our Advisory Board during the project, was the RBC Chair in Innovation and Technology Commercialization at the Telfer School, and is the past President of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. He authored a book on productivity and innovation, "The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada's Productivity Challenge", and more recently "Why we need more INNOVATION IN CANADA: and what we must do to get it."

Making it happen - the transition to a sustainable society

Jan 8, 2009