National Governance for Sustainable Frameworks
Results of a recent Governance Review indicate a return to the bottom up approach to Canada’s green building advocacy. The CaGBC (the organization that operates LEED certifications) is recently undergoing changes to reduce the size of the National Board and introducing working committees that promise to have a regional focus.
In comparison to the UK Canada seems to rely on a bottom up approach to introducing advanced legislation in the field of green building. The USGBC’s LEED Certification was initially a group of architects who desired a higher and consistent standard for what were/are obvious shortfalls in the delivery of building projects. Over the course of the last few years the LEED system has been widely used and requires governance at a National level.
BREEAM, as I understand it, was started within a governmental organisation and has since been run as a private enterprise.
The difference between these approaches to implementing sustainable standards is indicative of the differences between the two cultures. The critical issue with understanding these cultural approaches is, in some part, rooted in the history of place. The traditions of place making and institutions created to serve the society are products of their respective environments. Canada learned experience is to infuse a government into what is naturally occurring in specific regions. Many large cities in Canada are dealing with developers who wish to build and zone in new agricultural or essentially vacant pieces of land.
Land use planning in Canada is more of a reactionary response to legitimise where people are looking to build. This type of development has created some wonderful expressive and progressive buildings. It has also allowed developers to determine the types of neighbourhoods and buildings that dominate the landscape of North America. This type of developer instituted planning has creating much of the inefficiency and waste in our built environment.
The Governance Review at the CaGBC recommended that a smaller National Board with more direct input from regional chapters would be able to better respond to the timely changes occurring in the industry. These chapters (11 generally representing a provincial region) are, mostly, volunteer led organisations of industry design professionals. This engaged design community creates leadership both within the industry but also in terms of public advocacy and education.
In many was enabling the design community within specific regions creates a more responsive approach to green building standards and practices. The access to localised municipal and provincial authorities allows for a collaborative approach to building codes and standards. The interaction with the private sector (in North America business operations are private and governmental are public) enables a realistic assessment of the viability of sustainable capabilities.
In addition to the regional and vocational benefits mentioned above, a key element in allowing a bottom up approach to sustainable design, planning and building is the freedom to experiment with creative ideas to overcome our current unsustainable industry models. With an appropriate amount of oversight and regulatory supervision a designer can realistically develop solutions to building problems and have a level of confidence that those ideas will be enacted.
A key role for governmental organisations is to constantly measure and verify the products created. The accuracy of new technologies and practices must be measured. The current system of analysing neighbourhoods and buildings as they approach the end of their useful life is simply too long of a feedback loop. Too much energy and resources will be wasted if there is no way of verifying and measuring experimental design solutions.
The world of academia has an important role to play in this mêlée. As humans are resigned to processes relying on feedback to succeed, we will need to look at past successes and failures to critically examine our communities and environments to facilitate and provide responsible and specific solutions. Universities, technical schools, colleges and all schools concerned with the built environment will need to explore ideas with vision that can become part of our environment.
The role of larger governing bodies concerned with creating lasting value within industry and the sustainable built environment, such as the CaGBC, will need to be able to engage all three of these groups in ensuring a balanced and accurate framework is to be presented. Especially true if these bodies want their frameworks to be adopted by industry, government and society.
