Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

The District of North Vancouver (DNV) wants to be recognized as one of the most sustainable communities in the world by 2020 and it has adopted The Natural Step Framework to help get there. The DNV has partnered with The Natural Step Canada to build staff capacity around the use of the Framework and to conduct a sustainability analysis of its own operations.

Staff from various departments and levels took part in the training with a smaller core team taking responsibility for doing the full sustainability analysis. Subsequent workshops allowed DNV to develop a draft action plan for sustainability, which can be accessed here. The plan has not yet been formalized, but several of the actions listed have already been implemented.

The DNV says the biggest change has been integrating sustainability into the corporate culture. Susan Haid, Manager for Sustainable Community Development, says “The Natural Step has allowed us to do work that we’ve been meaning to do for years and has made our approach systematic."

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