Sustainability Planning Toolkit released last week

ICLEI USA developed guide

Vilas Bhuchar, Dec 09, 09.

ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability USA has released a Sustainability Planning Toolkit to help its 600 U.S. local government members develop strong sustainability plans for their communities, according to a press release issued late last week. The City of Houston is a member of ICLEI. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), a Program Associate with ICLEI USA South Central, is hosted by the City of Houston Mayor’s office to “advance deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and
achieve tangible improvements in local sustainability.”

The toolkit was modeled after New York City’s PlaNYC guide and developed through a close collaboration between ICLEI and the City of New York’s Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.

According to the press release, the toolkit fills a major need by creating a more organized approach to creating effective long-term plans:

Across the United States, a rapidly growing number of cities, towns, and counties are eager to create sustainability plans or expand the scope of existing plans, but find the task daunting and disorganized, and lacking standardized methods and metrics.

With ICLEI’s toolkit, jurisdictions of all sizes can now follow a proven, straightforward, and flexible process to create long-term sustainability plans that bring together their individual environmental, economic, and social initiatives under one holistic vision.

Finally, Jeb Brugmann, ICLEI Global’s founder and current Executive Director of ICLEI USA, elaborates on the importance of thorough planning in developing a successful sustainability plan:

This toolkit draws from the most recent best practices in the United States to help cities and counties take their sustainability planning efforts to the next level. With a sustainability plan to guide their actions, cities like New York, Minneapolis, Santa Monica, and many others have shown that they can more effectively combat climate change, green their buildings, update infrastructure, invigorate their local economies, and improve public health and quality of life for their community members.

Our message to all local governments is that the secret to a successful sustainability plan is a rigorous planning process, and this toolkit walks local governments through what can be a very complex process.

Sustainability toolkit’s table of contents, overview, and related free resources

Full press release

(Photo Credit: ICLEI World Congress 2009)