Sustainability Discourses In Vancouver, BC

What Kind Of Circular Are You?

Calls for climate action are abuzz with talk of the circular economy as a solution to the ecological collapse and environmental damage from our current linear economy or take-make-waste model of consumption. By participating in circular economy conferences and delving into the works of academics, policy makers, sustainability practitioners, and activists, I’ve come to realize that people often use the same expression to convey different understandings of and assumptions about the pathways to reform and resolution.

Thanks to REVOLVE Circular, I discovered Friant et al.’s typology of circular discourses, which classifies various circularity concepts into four categories (see Figure 1). It contrasts the fundamental differences between these discourses and places popular parlance in recent times (such as Doughnut Economics and the Degrowth Movement) within this framework for a clearer understanding of their points of divergence.

In this article, my goal is to employ Friant et al.’s typology to classify circular discourses in and around the Vancouver area to build a clearer picture of all things circular in my locality. Additionally, as a resource for those looking to transition to careers in climate action, I wish to distinguish green jobs based on their underlying assumptions and theories of change. Without such a typology, it may be easy to miss that much of governmental or corporate action is focused on a certain framing of the problem and its solutions. You may find that your own personal beliefs more closely match one of these four discourses: the greater the fit between an organization’s vision and your personal convictions, the better your likelihood of value alignment and authenticity in your work.

Figure 1: Friant et al.’s Four Circular Discourses as summarized by REVOLVE.media

I’ve found these typologies helpful in coming to terms with various internal inconsistencies I noticed in climate discourses locally and globally. Lately, there seem to be two conversations on everything: alongside the COP26 is the People’s Summit for Climate Justice; beside the UN Food Systems Summit is the Global People’s Summit on Food Systems; outside the Davos Forum is the Strike WEF Collective. Often, the demands and plans of these opposing groups are widely divergent and incomprehensible to the other. Once I started situating organizations and their climate action proposals within one of these four cells, the goals and means within each discourse started making more sense. I could also recognize overlaps across cells and shared agendas among groups that I originally thought had nothing in common.

Fortress Discourse

At first blush, this name brings to mind anti-immigration groups on the Right, Silicon Valley billionaires buying property in New Zealand on the Left, or doomsday preppers across the political spectrum. On deeper reflection, I realized that our current society is already a fortress world in many senses: the pandemic was devastating for rural migrants and continues to be so for many in the Global South as normalcy returns in the Global North. Even within developed nations, there is widespread inequality in how the pandemic was experienced by various income classes.

Technocentric Discourse

Microsoft’s carbon-neutral operations and Google’s virtual power-purchase agreements belong in the technocentric cell and are necessarily segmented in their approach to sustainability. To be a leader in this space, it is necessary to do what is feasible now (e.g., carbon-neutrality using offsets) however imperfect the solution may be, while aiming to do better in the future (e.g., achieving absolute zero).

Figure 2a: What You Think Google Means When They Say 100% Renewable

Figure 2b: What It Actually Means

Reformist Discourse

Most government climate action plans fall in the reformist cell — these discourses are more holistic and incorporate elements of equity. They recognize that voluntary commitments are insufficient and include various mandated measures such as extended producer responsibility programs and bans (e.g., on plastic shopping bags, fuel-powered cars). They go beyond individual-centered solutions such as electric car ownership or recycling awareness to community-centered solutions such as improving public transit reliability and designing livable neighborhoods.

Figure 3: From the City of Vancouver’s Climate Emergency Action Plan Presentation

Transformational Discourse

“Transformative initiatives differ from mainstream or reformist solutions in a number of ways. Ideally, they will go to the roots of a problem. They will question what we have already identified as core features of the development discourse — economic growth, productivism, the rhetoric of progress, instrumental rationality, markets, universality, anthropocentrism, and sexism. These transformative alternatives will encompass an ethic that is radically different from the one underpinning the current system.”
~Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary

This is the cell you land on once you are convinced that technocentric and reformist solutions, while offering near-term gratification, are unsatisfactory and counter-productive. In his widely-influential Deep Adaptation paper, Bendell reframes resilience in the face of disasters to not be limited to physical infrastructure arrangements (e.g., air-conditioning to survive heat waves or emergency supplies to last through supply-chain disruptions) but to include psychological coping mechanisms and community-building. He suggests that the way forward will involve relinquishment (e.g., giving up expectations for certain types of consumption) restoration (e.g., rediscovering non-electronically powered forms of engagement), and reconciliation (i.e., recognizing that in the face of our mutual mortality we will not know if our efforts have made a difference and making peace with each other).

Global Scenarios

These four categories (fortress, technocentric, reformist, and transformational) map quite nicely to four of the six visions in the “taxonomy of the future” introduced by the Global Scenario Group/Great Transition Initiative (GTI): fortress world, market forces, policy reform, and eco-communalism. I include them below to reinforce the ideas in Figure 1 through visuals and descriptions of each vision.

Figure 4: Four (of Six) Global Scenarios proposed by the Great Transition Initiative

Circular Vancouver

Next, here is my roundup of organizations in and around Vancouver grouped using Friant et al.’s typology. I had a hard time classifying organizations whose work spanned two or more cells or whose vision differed in category from their ongoing projects — I’ve tried to place them in the category that I thought most of their actions belonged to.

FORTRESS

Immigration Watch Canada: recognizes that there are environmental limits to the number of people Canadian cities can sustain.

TECHNOCENTRIC

• Anaconda: industrial composting to convert urban organic waste into soil amendments.
• BCIT: coursework and applied research centered around SDGs #11, #12, #13.
• Carbon Engineering: direct air capture of CO2.
• Moment Energy: energy storage using retired electric vehicle batteries.
• Axine, BQE Water, Saltworks, Viridis: water treatment and reuse.
• Merlin Plastics, Reclaim Plastics: plastics recycling and repurposing.
• SFU School of Sustainable Energy Engineering: research and co-operative education on sustainable manufacturing, clean power generation, clean technologies.

REFORMIST

• Basecamp Repairs, Repair Cafes: repair economy.
• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: policy research and analysis with a focus on workable solutions.
• CityHive (Envirolab): solutions-driven projects to address local sustainability challenges.
• CityStudio: experimental community projects designed and implemented by students in collaboration with the city.
• Ecotrust Canada: sustainable food, fisheries and clean energy for and with rural, remote and Indigenous BC communities.
• Embedding Project: tools, assessments and guidebooks for companies to incorporate context-based sustainability.
• Evo, Modo, Mobi, Quupe, Thingery: sharing/rental economy (unsure if Ruckify & Roowsi are still operational).
• Nada, RefilleryVan, Reusables, Sharewares: zero waste takeout and shopping.
• National Industrial Symbiosis Program: local business-to-business connections for resource collaboration and repurposing.
• UBC Centre for Community-Engaged Learning: experiential education for students through local partnerships and events open to the general public.
• UBC Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability: research and coursework on law, policy, infrastructure, land, food, water, waste, rewilding, risk reduction, and sustainable agriculture.
• Unbuilders: deconstruction and reuse of lumber from buildings.

TRANSFORMATIONAL

• FarmFolk CityFolk: community farms as alternatives to individually-owned land.
• Intentional Communities and off-the-grid living (e.g.,Lasqueti Island, Freedom Cove).
• OUR Ecovillage: a sustainable village community with collective land ownership and stewardship.

Careers Beyond Employability

“May each person lead their active life in such a way that their work, its products and the modes of its exchange, contribute to the development of a good life, with and for others, in just institutions, ensuring the permanence of genuine human life on Earth”.
~Guichard

For those of you with the privilege to transition to work that is more closely aligned with your personal values, I hope that this typology serves as a useful thinking tool to organize various competing visions and beliefs. I’ve come to realize that my own heart is in the bottom-left box: convivialism, degrowth, voluntary simplicity, buen vivir. My skills, on the other hand, are best suited for the top-right cell: advancement of long duration energy storage technologies, improving electrical grid resilience, carbon disclosure and sustainability reporting in corporations. This work will be fulfilling and impactful in the short term but cannot be holistic or thorough. (See Tariq Fancy for an insider-view criticism of sustainable investing, Mark McElroy for a primer on thresholds and allocations, Bill Baue for concerns regarding the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), and Ralph Thurm on moving beyond ESG and CSR to true context-based sustainability.) It seems possible to shift further left while staying in the “optimist area” by incorporating social justice components to technocentric solutions (e.g., advancing equity in utility regulation) or laying the groundwork for a just transition to a lower-footprint future (e.g., calling out corporate power and dangerous policy distractions, matching green jobs with those experiencing barriers to entry).

So, until I build the courage and stamina to work in the transformational space, I’m going to stay open to the possibilities of the reformist agenda. I think many people hold a vision of a transformational society but see reform work as the most effective pathway to enact change within current systems. I welcome your thoughts on the type of discourse that most appeals to you and the reasons why.

P.S.1. I’m aware that sustainability and circularity are not conceptually the same, but within the framing of this typology, I use the words interchangeably.

P.S.2. The compilation of organizations in Vancouver is by no means exhaustive. As a newcomer to the city, I have tried to identify a few examples in each category to illustrate how the concept of circularity is interpreted in different contexts. I’m sure there are many groups not listed here doing essential work in this space. Also, please let me know if you think I have misclassified your organization or misinterpreted your vision and solutions.