{"id":18349,"date":"2016-04-15T01:23:09","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T08:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=18349"},"modified":"2016-04-13T12:37:11","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T19:37:11","slug":"measuring-footprints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/04\/15\/measuring-footprints\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring footprints"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev\u2019s Dr. Meidad Kissinger is doing collaborative work with colleagues in British Columbia. (photo by Zach Sagorin)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Five years ago, Vancouver set the goal of becoming the greenest city in the world by 2020. According to the 2014\/15 update to the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan<\/em>, as well as research being conducted at the University of British Columbia in collaboration with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, there is a long way yet to go.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Dr. Meidad Kissinger told the Jewish Independent<\/em>, \u201cI really like Vancouver. It\u2019s, in a way, a second home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kissinger is the head of the Negev Centre of Sustainability and a faculty member in the department of geography and environmental development at BGU. He completed his PhD in urban and regional planning at the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC and returned last summer for a research leave that continues to this coming summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cUBC is a great place \u2026 there is a lot of interest in issues that I am engaged with around sustainability science and ecology economics,\u201d he said. In addition, \u201cit was important that the family would decide where to go, and Vancouver felt comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not needing to teach or focus on other administrative tasks while he\u2019s here, Kissinger said, \u201cMy time here is focusing on research. My own goals are reading a lot, thinking a lot, writing a lot.\u201d He is working on a book while at UBC, as well as engaging in projects with colleagues here.<\/p>\n

On one project, Kissinger is collaborating with researchers from UBC and Kwantlen University on a study of local food systems, looking at the potential of the Lower Mainland to produce its own food. It\u2019s similar to a project in Israel, he said, which questions \u201cwhat is the ability of the state \u2026 to produce its own food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kissinger is also researching urban \u201cmetabolism,\u201d which \u201clooks at the flow of resources into a city and looks at the city as a living organism, and asks questions of what is being consumed, who is consuming it and what is being emitted,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

He is also studying interregional sustainability, which considers sustainability from a global perspective. \u201cAny country, including a huge country like Canada, depends on resources from other [places],\u201d he said, giving the example of Canadian food consumption (mostly vegetables and fruits) from California. \u201cWhen looking at the world from an interregional level,\u201d he said, \u201cyou understand that there are linkages between the tomato that you are eating here to the drought in California. These are kind of the interactions. It\u2019s common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is, he said, \u201cWe don\u2019t take these things into account and we don\u2019t measure them.\u201d He did acknowledge, however, that there is an \u201cincreasing understanding that we need to look at interactions between the human system and the natural system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using 2006 data, Kissinger and colleagues Jennie Moore and William Rees of UBC\u2019s School of Community and Regional Planning applied interregional analysis to Vancouver\u2019s \u201cmetabolism\u201d to see whether there was validity to Vancouver\u2019s claim that it is the greenest city in the world. \u201cNow, we haven\u2019t completed research yet,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I suspect that what we will find is that maybe there are some incremental improvements in certain parts but when you are looking overall, the metabolism of this region has just continued to increase over the years. So, there is a major gap between the political arguments and what actually the research tells us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUrbanization has both positive and negative environmental implications,\u201d write the three colleagues in the Journal of Environmental Management<\/em> (2013). \u201cOn the one hand, cities are nodes of consumption that depend utterly on a constant flow of materials and energy from around the world in order to function\u2026. On the other hand, the economies of agglomeration (lower costs due to proximity of related activities) and the economies of scale (lower costs due to higher volumes) associated with the city\u2019s high population density and concentration of economic activity contribute to a significant \u2018urban sustainability multiplier.\u2019… Furthermore, the sheer wastefulness of many cities implies major opportunities for energy and material conservation. It follows that, in the 21st century, cities are an appropriate focus for research into ecologically necessary, socially acceptable and politically feasible ways of reducing the overall human load on the world\u2019s ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n

In analyzing Vancouver\u2019s \u201cbottom-up ecological footprint,\u201d the study examined the \u201cenergy and material consumption using locally generated data\u201d on areas such as water, food, transportation and buildings. It found Vancouver\u2019s total ecological footprint in 2006 to be \u201can area approximately 36 times larger than the region itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kissinger explained to the Independent<\/em> in an email that his research largely culminates in \u201canalyzing the socio-biophysical systems and what authorities\/institutions at different scales can do\u201d to reduce the ecological footprint. On a personal level, people need to consider their consumption in general, he said, \u201cand particularly of food, with emphasis on minimizing animal products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research collaboration such as that of Kissinger at UBC is rare. \u201cThere is hardly any Canadian-Israeli research collaboration,\u201d he said. \u201cVery different from what you have between Europe and Israel, between the U.S. and Israel. Even between China, India and Israel, there is more than what you have between Canada and Israel, which is \u2026 something that needs to be changed. Saying that, again, I\u2019m working this year with Canadians, here in this part of the world, and with colleagues in Toronto, and so I do find that it is possible and I like to work with Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason for the relative lack of collaboration is largely financial, said Kissinger. It has nothing to do with factors such as the boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel, for example.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m aware that there are attempts to undermine Israel in the world for different reasons,\u201d he said, but \u201cI\u2019m working with colleagues here, I\u2019m working with colleagues in European universities.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to put pressure on Israel to change policy, and I wish this is something that hopefully will be done. It is a different thing to do what BDS is doing\u2026. I don\u2019t think this is the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

He tried to explain how such actions are seen from the Israeli side. \u201cI guess it happens to any society when it feels that it\u2019s being attacked, it\u2019s being under pressure from outside,\u201d he said. \u201cIt [tries] to push the pressure away and at least appear unified and I think it is very natural.\u2026 So, when you are looking at Israeli media \u2026 it will try to resist [external pressure] and try to show how everyone is against us, instead of reflecting inside and looking at what is wrong with what we are doing. This is kind of the other side of this external pressure. It\u2019s complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zach Sagorin<\/strong> is a Vancouver freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev\u2019s Dr. Meidad Kissinger is doing collaborative work with colleagues in British Columbia. (photo by Zach Sagorin) Five years ago, Vancouver set the goal of becoming the greenest city in the world by 2020. According to the 2014\/15 update to the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, as well as research being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5664,2845,5663],"class_list":["post-18349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-ecology","tag-environment","tag-kissinger"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}