Sustainable Municipal and Rural Infrastructure

While the other two proposed pillars are the product of research into markets, emerging trends in global environmental activity, and on-the-ground capacity, the sustainable municipal and rural infrastructure pillar arose in response to local needs and conditions. Stakeholder consultations revealed a significant opportunity to build capacity to enhance the sustainability of local service delivery. The Province’s smaller communities face particular challenges with respect to meeting obligations around planning and operations. For example, many of them do not have a formal land use plan, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Municipalities (NLFM) has noted that the pending requirement for Integrated Community Sustainability Plans presents great challenges for rural and/or small communities.

Through applied and targeted research activities in this pillar, the CEE can support existing efforts to address problems of rural sustainability, notably the work of the Rural Secretariat and the NLFM. Strong alliances with such institutes will ensure activity in the pillar remains focused on creating opportunities for planning education and training; attracting environmental industries to the region as project partners; and developing expertise, models and tools for municipal and rural infrastructure policy.

There is a pronounced lack of professional planning capacity and training in the province. As a result, there is a need to develop planning education and capacity to address the unique obstacles to sustainability faced by small and rural communities. Adding some form of planning curriculum not only provides the only such training in the province, but serves to raise local awareness of the need and value of planning, and its key role in supporting sustainable infrastructure. The CEE has an opportunity to advance planning education and training, as well as to generate knowledge to transfer to governments in the region, and in other communities in Canada and abroad.

There is a need to address the clearly growing demand for municipal and rural infrastructure development, locally, and eventually nationally. There are a number of environmental and infrastructure businesses operating in other parts of the province. This pillar provides an opportunity for the CEE to partner with existing environmental businesses to identify, develop, implement and monitor locally appropriate infrastructure projects. The CEE will openly approach the environmental industry in the province and develop partnerships to address identified problems - the CEE then, will not compete with the existing environmental sector, but will support it, identifying and developing innovative solutions to the delivery of essential services.

The legislative and policy environments are key to supporting sustainable municipal operations. Although municipal authorities are the unit of government most able to implement sustainable initiatives, in NL they can be constrained by the dozen or so pieces of legislation that regulate their jurisdiction. Yet, an enabling legislative environment is a corollary to sustainable planning and infrastructure services. While on the one hand the CEE will partner with local environmental industries in implementing innovative solutions, it will also have a parallel role in policy research and working with local government to create favorable regulatory conditions for infrastructure projects.

With these elements in place, the CEE will be in a position to provide a full spectrum of services: identifying potential infrastructure projects, establishing planning and other enabling regulatory support, attracting innovative partners, and developing specialized knowledge. Taking this approach, the CEE can work with the environmental industry to jointly overcome barriers to local infrastructure development, and provide the necessary expertise, training, knowledge transfer and innovation to foster industry clusters in the region.