Thanks to David for inviting me to his show and giving me the opportunity to discuss issues that I’m passionate about and that I’m currently working on. It was a wonderful conversation. And I think it’s particularly timely.

Related posts:

1. My talk at @BCIT on Social Media, Politics and Public Policy
2. Social Media for Sustainability and Public Policy
3. My #nv10 talk on social media, politics and public policy

Credit: D.C.Atty

Credit: Publik16

Mangano expressed a few good points that are very much worthy of highlighting here.

* Homelessness is not dependent on the economy. In economic booms, homelessness increases because of rising housing prices. In economic downturns, homelessness increases because of job loss and other factors associated with lower income.
* Economic principles per se aren’t going to solve homelessness.
* It is important to focus on ONE specific area of homelessness policy – ending STREET homelessness – focus on the most vulnerable and the disabled.

According to Mangano, the following points are key elements to success

- Definite support from mayors and council and the political will to work on the issues of homelessness
- Reframing policy from the social service frame to the business case (how can we serve this people)
- Accepting that solving homelessness will take time
- Strategic timeline
- Identification of successful case studies and strategies and investment in evidence-based options (based on research)
- The business community to invest in this process too.

What didn’t work in the US (according to Mangano)
- Ad-hoc crisis interventions (shuffling leads to morale deflating – stats he provided 75 homeless/day use St. Paul’s Hospital – $ 700 from the moment they step into the hospital onward)
- Good intentions don’t end homelessness
- Increased resources without innovative ideas, strategic planning and long-term strategy don’t work.

I scanned the room as I arrived and I noticed that not only was the room full (for a beautiful summer day, having to shell out cash to participate in an indoor event and have to wear suits, you really must be passionate), there were a lot of well-known advocates for the issue of homelessness, including people from the Vancouver Foundation and the Street To Home Foundation. I recognized many people that I knew from before, like Mike Harcourt, Andrea Reimer (a Vancouver councillor who, the more I talk to, the more impressed I am with). The Vancouver Board of Trade should feel really happy with the attendance, because there were a lot of participants as well as high-level, policy decision-makers in Vancouver were sitting in that room, along with all the other board members and guests.

My overall assessment of Mangano’s talk

Mangano’s talk sounded very much like an ode to Mayor Gregor Robertson. Every opportunity he had he lauded Robertson’s efforts. If I wanted to pay (and in this case, I didn’t pay for my own ticket but Dave did) to hear someone praising the mayor of the city I live in, I would do it. But I really don’t like paying to hear someone do that. Don’t get me wrong. I have met Gregor myself, I have had a chance to talk with him about issues and hear his own viewpoints. Mayor Robertson is (in my view, from my limited interactions with him) someone who has expressed a genuine interest in thorny issues such as homelessness, environmental protection, accessibility to housing, etc. I have very high hopes set on Gregor Robertson, and with smart people like Andrea Reimer in council and a few other councillors and COV staff I’ve met, I am sure Vancouver will look for ways to end street homelessness.

Mangano’s talk was funny and entertaining but he wasted too much time in side stuff and didn’t get into the real “meat” of the talk until the end. And yeah, that part about NOT having questions/answers period? Pretty bad.

One point that really struck a chord with me was Mangano’s phrase “I have been to the Downtown East Side already, I don’t need to go there again”. This phrase sounded to me really dismissive. It sounded very much like “I don’t need to see more, I already know what the issues are there“.

I have to repeat through my assessment (which I’m sure sounds like a scathing indictment) that I am very sure that Mangano knows his stuff and that he has worked really hard to solve homelessness in the US. Sadly, his talk at the Vancouver Board of Trade did not give him enough credit. What he said and the way he delivered it wasn’t really what I am sure he can offer, nor what I needed/wanted to hear.

My expectation coming into this talk was an overview of specific, evidence-based, research-grounded policy options to tackle homelessness in Vancouver. In no way, shape or form did I get this. So what *did* I get, you ask? Well, I got a chance to hear someone who is highly praised in the US as an authority in homelessness provide a few points that I think are worth revising. I expected a talk of much higher caliber, but then again, maybe Mangano’s timeline didn’t provide for enough time to cover everything (although I would have EXPECTED him to be able to manage his time). The fact that he didn’t get into the data until the very end and that he didn’t provide policy options was a real disappointment.

But amongst the great things I got? I got to hang out with Dave and Toby, I got to meet some really nice people, I got to see a Vancouver Board of Trade from the perspective of an attendee rather than as a representative of the media (and remember, I have given numerous keynote talks, so I’m not looking at this from the perspective of a participant but from the perspective of someone who talks to large audiences about complex, thorny policy issues). And I got to talk to Andrea Reimer, Suzanne Anton, Mike Harcourt. So, in terms of being able to access important people and talk about issues, it was a success for me. And in the end, I did hear some interesting stuff from Mangano. Just not enough.

Dave’s assessment of the luncheon/talk can be read here.

Related posts:

1. Upcoming event – Stop Homelessness Public Forum (Vancouver)
2. Public policy lessons on homelessness for Vancouver’s next mayor
3. Homelessness in Vancouver and sustainability: Researching the issue

The feedback on my presentation was great and people seemed quite happy with the content of my speech. I think people were also taken by the fact that I presented the social network of the New Testament in a very cool visualization.

Thanks to AHA Media for providing documentation through videography/photography/live-tweeting and to Darren and Joe, respectively, for MC-ing and organizing/inviting me.

The liveblog/live-tweet is inserted below (or you can click in this link) and my presentation slides are hosted in my research blog and on SlideShare.

I’d be very curious to hear people’s reactions to my talk on the comments section. One thing I noticed is that people had a lot of questions that I really couldn’t address right there and then as we had very limited time, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a comment on my research blog or here.

Related posts:

1. My talk at @BCIT on Social Media, Politics and Public Policy
2. My interview with David Berner on The Power of Social Media in Public Policy
3. At the intersection of social media and sustainability

Daily Money Q to ponder: Are we OK with sports figures earning the salaries they do, while other citizens are in desperate circumstances?

It is RARE that I get asked questions that make my blood boil and that’s perhaps one of them (not because Nancy asked it – Nancy is a very dear friend of mine – it’s because I rarely think about this issue, and when I do, I always get upset).

When I teach Public Policy (both at the undergraduate and graduate level), I always have a lecture on fairness, equity and justice. These are always important topics for decision-makers in designing public policies. Why? Because, with a limited amount of resources you have to do a gazillion things. So you (as a policy maker) need to prioritize. What can I do with these resources and how can I best put them to good use to serve the public interest? What is fair and equitable and just? Is it fair that these sports figures (or politicians) are paid THAT much?

I always ask my students (and whomever listens to me, whenever I give a keynote or an invited talk) to think about issues in terms of trade-offs. If I spend X thousands of dollars on implementing Y policy, then I get Z results (in terms of people taken off the streets, or streets paved, or seats funded for post-secondary education, or litres of water treated). But since resources are scarce, I have to spend them on Y policy instead of W policy, then I am trading off something. I am giving resources to a cause and NOT to another. There’s a zero sum game, where some win, some lose.

For example, think about it this way – if instead of paying multi-million dollar salaries to sports figures (or politicians), you could spend all that money in something else.

Let me give you the figure I used as an example for Nancy (as listed below)

hummingbird604 I do have a firm opinion – it’s stupid. With 1 month Mexican soccer team’s salaries I’d pay 5 years of PhD ed for 100 pple

This time, I’ll do the exercise with the actual salaries I knew of. The office of the wife of the former President of Mexico was spending about $ 300,000 dollars per month (at the time I did this calculation – right now, said office does not exist as far as I know). What would you do with $ 300,000 dollars? Well, I can tell you one thing – given the monthly allowance that Mexican granting councils gave to PhD students at the time (I was doing my PhD then), you could fund the monthly allowance of 300 PhD students with the money this otherwise useless office used. 300. PhD-level, smart, intelligent people. Per month.

Think about it, people. What do you say is the best use of your money? Educating 300 people with PhDs or ensuring that the wife of the President has a nice office and staff for her ‘charity’ work? Whenever I reflect on it, I am always reminded of what my Dad used to tell me – “for the Romans, bread and circuses“. I have the same opinion of high salaries for sports figures.

Now, feel free to let your thoughts pour here

Related posts:

1. My interview with David Berner on The Power of Social Media in Public Policy
2. Public policy lessons on homelessness for Vancouver’s next mayor
3. Putting back the public in public policy

Being an academic and a blogger, I look at issues through research-trained eyes, and the whole discussion on banning bottled water in Vancouver is one of those debates that attract me. I am hoping to do some research about it in the short term future.

Photo credit: Ianiv and Arieanna

I am particularly drawn to water issues as I’ve done research both in the environmental engineering field (building wastewater treatment plants) and in the environmental studies field (studying water governance and policy). I am trained to examine problems from the social sciences AND natural sciences/engineering lenses.

A few weeks back, Duane kindly invited me to guest post on his blog. We were doing Blogathon and my post examined very briefly the debate on water privatization, but I didn’t delve in depth.

The whole banning bottled water debate in Vancouver touches on two issues. One of them, the commodification and privatization of water. The other one is the potential health-associated risk of consuming water from the tap. Both of these issues would give me enough material to start a new blog. However, I’m going to just focus on one small sub-issue: bottling water for sale and redistribution (and the health effects associated).

We often (but not always) consume bottled water because we feel safer. Sometimes we consume bottled water simply because we don’t have access to tap water at the moment. There are different rationales. However, one associated (implicit) benefit is that we don’t need to worry about our safety and health if we consume bottled water. Is our tap water really all that bad?

When I worked as an environmental engineer, I would get stomach illnesses whenever I would be exposed to wastewater streams. But I have never gotten sick from consuming water from the tap (neither in Mexico nor in Canada). I know, the whole “revenge of Montezuma” joke is based on a perception that potable water in Mexico is really polluted and thus every foreign visitor will get stomach cramps or get ill when visiting if they consume water from the tap. But it has never happened to me (not even now that I’m visiting).

Metro Vancouver is undertaking a project to have people pledge to consume only tap water and reduce the number of plastic water bottles thrown into landfills. I have to say that I wholeheartedly support this initiative. From their website:

Why Metro Vancouver has a Tap Water Pledge
* Metro is committed to reducing bottled water use by 20% by 2010 to reduce the environmental impact of bottled water
* Millions of single-use plastic water bottles (one litre or smaller) ended up in our region’s landfills in 2007
* We want to provide a tangible way residents to support a sustainable practice – using refillable water containers instead of single-use plastic water bottles

[Metro Vancouver: Take the Tap Water Pledge]

The Tap Water Pledge page has information on health risks associated with water, fast facts, etc. that are aimed to help the public understand the rationale behind the project. Interestingly enough, I didn’t find data on the worldwide consumption of bottled water in comparison to Canada and/or Vancouver. I think this would be a broader perspective. From the IBWA statistics page, their 2007 stats report, I found out that Mexico is the second largest consumer of bottled water in the world, with 54.1 gallons per capita (but is this figure per year, per month? If one drinks one litre of water a day, how many gallons is that a year? I hate websites with poor statistics!)

Now, from a social media perspective, I have to say that while I think the page is a good resource, I would probably take a much more “public understanding of science” approach to it. I have to say that it would be fun to undertake this type of project, and it would merge Web 2.0 with sustainability research…. Hmm… good idea!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: For some statistics on bottled water consumption, the International Bottled Water Association has some data. But I couldn’t find anything on Canada. Frustrating.

Related posts:

1. The Red Room, bottled water and bar-hopping
2. Conserving water and the “Largest Water Fight” in Vancouver
3. Water stress: Beyond water availability

Credit: KeepItSurreal

Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) take it upon themselves to participate in various ways in the environmental policy-making process. Human rights organizations often seek to galvanize public opinion and protect disadvantaged people. This the basis for a healthy, participatory society.

Unfortunately, it would seem as though not everyone is interested in engaging in public participation processes. Earlier last week I voiced my discomfort when I found out that there was much more interest from people who are on Twitter in the American electoral process than in Canadian or Vancouver electoral issues.

I was relieved to find a number of comments on my post agreeing that we need to focus on local issues (although we can’t forget international affairs). More recently, people have started to tweet more and blog more about the upcoming Vancouver mayoral election and the potential Federal election that could take place as early as mid-October 2008. These are, in my view, good news.

That’s why I would like to encourage my readers to take it upon themselves to put back the public in public policy. There are HUNDREDS if not thousands of issues that we need to focus on, and I am going to highlight just a few (all of them, which I’ve written about before).

* The need to support small local businesses.
* The lack of a strong, nation-wide water policy in Canada and a deficient regional strategy in Metro Vancouver, particularly in the management of wastewater.
* The lack of transparency in the development of Bill C-61.
- The need to re-assess the whole Eco-Density concept and understand the heterogeneities within the Vancouver urban region.
- The whole Provincial Transit Plan of British Columbia and how other countries can teach us lessons on transportation policy.
- The lack of a homeless strategy that really addresses the needs of the needier (which are affected by, amongst other things, snow and other climatic elements).

I could go on, and on, and if you have been reading my blog for a while, you’ll easily find the issues that galvanize MY opinion : water, environment, sustainability, homelessness, urbanization, human rights, electronic rights. Oh, and POVERTY. Let’s not forget about poverty. Now, let’s go back to the issues that galvanize YOU! Never has the phrase “think global act local” been more relevant than now.

I also want to take a minute to thank people who have voted for me on the Vancouver Election Blog contest. Rebecca Bollwitt (Miss604) has been the leader for a few weeks now, and that’s awesome and deserved since she’s been covering all things Vancouver (which have included political issues too!) for over four years. David Eby is also in the ballot, and he has always been a strong advocate for homeless people. There are new blogs, like VanCity Buzz who are highlighting small, local businesses (which is a series I enjoy), and there are more experienced bloggers too, of course… there’s Gordon Price and Paul Hillsdon and Frances Bula and Stephen Rees.

I have also seen the evolution of the contest, and I have to say that, in my view, every one of the nominated blogs are deserving, as each one provides a unique perspective on Vancouver. People may or may not agree on what bloggers write, on their style or their ideas, but as it has been attributed to Voltaire (although some disagree on this too!), “I may disagree with what you are saying but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” (I found that some people attribute these words to Evelyn Beatrice Hall).

Related posts:

1. My interview with David Berner on The Power of Social Media in Public Policy
2. Public policy, budget prioritization and the money question
3. Public policy lessons on homelessness for Vancouver’s next mayor

I was going to leave this post all the way until Blogathon, but Arieanna’s recent post on “Canada, the water” reminded me of the relevance of understanding how water supplies and water management works (great post Arieanna by the way). Arieanna’s post calls attention to the fact that the bottled water being sold at Whole Foods was pretty much targeted towards tourist buyers.

Photo credit: Ianiv and Arieanna on Flickr

What worries me a bit more is not so much the privatization and commodification of water, but the misconceptions of water availability on this planet. According to the 2nd. United Nations Word Water Report, between 25 and 40% of the world’s drinking water comes from ground sources (groundwater).

This fact should be scary to people, but I’m not sure that people who live in Canada and particularly British Columbia (since we are so well served by our watersheds and local reservoirs) realize the degree of water scarcity that pervades the world, even if there is a generalized perception that . Therefore, it’s not hard to think that many people have a reason to be rightfully annoyed by the increasing privatization of water supplies.

Given the investment and capital costs that need to be covered in order to provide groundwater for drinking purposes, I would imagine that people would be cognizant of water scarcity and avoid increasing demand on water reserves, both by conserving water and by recycling grey water. In one of my research projects, I have looked at the use of common pool resource (CPR) theory to try and understand the conflicts amongst two communities who share and access the same aquifer (in Mexico).

The nature of public accessibility of aquifers makes them an excellent laboratory to study the behavior of communities who have to share a common resource that can be depleted if inappropriately managed. The purpose of my post was (as subtly suggested in the header) to indicate that in order to appropriately manage or govern water, we need to first learn to govern ourselves and control our natural consumptive instinct, in order to avoid depletion of our water reserves. Will we be able to do that? And how can we increase the visibility of the challenges of governing water when we can clearly see that other issues (such as climate change) are so high up in the environmental agenda in Canada?

More resources and materials for reading:

- The World Water Assessment Project page – Provides lots of information and good statistics. The UNESCO International Hydrological Programme is currently putting together the 3rd World Water Report.

- CBC Series on Water – While I am VERY weary of pointing people out to media sources instead of academic sources, I kind of liked this series.

- The National Water Research Institute of Environment Canada – Basically focuses on freshwater, but a good resource nonetheless.

- The International Water Resources Association (IWRA).

Related posts:

1. World Water Day and “The Global Water Crisis” event by WaterDrop
2. The echo chamber in water research (social sciences)
3. Water stress: Beyond water availability

I’ve always been puzzled as to why would numerous individuals of different backgrounds decide to come together and volunteer their time to engage in environmental activism. Putting pressure on government is an activity that has taken place for a long time, and with the recent increase in media exposure to problems such as climate change and pollution, we have witnessed a spiraling growth of ENGO mobilizations.

Global warming protest outside Washington Park (Photo: Pembleton/Flickr)

You may or may not know that one of the most famous environmental groups (Greenpeace International) was initially founded in 1971 here in Vancouver.

In 1971, motivated by their vision of a green and peaceful world, a small team of activists set sail from Vancouver, Canada, in an old fishing boat. These activists, the founders of Greenpeace, believed a few individuals could make a difference.

Their mission was to “bear witness” to US underground nuclear testing at Amchitka, a tiny island off the West Coast of Alaska, which is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone regions.[Greenpeace website]

My research on ENGOs has focused less on understanding the motivations behind environmental groups’ (a topic that, while interesting, provides in my opinion less insight on potential public policy options) and more on the strategies that ENGOs use to put pressure both on industrial polluters and on governments at different scales (local, regional, transnational).

Moreover, I have been interested in gathering empirical evidence of the formation of transnational coalitions of ENGOs and how these coalitions use their collective knowledge to engage in strategic behavior and put pressure on national governments. Interestingly enough, there are many cases where ENGOs have been successful in pressuring polluters and shaming governments.

However, one of the most interesting insights that I have found in my research is that, for an issue to really galvanize public opinion, it has to be notorious and affect the population in a deep way (that is, it must be scary enough to make people put words into action). As I mentioned in my previous post on the governance of wastewater, it irks me to know that other pressing problems, such as dwindling supplies of water and increasing wasteful behavior on the part of urban populations are being overlooked in favor of climate change.

While it appears as though environment (and climate change) are two of the issues that Canadians indicate as public policy priorities, I am still surprised that there are not more environmental group protests on issues of pollution, and still place so much emphasis on climatic change issues.

My hope is that, in the coming years, people will continue to mobilize and try to change how environmental policy is shaped and implemented, but hopefully by then, we’ll have a much more holistic view and not only one shaped by excessive press coverage of environmental issues that, while pressing, are not the only ones we need to look at.

Related posts:

1. My year in review – Environmental mobilizations research
2. The Environmental Movement Needs You – Homer Simpson Has Already Joined – Guest post by Lotus Effect
3. The relevance of the BP oil spill for global environmental politics