Edging Forward:
Achieving Sustainable Community Development
– by Ann Dale
ISBN 978-1-7750904-0-3 152 pages Edging Forward
In Canada, a leading academic and thinker on these issues for the past quarter century has been Dr.Ann Dale, Professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University in British Columbia.
Dale's influence has remained at the nexus of where public policy meets academic theory for over three decades. She has mentored and influenced dozens of graduate students, officials in government and public policy advisors who, in turn, have gone on to make a significant impact in Canada’s environmental and sustainability movement. (Earlier in her career, Dale served in senior roles in the environment portfolio with the federal government). The Trudeau government green policy book could be a chapter out of one of her lectures or roundtables.
Her first book, At the Edge, is a Canadian best seller and she has edited five other books, including the first in the country on social capital and sustainable development. In her new book, Edging Forward, Dale examines the power of stories that shape our development and influence our ability to act now on climate change.
She uses both the personal and professional, to talk about her own journey in reconciliation, reconnection and the power of relationships as the most important pathway for transforming human development.
Her key message is that we have to move forward in implementing sustainable community development now. She provides insight into what is stopping Canadian communities from developing sustainably and focuses on the key elements for reconciling ecological, social and economic impe-ratives throughout Canadian society.
Her book is a call to break barriers, speeches, and traditional agendas which are harmful to the environment and to take a chance and embrace sustainability in our lives, communities and country.
The book looks at our relationships to one another, to other species, and to the planet. The message is that we must recognize that the world is in desperate need of care and compassion.
Storms, hurricanes, earthquakes in different parts of the world are now forcing us to think very differently about the pathways that can lead us to reconciliation, reconnection, and regeneration with the planet.
Dale says that the first step in coming to terms with what is happening with the earth must be a decision by each of us personally to do things differently — essentially to recognize the importance of sustainability.
What does this mean for us personally, and then for our country and the planet.
www.edgingforward.wordpress.com
