Municipalities can play an important role in promoting sustainable development by pricing services correctly. How we pay for municipal services has an impact on our behaviour: how much water we consume, how much waste we generate, whether we drive to work or take transit, and other economic decisions. How we pay for services and infrastructure also affects the nature, location, and density of development. Correct pricing will improve the efficiency with which resources are used to provide the services that residents and businesses want. Moreover, if cities are interested in pursuing compact development, they need to consider the impact of other financial tools (such as property taxes and development charges) on how cities grow and develop.
Canada faces environmental problems that threaten stock of natural capital— endowment of natural resources such as water, forests, land, and atmosphere—and the flow of goods and services that natural capital generates, known as ecosystem services. Much of the literature focuses on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, but many other challenges persist, including air and water pollution, risks from oil and gas extraction, water scarcity, flooding, loss of natural areas, threatened species, and toxic spills. While regulatory responses exist, their effectiveness is questionable with relatively little use of market-based instruments. The researchers focus on the challenges associated with measuring and developing policy to sustain natural capital and ecosystem services. The authors highlight problems and identify policy options and “big ideas” that may help both to improve understanding of the linkages between natural capital, ecosystem services, and human well-being and to achieve a more sustainable future.
The paper begins with some basic innovation definitions and quickly reviews evidence of the relatively weak innovation performance of Canadian business. The core of the paper develops a thesis that explains why Canadian industry, on the whole, has not emphasized innovation in its business strategies but has prospered nonetheless. This raises the question of whether Canada's low-innovation equilibrium can persist in the face of tectonic forces related to globalization, technology, and sustainability that require innovative responses from enterprises worldwide and, not least, from Canada.
The historic Paris Agreement on climate change sets the course for a fundamental transformation of the global economy over the next decades. The Agreement’s overarching goal of limiting global average temperature rise to "well below 2°C" will entail profound changes in the global energy system. Achieving the deep cuts in global carbon emissions that this vision requires is no small task given the enormous challenge of implementing – and eventually exceeding – current country climate pledges. This publication examines key sectors, technologies, and policy measures that will be central in this transition to a low-carbon energy system. It addresses the following questions: