| Citizens' Environment Watch (CEW)
Citizens' Environment Watch (CEW) is a Toronto, Ontario based organization that works to provide education, equipment, and support for community-based ecological monitoring and stewardship across Ontario with a particular focus on the Greater Toronto Area, Green Belt, and Oak Ridges Moraine.
History
Programs
History
CEW was founded in 1996 by a group of university professors and scientists, including Dr. Ursula Franklin, one of Canada's pre-eminent scientists and educators. CEW grew in response to the provincial government's drastic cuts to environmental staff and inspectors, and has become an effective grassroots vehicle for engaging Ontarians in science, local ecological monitoring, and stewardship.
Since the CEW's inception in 1996, the CEW have worked with over 4000 volunteers, including over 2,600 youth, and led over 100 environmental monitoring sessions in 10 watersheds across Ontario.
Programs
CEW sponsored programs are based around three principles:
Education: teaching and learning about local ecosystems and the environment
Evidence: collecting accurate and defensible scientific data about local ecosystem health
Action: using scientific data to start local projects and inform community decision-making
CEW uses community-based scientific protocols that were developed with help from experts in government, academia and the private sector. These protocols were specially designed to be relatively easy to learn and use in addition to generating scientifically valid data. CEW's community programs work from the bottom up in that the organization works with participants in order to reconnect to local ecosystems, monitor and improve ecosystem health, and participate in community decision-making.
Volunteers monitor air quality using lichens and surface water quality using benthic macroinvertebrates (insects that live at the bottom of water bodies). These organisms respond quickly to environmental impacts (like a canary in a coal mine), and because different species have different tolerances to pollution, they are good indicators of the health of the environment.
Program participants monitor air and water quality using biological indicators like invertebrates and lichen. The reason being that these organisms respond quickly to environmental impacts (just like a canary in a coal mine), and because different species have different tolerances to pollution, they are good indicators of the health of our environment.
Wattwize
Wattwize is a student-driven energy conservation program for Ontario schools. Using a PRO wattmeter students are able to perform a school energy audit in order to understand exactly how much energy their school consumes, and which appliances are the biggest consumers. These tools allow participating students the opportunity to understand the energy use of their entire school as well as individual areas like the library, laboratories, cafeteria and classrooms.
Following this audit schools are then able to develop a school-wide energy conservation plan. With the help of the Wattwize program students can make a plan that includes low-cost energy-efficient products, room-specific energy reduction strategies, school wide conservation measures, and things each student can do personally to save energy and develop a conservation culture in their school.
Lastly students are able to know their school's exact energy, cost, and greenhouse gas emission reductions by doing comparisons using on-line calculators.
Monitoring the Moraine (MTM)
Monitoring the Moraine (MTM) is a collaborative project between Citizens' Environment Watch (CEW), STORM Coalition (Save the Oak Ridges Moraine), and Centre for Community Mapping (COMAP). It is designed to engage and sustain community volunteers in science, stewardship, monitoring and decision-making on the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Involved Parties
Save The Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition (STORM) is focused on protecting the ecological integrity of the Oak Ridges Moraine. Since 1989, STORM has been working at the local and regional levels to ensure that municipalities make good planning decisions that respect the environmental significance of the moraine and that take into account its ecological and hydrological functions. STORM's years of experience in policy and planning advocacy on the Oak Ridges Moraine and its well-developed network of local and regional contacts were critical to the campaign that saved (legislatively) the Oak Ridges Moraine.
The Centre for Community Mapping is an assembly of designers and researchers, whose goal is to provide accessible and affordable informatics tools and support to community-based organizations. COMAP's main focus is to enable communities to communicate information through a sustainable, shared infrastructure, a common map platform for visual exploration and contribution of community information. The common map will have natural and cultural heritage applications, as well as land use management policy monitoring applications, serving communities that care for the Oak Ridges Moraine.
The MTM partners bring a variety of complementary skills and experience to this collaborative project. STORM has years of experience in policy and planning advocacy on the Oak Ridges Moraine. CEW is a leader in providing education, equipment and support for community-based environmental monitoring. COMAP develops web-based data management tools that will enable users to report the results of their monitoring, as well as access the findings of others, with a few simple clicks of a computer mouse.
Thus, the goals of the Monitoring the Moraine project aims to:
* Develop, implement and evaluate collaborative approaches to community-based monitoring across the Oak Ridges Moraine landscape;
* Improve the efficiency and utility of both environmental and policy monitoring;
* Develop an effective and dynamic monitoring framework that is widely applicable to all communities and moraine-monitoring organizations;
* Generate a visual and interactive `big picture' in the form of an online map that can be viewed and updated by anyone with Internet access;
* Inform decision making by disseminating relevant and credible environmental and policy monitoring data to key decision makers;
* Facilitate a strong and informed community voice in the upcoming 2014 review of the ORMCP;
* Provide a model for other large scale monitoring projects, provincially, nationally and internationally.
Benefits
The MTM project will benefit communities across the moraine in numerous ways: by providing the necessary education, training and support to carry out monitoring projects and by helping to ensure that the data generated by participating volunteers is valuable and scientifically defensible. This will allow community members to raise and act upon environmental concerns in a timely fashion. Community empowerment will lead to wider community involvement and ensure that those who live, work and play on the moraine will be informed, engaged and well positioned to protect this unique landscape for years to come.
Successes
Successes / Challenges
In 2002, the Ontario government took steps to protect the moraine through the passage of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan (ORMCP). The decision was applauded by project partners applaud the vision, objectives and intent of the ORMCP, and believe it provides the foundation to sustain and strengthen the ecological and hydrological integrity of the Oak Ridges Moraine and its associated communities. However, the moraine continues to be under pressure from challenges associated with urban sprawl. The ORMCP, like any regulation, is only as strong as the will of people to implement it. The future health of the moraine will not rest solely with the provincial or municipal governments; residents and other interested parties must also be involved. People living on the moraine, and those in neighbouring urban centres, must work together to ensure that the ORMCP is not only adhered to, but that it is also effective and remains relevant over time. An effective way for volunteers to achieve this is through ecological and policy monitoring at the community level.
The Monitoring the Moraine project engages volunteers in ecological and policy monitoring with the goal of determining the effectiveness of the ORMCP and measuring changes to the moraine landscape as a result. The project will ensure that the information gathered by participating volunteers is successfully communicated to other stakeholders. This is not an easy task given the geographic size and complexity of the Oak Ridges Moraine. In order to develop an accurate picture of the entire moraine's ecological health, consistent standards or protocols must be agreed upon and applied at all levels of monitoring - the MTM project works toward this goal. The challenge is to create a common monitoring framework within which everyone dedicated to the moraine's preservation can work.
The success of this ambitious project relies on community initiative and participation. The project is being guided and implemented by the "Monitoring Advisory Committee", comprised of local volunteer champions, moraine-based environmental and citizens' groups, environmental non-government organizations, provincial and regional government, conservation authorities, and the private sector. As a result, diverse areas of expertise and knowledge are being drawn upon. At the same time, this collaboration ensures the project will recognize and support what residents hold dear.
Lichen Count
In March 2006, CEW staged the first annual Citizens' Environment Watch Toronto Lichen Count. Citizens from across Toronto counted lichen populations near Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) subway stations at over 70 locations throughout the city in order to gather data on the quality of the air in Toronto.
Lichens are small, moss-like organisms that grow on trees and rocks in nearly every region in the world - even the Arctic. Lichens make an ideal choice for air quality monitoring because they have a unique biology that makes them very sensitive to air pollution. By understanding the kinds of lichens that grow in Toronto and how they change over time it becomes easier to tell if air quality in different parts of the city is getting better or getting worse, and how air quality is affecting various communities. |