Sustainable community development, networks and resilience.

We live in an increasingly complex world. One of the mistakes of early proponents of sustainable development was to advocate for stable states, yet complex systems such as human societies are not always stable. In a world of sudden and unexpected change, no one lasting sustainable state exists (Newman 2005). Sustainable development is a moving target (Salwasser 1993), not a one time goal. Sustainable development requires constant and difficult effort, and this effort can be very taxing for a community with few economic resources. In our study of "United We Can," we were particularly interested in whether the formation of the group would increase community resilience by providing a network of social capital to draw upon in the future.

To manage complex, dynamically interconnected situations such as the entanglement of ecological, social, and economic issues, communities can draw on systems theory designed to treat such complex issues (Kay et al. 1999). One key element of systems theory is understanding of the dynamics and complexity of resilience. One definition of resilience is "the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental change" (Adger 2000). Although the concept is drawn from the study of ecology, its application to human systems is much broader, as humans can anticipate and prepare for the future to a much greater degree than ecosystems can (Peterson 2000a). Resilience has also been defined as the capacity to deal with complex issues widely dispersed across a set of loosely connected actors (Olsson et al. 2004), a definition that speaks to the collective nature of community resilience.

Social resilience can be measured by proxy, using indicators such as the variability of income, stability of livelihoods, wealth distribution, demographic change (Adger 2000) and agency (Newman and Dale 2005). However resilience is also a function of the social networks contained in a community. Resilience emerges from both intrascale and cross-scale interaction. Understanding the nature of resilience across scales is difficult because of non-linearity, emergent properties and the dominance of different processes at different scales (Peterson 2000b), as well as human dynamics.

On the basis of our research in Canadian communities and network formation for sustainable community development, we concur with Gunderson (2000) that, in order to increase local resilience, communities must increase the buffering capacity of the system, manage for processes at multiple scales, and nurture sources of trial and error. We believe that communities with few economic resources might have difficulty meeting these requirements, and will need to explore many different potential options. Communities also need to encourage diversity. Rammel (2003) argues that diversity is the key to preserving adaptive flexibility within society. In effect, when confronted with challenges, an adaptive community survives by having an array of diverse paths to choose from. In the case study in question, the community builds diversity by providing new options for employment and builds resilience by formalizing an activity that was conducted individually, giving the participants a recognized voice in the larger community.

The History of the "United We Can" Case Study

The city of Vancouver is often held up as a model of sustainable development with its dense downtown core (Montgomery 2006), but Vancouver's East Side has not shared in this renaissance. Millions of dollars have been spent on initiatives to improve conditions in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, but addiction rates and the destitution of this area have continued to rise. The community continues to be the centre of the injection drug use epidemic in Vancouver and disparities of health status of residents compared to Vancouver and the rest of British Columbia persist (Buxton 2003). In the period between May 2004 and September 2004, over 200 men died in this neighbourhood (Lyotier, pers. comm.). Compared to the province of British Columbia as a whole--and taking into account the age of the population--this community has significantly more observed than expected deaths from all causes (Buxton 2003).

The study of the "United We Can" initiative was undertaken as part of a larger grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) titled "Social Capital and Sustainable Development." This research project studied the linkage between social capital and successful sustainable development initiatives in several communities with varying levels of economic capital. Interviews were conducted within the community using a "snowball" technique to gain understanding of the social network structure present. The Vancouver East Side was the community with the lowest levels of economic capital present.

The "binners" of the Eastside have long been a fixture in the community. Prior to 1995, divers worked at night, individually and hidden away since they were regarded as distasteful even within their own community. They recovered recyclables from the big blue garbage bins hidden in the alleyways behind high-rise condominiums that connect much of the downtown of Vancouver. They were hostage, however, to retailers who resented street people bringing recoverables to their stores for cash--often with containers not sold by the retailer. Interviews revealed that retailers would refuse to take the containers or would try to convince the divers to take product in lieu of cash.

In 1992, the founder and a friend decided to do something about their resentment and convinced a local church, First United Church, to donate $150.00 to organize a one-day bottle depot in Victoria Square, a local park. The idea was to pay street people to bring in empty cans and bottles which at that time were non-refundable. By organizing this event around a basic issue affecting dump-ster divers, the leaders hoped to highlight the issue publicly. Small handbills were drawn up and posted on the blue garbage bins, and distributed in welfare and food bank lines, the Salvation Army and other places frequented by the dumpster divers. The initial one-day park depot attracted divers who lined up along the park and spilled onto the street with shopping carts full of non-refundable bottles and cans. Each person was paid up to $10.00 for their non-refundables. The event was a huge success in terms of its outreach to the 'diver' community and the volume of bottles and cans recovered, although in the end the organizers had to pay a truck to come and haul away the 'garbage'. One unanticipated result of the Victoria Park depot was that all the people who had been 'hidden away' working individually in the alleyways sorting through garbage started to connect on the streets and comment about how great the depot had been, and asked whether there was anything more that could be done: the beginning of a small network. The provincial government, through the Human Resources Ministry, approached the organizers to learn more about what had happened. They proposed bringing in consultants to organize community workshops. The community organizers, however, suggested to the Ministry that if they wanted to learn about Victoria Park, the knowledge should come directly from the divers, and that they should also be paid as consultants for their time. Again, street people lined up for the workshops at local community centres, and had a lot to share with the government officials, for they knew the business first hand.

The critical emergent learning for the binners from these workshops was the realization that they could create their own deposit system. Although there was no further money to hold another one-day depot, about 15 people continued to meet regularly to discuss how to start their own not-for-profit society, with Ken Lyotier paying for pizza. Over time, more and more people were attracted to the meetings. In 1993/1994, the provincial government brought in new regulations to cover containers not earlier covered, providing the potential for a depot such as United We Can to make money. It still took a few years, however, for the initial core network to become a legal nonprofit organization.

Following their incorporation, the group approached VanCity Community Loan Fund (a community savings co-operative) for a line of credit, which was eventually secured: $12,500 from VanCity itself and $12,500 from a benefactor. United We Can was established as a formal depot in 1995, and Ken Lyotier became its first, and to date only, Executive Director. In that first year, 4.7 million containers were recycled, putting $360,000 back into the community through handling fees. At this time, the provincial government paid for the rent and the initial wages for the men and women. This convergence of government alignment and economic support helped sustain the initiative at critical points in its evolution from a small network to a recycling depot to, ultimately, a social enterprise.