UBC Forestry’s Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP) group receives the Public Education Award from Tree Canada. This highly esteemed and honoured award recognizes excellence in furthering the understanding of urban forestry issues and/or encouraging best practices in the urban forestry sector.
“CALP is thrilled to receive this award from Tree Canada, and we deeply appreciate the recognition for this and our other work with communities. Our research lab is continuing to design and implement new methods for collaborative learning, using urban landscapes and interactive visual media to engage citizens. I would like to thank the entire CALP team for making this team award possible,” says UBC Forestry CALP director and former Bachelor of Urban Forestry program director Stephen Sheppard.
About CALP
CALP is a multidisciplinary research group focused on developing bridges between research and communities, with a focus on landscape planning and climate change issues. CALP’s goals are to develop & implement better ways of collaborative learning, planning & social mobilization on climate change, community energy, urban forestry & other aspects of sustainable landscapes.
Climate Action Meets Community Engagement
CALP’s most recent project, Cool ‘Hood Champs, centres on training local residents to become “climate champions” who then go on to galvanize climate action amongst their neighbours. A pilot program held in early 2020 saw 37 volunteer champions developing local climate action plans and over 70% taking action, such as planting trees. This training program builds on CALP’s Citizen’s Coolkit, an innovative guide that empowers households and neighbourhoods to make more climate-conscious decisions, and educates people on British Columbia’s dynamic future in its efforts to meet carbon reduction targets.
Moving forward, CALP aims to scale up such training programs and toolkits across the city and province. CALP is also developing a Teacher’s Guide for the Vancouver School Board, to be launched in 2021. Entitled ‘Your Community, Your Climate’, this guide provides teachers with a menu of activities for improving their students’ understanding of climate change at the local level.
Other CALP Projects
Other CALP initiatives include the Green Design Project, which focuses on scalable evidence-based urban greening guidelines for improving the lives of human beings and the green spaces that enrich them, and the Our Future Community video game, designed to teach students about climate change solutions through fun, interactive quests. For more information, visit CALP’s website at https://calp.forestry.ubc.ca/.
About Tree Canada
Tree Canada was founded in 1992 as the National Community Tree Foundation and has spent the last 28 years dedicated to bolstering Canadian urban forests, and inspiring people to participate in community greening. With a focus on planting trees, their work partners with indigenous communities to explore the impact of greening initiatives, and provides awards to organizations like CALP for excellence in furthering the understanding of urban forestry issues and encouraging best practices in the urban forestry sector.
