Sustainable Maryland Certified

A new initiative designed to assist Maryland's 157 municipalities in their journeys toward sustainability has recently begun. Coordinated by the Environmental Finance Center at the University of Maryland and called Sustainable Maryland Certified, it is an effort to encourage the growth of livable, lively, thriving cities.

The idea is similar to LEED accreditation: offer a menu of sustainable actions that municipalities can choose from, with each action yielding a certain number of points. The goal is to reach a numerical threshold, reflecting a certain level (bronze or silver as of now) of sustainability.

What makes this program especially exciting is that along with the expected topics of natural resources, agriculture, economic development and the built environment, it includes points for health and social equity.

Seven task forces will be meeting over the course of the next 6-8 months to develop the overall criteria for certification. (I serve on the Social Equity task force.)

Our task, as I see it, is to embed in this program the value that the benefits and burdens of consuming the earth's resources should be equitably shared among all peoples, across space and time.

How this can be done is the daunting question. It will be instructive to hear the conversations around the creation of the program's criteria, interesting to see the final menu of options and fascinating to see how the ethics of environmental justice and social equity get woven into the fabric of our sustainability efforts.