Colleges and Institutes Canada again selects Canadore College to participate in its Living Labs project
Jul 12, 2023 | Cindy Males, Public Relations and Communications Specialist
For the second straight year, Canadore College has been selected by Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) to participate in their ImpAct Climate Campus Living Labs project. Last year, Canadore chose to focus on food security for rural and Indigenous communities, and solutions to divert greenhouse gas emissions using solar energy to produce food. This year, the Canadore project will focus on the forested land at the College Drive Campus.
“The forest inventory will provide us with an accurate picture of how much carbon is being absorbed within the forest,” said Jesse Russell, Sustainable Development Project Leader. “The total helps us to mitigate operational emissions.”
“We anticipate that the forest will help offset more than 1000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. The forest management plan will help us preserve the ongoing health of the forest and identify opportunities to enhance the carbon sequestration. This will also be the case with any of the trees that are planted as part of the project.”
“Carbon sequestration is an outcome of good forest management, which engages local communities in a multi-use framework that provides multiple complementary values,” said Elliott Groen, Owner, Forest Gardener, who is working on this project with Canadore College.
The project will take a “boots on the ground” approach to measuring and calculating carbon absorption rates of the 650-acre forest on Canadore’s College Drive Campus and will result in the creation of a 10-year forest management plan to obtain Forest Council Stewardship certification.
"This initiative is a key component of a larger effort by Canadore to become carbon neutral by 2031,” said President and CEO George Burton. “We are already planting trees on all of our campuses, and we have installed water filling stations and waste sorting facilities as well. As a signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Accord, Canadore College is committed to embedding the SDGs into its education, research, leadership, operations, administration, and engagement activities.”
“Canadore College thanks Colleges and Institutes Canada for its ongoing, national leadership in the realm of sustainable development and the SDG Accord,” said Shawn Chorney, Vice President, Strategic Infrastructure, Indigenous, and Learner Services. “The evidence of climate change and the need to take action now is all around us. Our future graduates will be more dialed in to the environment than those who came before them, and we aim to do our part as a modern post-secondary institution by curbing our emissions and impacts.”