Five theme areas are: Natural Resources, Air Quality, Water, Transportation and Energy, and
Community and Economy, to represent the essence of the community and its influence on
the land and our environment. This report, built on 2006 baseline data, provides trends for key
indicators, and includes a few new indicators. Buffelgrass is featured for the first time and we are monitoring data to track expanding regional progress to control this invasive plant.

The report (large file) is available for download here.

Local chefs cook meals with produce from local gardens at a fundraiser
for Kim Fox’s travels from 4 to 6:30 p.m., Sunday, May 23. $25 to $75.
Mercado San Agustin 100 S. Avenida del Convento. Call 461-1106, or
visit theoriginalhoe.blogspot.com for more information.

Sara Jones of Tucson CSA will make dessert, and Amy Schwemm of Mano Y
Metate will make mole. Rachel Yaseen of The Organic Kitchen and
Justin Dixon of Mercado Sunday Dinners will also be cooking.

TUCSON’S LOCAL FOOD AMBASSADOR

Kim Fox, a Tucson micro-urban farmer and food activist dedicated to
community education and local food production, is embarking on a new
adventure! Up until now, Kim has been busy designing urban sites for
food production and distribution. Her community education programs
focus on local food production, soil science, food security and
health. Now that summer is here, she’s hitting the road with her bike,
and an open plate and mind!

Kim is an observer of and participant in local and international food
ways. She has traveled to 25 countries working on small farms and
urban gardens, visiting farmers’ markets, participating in food
culture and customs, and observing local food production and
distribution methods. Beginning in June 2010, Kim will travel by
bicycle across Europe engaging with people who manage urban and rural
farms, gardens, farmers’ markets, food banks, seed banks, and public
and private agencies in order to exchange perspectives and information
on local sustainable agriculture. In particular, Kim will study and report on
seed saving, climate change consequences, GMO issues, sustainable farming
and urban gardening techniques, and seek to collect recipes straight from the kitchen.

Her community in Tucson and beyond can learn with her, via internet updates
on her blog, at www.theoriginalhoe.blogspot.com or on Facebook “Kim Fox Food Trek 2010.” Your donations or in-kind support will ensure that fresh and enriching ideas, beyond the American perspective, will benefit our community’s local-sustainable food system.

To contribute to her trip or for more information, visit her blog or
contact her at theoriginalhoe@live.com or 520-622-1917. Become a food
trekkie!

Transitioning to a Sustainable Economy: Tucson’s Future?

What is the greatest challenge we now face in Southern Arizona?

This question becomes more important as we join together this year in community conversations about our future. Increasingly, people are realizing the main challenge is not growth, but rather sustaining and improving our quality of life including our economy. Managing growth is necessary, but only part of what is required for success.

Our mounting problems are largely the result of over-dependence on population growth to keep our economy thriving. In addition to our attractive climate, desert landscape, and friendly, diverse culture, people migrate here for the affordable lifestyle. Until recently, we offered many low-cost advantages – cheap water, cheap energy, cheap labor, cheap capital, and cheap land. We also subsidized the expansion of public infrastructure and services to serve growth, mostly out of general revenues. As long as these favorable, artificial conditions for growth prevailed, people continued to move here. Only one year in our history – 1990 – did out-migration outpace population in-flux. And that was a year when our economy last hit bottom.

Our region’s long-term average population growth rate has been a little over 2% per year. The annual growth rate for Arizona as a whole has been more than 3%, resulting in doubling population and the required built environment every two decades. Job creation has generally kept up with population, yielding low unemployment rates, mainly because population growth has been the driver of job growth. Even though public systems and services were under-funded, this growth dynamic benefited most of us as long as the base kept growing.

But what happens when the conditions underpinning growth change? This is the situation we find ourselves in today – a drying, warming Southwest with looming water shortages; the end of cheap oil, natural gas, and coal; unprecedented price rises for food imports; people refusing to subsidize urban sprawl; increasing limitations on jurisdictions to maintain and expand infrastructure and services; a super competitive global economy driven by advances in science and technology; new accounting and costing proposals including measuring and limiting carbon impacts – and in the face of these growing uncertainties – questions about the declining health of the American economy and its financial systems. What does sustainability mean for us here as we confront these major, converging challenges of the 21st century?

Instead of debating the infinite pros and cons of growth, maybe we should focus on what really matters most to us – how are we going to successfully transition to an economy which sustains our quality of life into the future but doesn’t require unsustainable growth to keep it thriving?

The Arizona Department of Commerce initiated an important study several years ago to answer this question. However, that prospectus was mostly neglected and to date, remains little known. The bottom-line finding is that we are well-positioned to sustain our economy by developing a Sustainable Systems Industry based on already existing strengths in engineering, optics, biosciences, environmental design, earth sciences, and natural resources. Our sustainability challenges can all be converted into opportunities for centers of excellence in economic development. These sustainable systems and technologies would include resource-efficient products, services, and practices in the areas of water, energy, food, health, transportation, and housing. And perhaps most important, these industries would supply both the local economy and rapidly growing export markets – all responding to the new demands for higher performance standards.

Development leaders in both Tucson and Phoenix are already discussing the growth limitations of each city – the prospects of “population build-out” in the future. Some say our region should grow to 2 million, some say we can sustain another half million people, but others ask: How will we sustain even the current million people without fundamental economic innovation and investment in our deficient public infrastructure and services to support a new economy? Regardless of scenario, population growth will go away as the driver of the economy.

More immediately, growth is certain to slowdown naturally as development subsidies are reduced and demand for new development declines. Growth patterns will be better managed as we direct development and re-development pressures toward more compact, mixed use, transit-oriented urban form. The big questions that remain are: Will we respond to these sustainability challenges in time to ensure that our quality of life becomes sustained and not further eroded? Will we build a new economy based on the opportunities of sustainability? Or will we witness these converging challenges become the first step of long-term economic decline?

In his inspiring 2008 State of the City address, Mayor Bob Walkup called upon people and groups in the community to join together in building a new sustainable economy. This should be Goal One if we are to build economic resilience and attract sufficient investment within the next five years. Surely, we need clarity about where we are and where we’re headed. And we need a way to common ground, common vision and full community participation.

– Sustainable Tucson, February, 2008

You‚re Invited to a FREE Public Showing

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO

GREEN VALLEY LIBRARY

601 N. LA CANADA

GREEN VALLEY, AZ 85614

Saturday, APRIL 24, 2010—-TIME: 9:30 a.m.

The World According to Monsanto, a film by Marie-Monique Robin, documents the devastating cost of Monsanto‚s race over the last decade to genetically engineer and patent the world‚s crops. Ms. Robin has traveled the globe in an effort to capture the human toll of Monsanto‚s drive for GMO market domination. Her interviews with scientists, legislators, agricultural officials, farmers, shepherds and families affected by GMOs, has made this picture critically-acclaimed in every country where it has opened.

ADMISSION: FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Presented by Thought Provoking DVD Films

and the GMO Free Project of Tucson

CONTACTS:  Alma Sychuk: 520.648.6416

Mascha Miedaner ˆ GMO Free Project of Tucson

520.481.1128 info@gmofreeprojectoftucson.org

www.gmofreeprojectoftucson.org <http://www.gmofreeprojectoftucson.org/>

Double Check Ranch at the Walking J Farm

Amado, Arizona

Here’s one to add to your shopping list on March 27 – fresh, natural, locally grown and grass fed beef.  See where your food is grown!  Go directly to the source!  The Walking J Farm (a member of Arizona ’s Double Check Ranch family) is located in Amado, just an hour south of Tucson .

Join us for this perfect afternoon with the cattle in the pasture, the chickens in their “tractors” and a rapidly expanding garden – all at the Walking J Farm.  Host Jim McManus, owner of the Walking J Farm, will lead a walking tour

RESERVATIONS REQUIRED.  TOUR FEE $10.  For inquiries and reservations, contact LocalFoodConcepts@comcast.net or call 520.395.0663.

Cyclovia will give Tucson folks the chance to enjoy our great weather, see neighbors, friends and people from throughout Tucson, and get a little exercise – all on city streets that will be closed to car traffic and open to walkers, joggers, cyclists, skaters and all other forms of natural movement.

Motor vehicles are detoured from the route allowing everyone the freedom to enjoy the outdoors – safely. It isn’t a race, parade or competition. Instead, it’s a chance to enjoy Tucson from a new perspective, get some exercise and have some fun. Walk your dog, roller skate, blow bubbles. Have fun because during Cyclovia, the world stops for you.

Read a recent Arizona Daily Star article here:

For more information visit: www.cycloviatucson.org

To learn more about this event and how to get involved, please attend the event open house, on Tuesday, March 30 from 5:30pm to 7pm, at the Northwest Neighborhood Center at Mansfield Park, 2160 N. 6th Avenue.

The first print edition of the Green Pueblo Map showcasing our community’s favorite “green” places and spaces will be available later this year.  If you haven’t already done so, we encourage you to “make your mark” on the map by nominating your favorite sustainable sites at www.greenpueblomap.org . Please also encourage your friends and colleagues to participate.

Nominations are being accepted in more than 30 categories, including community gardens, solar sites, recycling centers, re-use shops, public parks, scenic vistas, rainwater harvesting locations, and historical sites.  It takes only a minute to nominate a site and you do not have to provide any personal information other than a zip code.  Once a site is nominated, it will typically appear on the website within a month.  A selection of sites will also appear on a printed version of the map.  If you want your site(s) to be considered for the printed map, please submit your nomination(s) by April 1, 2010.

The Green Pueblo Map is a free, community-based mapping effort.  The on-line map is constantly evolving and reflects the community we are all creating together.  Residents are encouraged to visit www.greenpueblomap.org at anytime to help identify and explore the features that promote sustainable living and which makes our region such a special place to live.

Pima County, the City of Tucson, and The Inner Connection are organizing the Green Pueblo mapping effort.  However, the project is part of a much broader, international green mapping initiative that began in New York City in 1995, and has since spread to 55 countries.  For more information, please visit www.greenmap.org .

Tucson\’s 16th Annual Earth Day Festival and Parade will be held on Saturday, April 17, 2010 at Reid Park. The theme for the 2010 Festival is “All Species Deserve a Place on Earth!”  All species great and small – insects, plants and animals – the Earth needs them all!

Exhibits related to the environment will include \”hands-on\” activities for children and provide information on environmental products, water conservation/water quality, household hazardous waste, wildlife, nature preserves and much more!

At 10:00 the unique and colorful parade will include participants dressed up as plants, animals, and insects, and environmentally themed floats. Batucaxe, high energy drum and dance group will lead the “All Species Procession” as part of the Earth Day Parade!

After the parade, watch as local middle school students test their design and construction skills in a model solar electric race car competition.  Then change gears from model cars to full-size vehicles at the Alternate Fuel Vehicle Show.  Check out vehicles that run on alternate fuels such as biodiesel, compressed natural gas, electric, ethanol, propane and even waste vegetable oil.  Ask the experts how you can start using an alternate fuel in your vehicle to keep the air clean for all species.

Animals love the earth and deserve a place on earth too! So, ride your bike to the Earth Day Festival and for those riding their bikes (with a helmet) get free admission to the Reid Park Zoo by showing your safety helmet.

For more information about the 16th Annual Tucson Earth Day Festival please visit www.tucsonearthday.org, call (520) 206-8814 or email tucsonearthday@yahoo.com.Earth Day