Q & A: John Robinson, UBC

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Dr. John B. Robinson is Professor, Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability, in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He teaches environmental studies at UBC and spends a significant amount of this time researching a wide range of sustainability issues.

He is a member of the Program Committee for the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, and has been a lead author in the last three reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008.

Can you tell us about your background?
I grew up in northern Ontario and completed all of my studies in the province. I received my undergraduate degree in geography from the University of Toronto in 1975, my Masters in environmental studies from York in 1977, and eventually my Ph.D. in geography from the University of Toronto in 1981.

I moved to British Columbia in 1992. I am married with five sons, all of whom have gone to or are going through UBC. My wife is also an associate registrar at UBC, so we're very much a UBC household. We live in Vancouver and have recently downsized to a carriage house in order to reduce our footprint.

When did you become involved with BC Hydro's engagement initiatives?
I first became involved back in the 1980s as a consultant on an early version of the Conservation Potential Review. I moved to B.C. in 1992, and have had ongoing relationships with many different people from BC Hydro over the years.

I have been a member of the Electricity Conservation & Efficiency Advisory Committee since its inception. I am considered a representative from academia, and am on the committee because of my background and experience.

Can you describe the CIRS project that you are currently working on?
The concept behind this project is to showcase sustainability and provide a continuous research test-bed. Sustainability is happening everywhere, but it's one-off and not integrated. The goal is to accelerate sustainability in the regions. We want to be judged in 10 years on whether we've made an impact in a number of sectors and areas.

There are three parts to CIRS. The first is to build a building that is the most advanced and most sustainable building in North America. We would treat it as a living laboratory. It would be a research project on how to create sustainable buildings, system integration and how humans interact with it all.

The second part of the project is community engagement. Politicians can't act to change the world unless they have a constituency for change. The Carbon Tax in B.C. is a good example. It needs support from the public in order to work. The question is how to create social mobilization in support of political change. It's not about changing behaviour, but about how to engage people in thinking about collective change.

The final part of the project is policy implementation strategies, which looks at how we can create private and public partnerships with NGOs and the research sector. About a trillion dollars a year is being spent on building cities. The question is how we can link all of these sectors together and demonstrate sustainability on the ground.

What are your top two recommendations to help BC Hydro become more stakeholder-focused and better able to meet your interests?
The big frontier for organizations doing stakeholder engagement is integrating it with strategic planning. People get engaged in the process, but it's sometimes hard to see what the impact is of that. So many different interests make it complicated.

It's not just about making people feel good; the point of doing all this is to have some impact on the decisions. There needs to be a way to demonstrate that linkage. You want people to recognize that maybe BC Hydro didn't do exactly what they wanted, but they can see the way their input had some effect. That's the piece that's the hardest to do.

Because of its position, BC Hydro can pioneer things that other organizations see as harder to do. I think BC Hydro has a leading role in a lot of this stuff.