Objectives

The overarching objective of this initiative is to facilitate community needs for the implementation of sustainability strategies as it applies to the municipalities of Hinton and Grande Cache. The detailed objectives include:

• to identify local priorities for sustainability, with particular attention to Social, Economic and Environmental issues;
• to investigate and recommend innovative practices and opportunities that exist within the region for social and economic diversification;
• to collect and document the experience of resource-dependent communities and researchers both in Canada and around the world that are addressing diversification;
• to explore ways of increasing entrepreneurship and making the area competitive for diverse enterprises, knowledge-based industries and research in the development of new products and technologies for the resource industries;
• to investigate value-adding opportunities within the current resource industries, such as:
  1. alternative uses of waste products and raw materials,
  2. damage from the Pine Beetle infestation,
  3. providing products and services to the resource industries locally that are purchased outside the communities,
  4. capitalizing on the existing knowledge base of generations of resource extraction to further research in the field.