Course:ENVR400/Scope Statement (10/20/10)

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Scope Statement (10/20/10)

How do we make Vancouver’s food system more sustainable?

This will be the driving question of our research and our aim is to produce a report that includes recommendations on how to achieve this. Our starting point will be to explore areas where we see potential for improvements that could lead to a more sustainable food system. We will explore the following areas to assess the feasibility of a project and the potential impact of improvements within that area:

  • Seasonal food availability
  • Carbon footprint of food
  • Organic vs. non-organic
  • Local agricultural inputs
    • water
    • land
    • fertilizer
    • pesticide (organic)
  • Agricultural style
    • mass production
    • rotational
    • garden
  • Nutritious food waste
    • domestic
    • wholesale
    • grocery
    • food services
  • Composting
    • of food scraps (e.g. apple core)
    • Non-nutritious food waste (e.g. rotten apple)


We will select an area based on the feasibility of an associated project and the impact we feel our recommendations could have. Our tentative deadline to make this selection is in mid-November so that we can generate a proposal and project outline and subsequently focus our efforts solely on one area.

The execution of our project will include describing the current situation, looking at ways it has already improved and ways in which it can be further improved. We could quantify the impact of existing improvements using methods including (but not limited to) data collection, data analysis and modeling. We could attempt to predict the impact of future improvements using methods including (but not limited to) modeling and making projections based on existing data from places where our recommendations might already be implemented.

Based on the contents of the Draft Regional Food System Strategy published by Metro Vancouver in September of 2010, they could play an important role in the production of our report. Because of Metro Vancouver’s desire to improve the sustainability of Vancouver’s Food System they would be a key stakeholder. Furthermore they have outlined several proposed collaborative actions, and we feel that there is a likelihood our project could fall within one of these actions. Given this association with Metro Vancouver it would likely follow that the geographic area that Metro Vancouver encompasses will be the physical boundaries of our project.

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