I am, at heart, a pragmatic idealist. For a short period, the path for those of us working on environmental and climate issues, while difficult, felt relatively clear. However, the last year has changed everything. As they say, history has come roaring back.

The continued fallout from a global pandemic, multiple land wars and conflicts across the globe, inflation and deep political polarization are not distractions from the environmental mission - they are now inextricably part of it. Environmental solutions that ignore economic precarity, supply chain resilience and social cohesion are not durable solutions for the complex world we now live in. 

This new reality requires a coalition of the willing, a web of relationships strong enough to hold true in turbulent times.

In this new era, my gratitude extends to the fantastic web of relationships that sustains our work at Alberta Ecotrust—the many partners, collaborators, and supporters who show up every day as we strive to make progress towards a vision of a better world. 

I am grateful for our municipal government partners, who work with us on the front lines to implement tangible urban climate solutions. We are grateful for our collaborators in the building and development industry, who are co-designing the path needed to create a net-zero future. These relationships are crucial because they ground our work in the real-world economies and communities we aim to serve. 

I am also deeply grateful for the innovators and the enablers. This includes our fellow non-profits, with whom we build coalitions to tackle immense challenges like water security, and the impact investors and capital providers who help us unlock new financial pathways for everything from deep energy retrofits to emerging climate technologies. 

Their work, and ours, is sustained by a community of funders who believe in this shared mission.

And finally, I remain profoundly grateful for the foundational wisdom shared by our Indigenous partners. In a world that has been reminded of its interconnectedness, their holistic worldview provides the connective tissue that helps all the other pieces make sense. The principles of reciprocity and relationality are essential anchors in a volatile world. 

This complex web of relationships is our most essential asset. The challenges are immense, and progress is rarely linear. Working every day with this incredible array of committed partners isn't just inspiring—it’s the only pragmatic way forward. It is the hard, necessary and (occasionally) joyful work of building an Alberta where people and nature thrive.

With gratitude,

Rod