KLAMATH SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

a group of people working for a healthy future in the Klamath Basin through education and community activities.
Our focus is community well-being, environmental stewardship, and economic prosperity.

Klamath Falls Sustainable Communties logo 50k

"If you make a decision and wonder how it will affect your children, then you are thinking sustainably."
Leslie Lowe, Founder, Klamath Sustainable Communities

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Look for the KSC information kiosk at the
Klamath Falls Farmers Market
(weather permitting)

Saturdays from 9 to 1
Main Street at 9th Street
downtown Klamath Falls

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Check out the Klamath Green Welcome Wagon website
and help us build a community website devoted to sustainability!
Check out the Forums for information on the Local Food Network and more!
Klamath Green Welcome Wagon

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Check out our Summer 2009 Newsletter
** click on NEWSLETTER-Current in the site menu above

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A DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABILITY:
A SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY respects its own diversity, values the complexity of the natural world, and accepts responsibility for the social, economic, and ecological well-being of present and future generations through individual and collective actions.  It balances regenerative and degenerative processes by applying the following principles:

  • Rates of use of renewable resources do not exceed their rates of regeneration.
  • Rates of use of nonrenewable resources do not exceed the rate at which sustainable renewable substitutes are developed.
  • Rates of pollution emission do not exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment.

A sustainable community advocates an economy that equitably provides satisfying livelihoods in a safe, healthy environment that protects its natural resource base and the viability of natural systems on which all life depends.
Specifically, sustainable communities:

  1. Have levels of pollution, consumption, and population size that are in keeping with regional carrying capacity;
  2. Share an ethic of responsibility to each other and to future generations;
  3. Reflect the social and environmental costs of the provision of goods and services in the prices charged for them;
  4. Encourage informed democratic participation and deliberation in their system of governance, education and civic leadership;
  5. Enhance neighborhood livability and access to greenspace in their design of markets, land use, and architecture;
  6. Make sure that housing is affordable and interrelated with employment, recreation, and shopping areas;
  7. Integrate principles of sustainability into the community's Comprehensive Plan and into other planning policies and procedures
  8. Foster business development policies and procedures that support a sustainable community;
  9. Encourage inter-jurisdiction planning that supports sustainability; and
  10. Encourage innovative and creative approaches to sustainability.

This definition was adopted by the League of Women Voters of Klamath County on April 25, 1998.