Green Gold Initiative > The Green Gold Strategy

The Green Gold Strategy

Common Council President James Pitts' Speech About the Green Gold Initiative

The key to improving our region is jobs - specifically, jobs that are interesting, fulfilling and that provide a decent income in fields that are likely to grow in the foreseeable future. We all know family members and friends who have left Western New York to seek opportunity elsewhere. We all know that the decline of steel and other basic manufacturing industries has devastated our local economy. I believe we need a focused and intelligent strategy to ensure that our recovery from this devastation is swift and complete. Current efforts to market the city to industry in a general way have had only limited success, and I believe that unless Buffalo finds a niche in the world economy, it will be difficult to attract anything but low paying service industries to our area.

I have developed what I call the Green Gold Strategy as a key part of my vision for WNY. Green Gold is based on the following precepts:

• Serious environmental problems are a fact of modern life.
• Whether these problems "explode" the way Exxon Valdez and Chernobyl did, or merely continue to put more and more pressure on our lives, our health ,and our social systems, some of them will force us to make significant changes in our society over the next few decades.
• Companies that provide ways to enact these changes are likely to boom.
• These companies are likely to provide meaningful and lucrative jobs as demand for their products will be firm, and they will require a highly skilled workforce.
• By focusing on the environmental solutions industry, we can create a synergy, similar to that in the Silicon Valley, that provides the intellectual and economic climate for many companies to grow together and develop momentum that reinforces their individual successes.
• Environmental solution technologies are poorly supported by the current economic and political culture and will respond to a well structured invitation to locate and grow in Buffalo.

It may be a stretch for many of you to see Buffalo becoming a national center for the environmental industry, but that is exactly the type of collective stretch we need to take if we are to rise above our current stagnation. Before telling you why I believe the Buffalo area can become the environmental Silicon Valley, let me describe how I see the Green Gold strategy working. The Green Gold office should be supported by a public-private-university-citizen group partnership. Its mission will be to develop, attract and sustain forward looking businesses that are offering solutions to current and projected environmental problems. The office will:

• Undertake research on the environmental industry and its fit with the local economy and labor force;
• Provide assistance for local companies interested in taking part in the Green Gold strategy and developing a Buffalo Area Green Business Council;
• Work with the School Board and its Environmental Advisory Council to prepare Buffalo's students for participation in the Green Gold business sector;
• Develop a prestigious annual national conference to explore the nature of future environmental problems and the likely economic consequences of those problems. We have already made some contacts to set up a Western "Sister City" that could hold the conference in alternate years;
• Develop and implement a national marketing strategy that identifies Buffalo as "the place to be" for environmental entrepreneurs.

We have begun assembling the team necessary to enact the Green Gold strategy, and in fact the Greater Buffalo Partnership, the Mayor's Office, the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, Buffalo State College, the Buffalo Environmental Task Force, the Department of Community Development, Vision for Tomorrow, the Common Council and other organizations all recently cosponsored an EPA grant application to fund the Green Gold Strategy.

Why Buffalo?

This project can be successful because the city and the environmental solutions industry have both been neglected by the national economy. The book Green Gold makes abundantly clear that the US is missing out on an enormously lucrative economic opportunity by letting our environmental technology advances slip away for development by other countries. The city of Buffalo is vastly underrated and misunderstood and has been largely abandoned by corporate America. Both the city and the environmental solutions industry are ripe for expansion. With proper leadership and support they can combine to provide for a robust future partnership.

What can Buffalo offer the environmental solutions industry?

• A forward looking city government that understands the need for the environmental solutions industry and is committed to supporting their efforts and helping to solve their problems;
• Local companies such as Ecology and Environment and Process Technologies, Inc. that are already leaders in the environmental field, and that provide a solid core that can be built upon;
• A chance for companies and analysts to be at the center of planning and benefiting from an annual conference that will advance the understanding and development of environmental solutions;
• A fantastic border location central to the important markets of New York, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Montreal;
• The focused attention of local development officials, universities and the business and banking community in providing locations, workers, market support and infrastructure;
• Cheap hydropower;
• A city image that can lend credibility to a corporation's image. Buffalo's honest, blue collar image can fuel a great marketing campaign. Even our weather could be used to advantage in this regard - especially relative to alternative energy;
• A skilled and committed labor force;
• Inexpensive and architecturally wonderful housing;
• A good school system - with the potential to develop an Environmental Technology magnet high school;
• Popular attitudes that support the environment - Buffalo was the only upstate community to vote for the NYS Environmental Bond Act, and a strong environmental movement here would provide a healthy underpinning for a true environmental solutions industry.

The Green Gold strategy offers Buffalo a way to get back on the cutting edge of industry. Establishing a lasting economic base requires us to create goods and services here - not to just recirculate that which is made elsewhere. In addition, this strategy requires that the city make the local environment a priority in order to attract and keep those who are interested in a clean and diverse environment. This can only benefit us all in the long run.