The Mulvehill Monologues, Part III

The re-posting continues from August 2012. I forgot how traumatized Anna, the transcriptionist, was while she was doing this. I hope this doesn't trigger a PTSD episode. This one is particularly labyrinthian.

And the transcription continues...., bracing myself, Wes, 

Mulvehill continues her monologue to the commission on 8/7/12 about her trip to Germany:

"To look at it from the angle of how do we, how do we turn this into something that we can benefit from, how do we brand the fact that we can become a city of (unintelligible) ten thousand people a year move to Copenhagen. OK. So they invested 15 million euros before new legislation was even passed and what to do about this so they were very proactive. This initiative, they formed several initiatives, the cloud burst initiative which you can google and the Danish water forum and one of the angles that, ahhh, the team had presented, the entire staff of this particular department flew in to present this. There were several, there were teams from Taiwan that flew in, there were teams from Denmark, ummm, La Paz, Mexico, they had staff, and, that would come in and present these case studies for (unintelligible) but this angle of policy challenge, so rain falls on the road and she says, "that's sewage money," you pay for that from your, your water and sewer. But when rain falls into the lakes you can't fund it with water management money, you couldn't fund it with any money. So it's like well it's not my job, it's not my job, it's not my job. Rain didn't fall here, it's all or just rain that's coming down! [Mulvehill raised voice] It's just funded through different channels, and, so they had to work, they looked at that angle, of, OK, well, it's just, it's rain. Just depends on where it's falling in terms of how we're going to deal with it and having to make policy changes so that it can be addressed whether it falls in the lakes, whether it falls on the roads, so that the problem can be addressed, ummm, as almost a turnkey solution through policy setting. It was a very, very impressive and [mumbling] you can actually find their presentation for this, and the whole report from [unitelligible], ummm, the conference on line. OK. So they, their, their, to answer that question of whether you can use adaptation strategy to promote green growth and promote investment in your city they have their, their branding it that a climate proof city is more attractive to investion [sic], ummm, a resilient community secures existing investments and attracts new investment. Adaptive capacity is a competitive advantage and cities capable of protecting businesses and citizens from climate related threats are more attractive places to live, work, and invest. So they are using adaptation strategy and their capacity to deal with the flooding, and to deal with a natural disaster that happens to them regularly with rain to become a competitive advantage. OK. Mainstreaming resilience was another term that, ahhh, if you google it you won't see a whole lot on the term of mainstreaming resilience but basically what it is is when you make it part of your overall, what, what Copenhagen did. It became part of their overall plan of attracting business, of attracting investment, of green, providing green jobs. And it allows cities to take advantage of synergies between communities, even between departments, where they were solving the problem of, this isn't our, water, the water on the lake. So we're not going to use that money for it. 

Sorry, Wes. All I can handle today. Usually transcription is fairly straightforward, a person has a thought and follows through and it is easy to transcribe. But this is something entirely new. Every once in a while there is a thread of a thought and then it goes, nowhere. Are you certain you want people reading this? Will try to do a few more minutes later on. Am beginning to feel a terrible headache coming on. Call me later on, Anna.