Implementing Sustainability: Policy Coherence & Effective Action - Some challenges in building a sustainable future (Part4)

The Challenge of Information

The volume of knowledge available from the sources previously discussed in Part 3 is staggering and this is a barrier to progress. When faced with issues of complexity, a broad scope and multiple information sources it is often difficult to access facts, distil the relevant from the unimportant, and prospect for nuggets of innovative thinking. This can retard the development of well formed and coherent policy.

The human race in the developed and developing world is not only in conflict with its own unsustainable appetite for consumption, it is also in effect at ‘war’ with information.
In order to prevent mankind from consuming itself out of a sustainable future we must stay one step ahead in this ‘information war’*. One objective is to organise and structure it; another is to devise effective methods of search and retrieval. A third is to be able to do both of these more quickly than the speed at which new information becomes available.
The challenge here is to take information and place it in a smart framework that can be educated or is clever enough to learn from search activity, enabling us to extract results that inform our intelligence.

Once this is achieved, the resulting ‘sustainable information’ could well be a significant factor in determining the success of building a sustainable future. It will integrate information on climate change with the other elements of sustainable development. This drives the creation of rounded and coherent policy that can be readily translated into effective action to build a sustainable future.

If we fail to manage the abundance of information and turn it into knowledge, local government organisations will find it difficult to make the enterprise wide changes that are needed in order to meet the strict targets that central government is likely to hand down.

Implementing Sustainability: Policy Coherence & Effective Action - Some challenges in building a sustainable future (Part 3)

The Challenge of Communicative Processes

The point communications technologies we all use to carry out our daily work are inherently disconnected; consider voice calls that come through the switchboard and email messages; voice mails to our mobiles and email attachments; SMS messages on our mobiles and Instant Messaging to our desktops.

As the number of people within a workgroup grows, the complexity of the shared undertaking increases, or both, structured communication exhibits a tendency to breakdown. 

Communications have a higher probability of becoming missed, incomplete, delayed or garbled, and consequently, processes can become disjointed across the organisation’s structure. With the increasing magnitude of the organisation, so the potential size of workgroups and teams increases. The team may become inter-departmental. Where a local government organisation is engaged with a number of external organisations, collaboration will have to take place across organisational boundaries.

As we factor in geographical issues that arise from a flexible working policy where workers could be mobile or telecommuters for instance, the potential for ‘chaotic’ messaging can go up another notch. This can result in a significant slowdown in the speed at which we are able to conduct our activities. If we can improve the efficiency of communications across the workgroup, we will create an environment that is conducive to more effective collaboration. 

This prevents the duplication of effort and dilution of human resources, and will ultimately contribute to the delivery of value to citizens by local government.

Such an environment promotes rapid progress and the shared undertaking of building a sustainable future gathers forward momentum.

Implementing Sustainability: Policy Coherence & Effective Action - Some challenges in building a sustainable future ( Part 2)

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A unifying mantra of ‘think global, act local’ seems to have gained popularity as a rallying cry, inviting units of society at the community level to act to exploit ‘the butterfly effect’, where small local actions can have broad global effects.

In its first report in December 2007, the Local Government Association Independent Climate Change Commission found that many councils have yet to put appropriate strategies and action plans in place.

The Commission also warned that if councils fail to respond to climate change in the next two years, then central government should legislate to ensure they take action to tackle global warming.

The Nottingham Declaration, seemingly the most widely recognised policy statement on climate change, had acquired 281 local authority signatories as of Feb 20081. 

One of the leading advisory organisations, The Carbon Trust, recorded 141 councils as participants of its Local Authority Carbon Management Programme (LACM)2. It seems there is no shortage of commitment, but how do we explain the lack of action?

One explanation may lie in the complexity of the task in hand. Sure, the early goals seem straightforward; a 5% reduction in energy consumed by buildings under council administration by 2010, pushing up to 10% by 2015. With a structured approach this looks entirely achievable. 
It is the 5 years after that, the goal for 2020, which currently stands at between 26-32% where the real challenges begin. Carbon reduction will also need to be tied to the big picture of building the sustainable future which will almost certainly compound the difficulties.

In the way that the past reaches back before the Industrial Revolution, the sustainable future stretches way beyond 2050 and the 60% carbon reduction target. Looking forward, the degree of progress that is made now will influence the prospects of man generations to come. We have to re-calibrate the baseline of ‘long-term’ to fully appreciate the importance of the task.

There are no quick fixes; if the past era of well intentioned ‘green initiatives’ seems to have been somewhat of a fad, the PR activities of commercial organisations which achieved little now look like noisy tokenism. Local government can afford no such forays; it has an obligation to citizens and businesses; it must be exemplar.


To reconcile the aspirations for sustainable growth with the reduction targets of 2020 and beyond, local government organisations have to develop and nurture the new shoots of enterprise wide change.

The financial backdrop against which this far-reaching, complex and difficult task will have to be performed is one of successive rounds of reductions on spending.

The issues that must be addressed in the pursuit of a sustainable future for the environment,
economy and society are broad and diverse:

• Climate change and energy
• Management of natural resources
• Public health
• Social exclusion and demography
• Sustainable transport

The continual improvement of the quality of public services cannot be ignored, yet another one of the many criteria that need to be met.
To help councils meet targets for sustainable development, a plethora of interlocking and overlapping pools of expertise are on hand, ensuring that a complete circle of support exists; private enterprise, consultants, advisory bodies and quasi-NGOs. Perhaps the primary ones are:

• The Carbon Trust
• The Energy Saving Trust
• The Environment Agency
• ICLEI - (The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives)
• The Local Government Association
• UKCIP - (UK Climate Impacts Programme)

In the midst of these sits central government’s monitoring station for progress, the Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) within DEFRA4. Below the top level, a secondary layer of information sources are to be found.

These may be smaller organisations with lower profiles and quieter voices, or they may be indirect sources that provide useful information such as the Technology Strategy Board’s Knowledge Transfer Networks for the private sector. The contribution of information from secondary sources is not necessarily of lower value or importance than that which originates from the primary level.

If we take an overview then it is possible to discern that there are three fundamental areas where key challenges are to be found:

• Extraction of intelligence from all information sources
• Joining up communicative processes across organisational boundaries
• Ensuring the cultural cohesion of those who need to work together to effect change

The volume of knowledge available from these sources is staggering and this is a barrier to progress. In Part 3 we will consider when faced with issues of complexity, a broad scope and multiple information sources how we can distil the relevant from the unimportant, and prospect for nuggets of innovative thinking.

Implementing Sustainability: Policy Coherence & Effective Action - Some challenges in building a sustainable future ( Part 1)

Sustainability Matters

Sustainability is a subject of some complexity and this can make it an area prone to misunderstanding.

If we briefly chart the history of sustainable development it includes these major milestones:

• At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, political leaders from over 100 countries made a formal commitment to intensify efforts to resolve global environment and development problems and to strive for sustainable development.
• Following the EU Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, the Council of Ministers decided to assess all policy areas for their contribution to sustainability.
• In June 2001, EU Heads of State and Government agreed the first European sustainable development strategy. This set out a long term vision for society where economic growth would support social progress and environmental performance. This was subsequently revised at the European Council meeting in June 2006.

In the 20 years since sustainable development debuted on the world stage, its precocious relative, global warming, like an older and more belligerent sibling, has been dominating the agenda – more latterly, redefined as climate change.

Unfortunately, in some quarters, the distinction between sustainability and climate change has become blurred, and the point that action on climate change is only one element of sustainable development is often overshadowed.

The bias towards combating climate change is enormous; carbon reduction is certainly an area where we can obtain immediate results; the insecurity of global energy and sky-rocketing prices only serve to reinforce this.

Behavioural change and a short programme of technology modification are likely to be very successful in curbing the worst excesses of energy consumption and the energy inefficiency of the built environment.

Transport efficiency initiatives are being implemented at a local level and congestion zone charging is certainly modifying behaviour; national road pricing policy appears to be a likely candidate for a national debate - if not at the UK level then almost certainly at the devolved level.

Other important aspects of sustainability from the local government perspective that need to be considered are:

• Action to deliver sustainability must also allow for growth - populations, economies and the net consumption of commodities
• Carbon reduction must be accompanied by an improvement in service delivery from smaller budgets

The satisfaction of these elements requires local government to do more with less, and in effect to undergo enterprise wide change. In Parts 2 and 3 of this paper we will identify and examine the challenges posed by information, collaboration and culture in building a sustainable future.