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.