Evalution of engagement project or EfSD

One of the most important things I learnt in my previous job was the importance of building evaluation into a program from its development, especially in terms of clear and obtainable indicators. This helps with later reporting and with seeing if you've met your objectives along the way. Clear reporting against indicators also helps securing future funding for continuing the project, as it means you can set out clearly why your project/program works and its outcomes and impacts.

Coal and energy generation

ABC Radio's This World Today (listen here) had a program yesterday on California's push to have one third of their energy generated by renewables in the next decade, as part of their legislation-backed attempt to cut their emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Its interesting that in the US, especially the seaboard states, and Europe pretty much no governments are approving new coal power stations but in Australia this debate is not really even happening - old style coal power plants are still being approved. The article notes that this might be as electricity in Australia has traditionally been largely coal fired (80+ %) that its much harder to get the debate started here,, and much harder to put in place aggressive state backed measures.

If we had a government that actually backed climate action, its fun to speculate how they would engage citizens in this debate. I'm presuming citizens assemblys wouldn't be part of it!

Climate change and the 2010 Australian election

Given the large role that climate change played in the 2007 election, and February's Newspoll that showed 73% of Australians believe climate change is a problem, it was interesting to see the way it largely had disappeared from the public debates surrounding the 2010 election.

John Hepburn discusses the role that climate change played in the election results, especially the strong showing of the Greens, in an August post to the Rooted environment blog. He makes the point that both the Greens and the independants (with the exception of Katter) are all pro-action of climate change, and he argues that their sucess is in part to do with the mainstream electorates disatisfaction with the major parties stance on climate change. I think this may be partially the case, especially in the lower house Greens result, but its important to remember that this election was also fought largely in the marginals, and on very local issues, so climate change was pushed out of the media, and that the move to a third party may have reflected a more general disatisfaction with the majors.

However it does seem that the sustainability dialogue has been somewhat sidelined in Australia.

ABC Catalyst report: What role has science in combating climate change?

Catalyst did a good report on the role of science in the climate change debate. It could be used as a good discussion point for a critical thinking exercise on public perceptions of science and authority in the climate change debate:

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3013512.htm

Sucessful engagement: Brown and Issacs "6 Cs"

Brown and Issacs (1994) have developed the "6 Cs" model for guide the development of a successful community engagement process:

• Capability - the members are capable of dialogue
• Commitment - mutual benefit beyond self interest is created or demonstrated
• Contribution - members volunteer and there is an environment that encourages participation
• Continuity - members share or rotate roles and, as members move on, there is a transition process that sustains and maintains the community corporate memory
• Collaboration - reliable interdependence, members have a clear vision and an environment of sharing and trust
• Conscience - embody or invoke guiding principles/ethics of service, trust and respect that are expressed in the actions of the community

These 6 Cs may also be used as filters to measure the functionality of a community or participant group.

(Reproduced from the Effective engagement toolkit, Victorian Government Department of Sustainability)

Systems thinking exercise

In class we did an exercise where we traced the path of a cup of coffee from its manufacture to our drinking it during the afternoon break. In groups we had to trace its journey and map any inputs or externalities that had gone into getting the cup there. Our group's diagram got very involved very quickly, as we mapped energy inputs (in the form of fossil fuels and the sun), water, labour, transport etc.

Different groups mapped different types of coffee (one near us did fair trade coffee) and we then compared our diagrams.

Workshop reflections

In doing this task, we split it up into three parts: I did the day outline, facilitation notes and feedback questionnaire, U did the rationale and S designed our 20 min workshop for the day. We then would pass a draft to each other and workshop it together to produce a final product.

I think the workshop went really quite smoothly on the day. Before we started, I got people up and energised with some yoga, and explained where we were coming from and the point of the day, which seemed to go down really well (the yoga in particular - I need to remember that one for next time!).