Enabling a true community partnership on climate change is harder….

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Globally, 1,807 local government bodies - including municipal councils - have declared a climate emergency within the past 5 years*.

Making a declaration is the easy part. Partnering with the community to come up with responses to such a momentous and complicated challenge is not something that every council is willing to take on.

But those who do will be rewarded with ideas and momentum from the community that council cannot possibly achieve on its own.

In this article we share with you a story of a local council in Victoria who has partnered with their community to respond to the climate emergency together.

One of our facilitators, Jessica Connor Kennedy, recently interviewed three people involved in 18 months of community engagement, which has largely been community-driven - Kitty Walker, founder of the Queenscliffe Climate Action Group (QCAG), Martin Gill, CEO of the Borough of Queenscliffe (BoQ) and Jay Epstein, a Community Panel member.

Their experience and insights provide indispensable insights for other councils.

Martin, as a council you have worked closely with your community, and are leaders in empowering/partnering with community on climate change response, why did you go down this path?

Partly it was understanding we couldn’t do this without the community. If we were to make real change, the community had to support that. We needed to find a way to help them guide us and to understand what we were trying to achieve. Having their input and lots of conversations, felt like a good way to start to be on the same page regarding the issues we face and what we needed to do to deal with the issues. Acknowledging on our part that there was such passion amongst community members who have such a good understanding of the issues that matter to them. They brought a great deal of knowledge, and willingness to research, to the table.

Right from the start Councillors wanted this to be a partnership. Yes, there will be risks when we take on partners. Part of that risk was empowering the community to drive the content and the actions that we have ended up with.

Kitty, council leaders might say, ‘we can’t have partners with our community to write the Climate Emergency Response Plan (CERP) because they will make it bigger than we can resource and achieve’, what would you say to that?

I’d say that my understanding of local government is that it is there to support communities to be stronger and that the only way that local government can do that is by working with the community and listening to them.

If you slightly scratch the surface of communities, there are so many heads to tap in to and so much passion, especially in small communities. The passion that community members have to help council make where they live a better place should be harnessed. There should be no ‘us and them’ mentality, great things can happen when people from all walks of life come together to drive change.

Local government have an important role to play; no longer just managing roads, rates and rubbish. People are turning to local government because they are dissatisfied with action on a huge range of issues at a state and federal level and local government is really stepping up. Most council plans make it clear that their role is to build community cohesion and one of the greatest ways they can do that is by listening to the community.

Kitty, you have conducted a huge amount of engagement, including before and after MosaicLab hosted a series of workshops. What has been one of the key ingredients to the engagement working?

Diversity of voices. Making sure that you’ve got a really big mix of people feeling like they can contribute. And that takes time, and a lot of it.

Some people are more comfortable writing their thoughts, some need to be in person, some run a mile when they hear the term ‘community engagement’.

How do you reach them? We tried a range of things including social media and have conducted many, many one-on-one conversations with community leaders and others, to make sure we listened to as many different opinions as possible. There is no one size fits all, and that’s the point of good community engagement.

Martin, when thinking about your work with the community, what was a turning point?

One of the turning points was after our second or third panel session (facilitated by MosaicLab) where the community weren’t happy and suddenly lost some support for the project. We all had to pause and work our way back to the core of what we were trying to do.

That was good because it was the first time that we had to have conversations where we didn’t necessarily see eye to eye and come to a solution. That stuck in my mind because it is okay and easy enough to empower when we are all happy on the same page, but there will be times when there will be challenging points to work through on issues like this.

In that period, we had to work through a challenge about what council thought and what community was seeking. We had set up the structure to have the conversation and we were helped by MosaicLab reminding us that we had to be flexible and understand that we would need to adapt – we were learning through the process.

Once we started ‘letting go’, the amount of the work the community did was quite incredible. A good moment was when the community took ownership of - not just the concepts - but also the work required to turn the concepts into actions. We are close to finishing that report now. That was the moment where the openness and trust built into the process really paid off.

That we all chipped in and did a few more sessions was powerful as well. The conversation didn’t fit neatly into the planned timeline, we knew we needed to do more. Both sides of the conversation agreed with investing more time, which was inspiring.

I really appreciated the guidance that MosaicLab offered us, that was the other really critical partnership. It was clear that MosaicLab were invested in it and the community could see that and that was really important.

Jay, you were on the community panel. What surprised you about the process?

Mainly the fact that you got a cross section of all levels of the community and everyone seemed optimistic. There were people from across the board - 16 year olds to 60 year olds, left wing, right wing and conservatives. Everyone must’ve put their hands up to be involved and I was surprised to see the level of interest. There were one or two cynical people, like me, but being involved made me more optimistic.

I’m cynical because I feel that the world has another 30 or so years. Ten years ago I was at the ‘give up stage’, thinking that there is nothing we can do. But now I think we’ve got to do what we can do in the time we have.

It surprised me that our council was willing to declare a climate emergency, showing us that they were starting from a different perspective, that it’s a major focus. Being involved showed me that people are willing to take the first steps.

Since the panel I’ve volunteered for two things - greening up the area and making it better for wildlife, I feel like I’m doing something. I’ve got slightly less pessimism since being on the panel. When I went on the panel I knew about two thirds of the people. Now when we see each other around town we talk environmental things and that changes your focus - I get different ideas from different people.

I’ve since seen the plan come out of council and saw that 70K has been allocated to electric car chargers. It seems to be very forward thinking.

Martin, what advice would you give to any council executives who are looking at taking the next step regarding climate change engagement?

This is a tough one. A climate emergency response plan (CERP) is a unique piece of strategic work because we don’t own the knowledge on this issue and we don’t have all the tools to make change effective, so we really do need to work out how we become partners with the community.

It requires true speculative investment while not necessarily knowing the outcome. It is a step into the unknown and that is okay, you have got to trust that you can hear from your community, not just the people you hear from all the time, it’s much broader than that.

The process was interesting. Throughout consultation, some of the usual voices said ‘council will never be able to do this because they always fail’. What has been great is that we didn’t have to defend ourselves. Instead, we encouraged these people to go and have a chat to members of the community panel. That had a really positive effect. There is now recognition that there are other voices in the community bringing value to the table, so we haven’t had the level of push-back that we might have normally had.

Kitty, what one other question would you love to be asked about your work on the CERP to date?

We do get asked this a bit but, why is it important to take action locally? The number one argument for not doing work in a local government area is that it doesn’t make a difference. Some say, ‘what role could we possibly have in making change in a massive &^$@ issue’. The whole process teaches me that it is necessary to keep going no matter how big the issue. The famous Margaret Mead quote keeps me going:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

— Margaret Mead

When I get frustrated or fatigued the community members throw that quote back at me. There is no greater sense of wellbeing and achievement than coming together and working with your community on something.

Today we brought together the treasurer of the cricket club, some leading scientists, a reverend from our biggest local church and other key community leaders who all spoke to council about what they will do - with their networks - to support action in the CERP. They all came together because they feel they can make an impact. Nothing will happen unless we all do this.

My great wish is that the Borough of Queenscliffe, and what we have created, can become a blueprint. That we can go to G21 and then G21 can go to neighboring councils, and then to state government and so on. That’s the power of it, I hope.

Martin, does this work finish?

No, and that is a big shift and is an important one for our organisation.

It is not as simple as giving ourselves a pat on the back. Once you go down this path it is the start of a long conversation and you need to keep investing in that.