Insight - The Community Development Foundation

Which community? What is development - CDF's definition is work around:

Working with individuals and communities

• Challenging opression and inequality
• Bringing about social change and justice
• Empowerment
• Wellbeing

Community engagement is about involving people in the decisions that influece their lives. In the world of citizen-centered policy, employee, employer, individual, volunteer, carer, representative are all roles to take into account.

The latter of participation:

Information - supporting - consulting - deciding together - acting together - it's important to know where you are meeting people, and where you hope to take them to.

Decision making in the round - 1) holding to account, 2) giving account, 3) taking into account, 4)dis-counting (not going to be used because timing or context is out). The lack of feedback kills engagement if actions don't develop from input and suggestions.

The Community Development Worker - work alongside local people building relationships, helping communities develop common concerns.

Project example - working with CCW on Come Outside - trying to generate sustainable levels of community use of nature. Engagement motivators included enjoying greens space, creating usable space, meeting people - barriers included distance, fear, lack of knowledge or neglect of the spaces.

The role of community development agents is going to be key for rapid progress, particularly so taking the knowledge gap into account.

In a Times interview, 41% of people interviewed believed that we needed to act quickly on climate. To protect community, we need connectedness, care, concern and commitment. And action.

Community based social marketing

Insights from Welsh Assembly Govt Climate Change Workshop

Step One - select the specific behaviour. Pick the behaviours that you want to stick. If it's about how water heating, anything from shower heads to thermostats can be relevant. Understand that different motivators will be present - which may be often more complex than those determining consumer choices.

Step Two - identify the barriers and benefits - "walk in their shoes" - understand their language and do solid research, run focus groups and conduct surveys to show what's actually happening. Set SMART goals, and Baby Smart goals - the things that will be needed to get started. e.g. reduce the number of staff travelling to WAG building X by 70% by Xmas 2010.

Step Three - Develop a clear strategy. For each behavour, develop a strategy to reduce barriers and increas benefits. Make the preferred behaviours easier and more affordable. Gain commitment - and make them public to promote engagement and involvement. Take advantage of social norms - group expectations and pressure to perform. Remember the value of prompts (remember to switch off the lights). Communicate, being careful to avoid the use of fear.

Step Four - Pilot - small groups, trying it

Step Five - implement a strategy

Rearrange the deckchairs

With a decision at Copenhagen now pushed back into 2010 at the earliest, and the chances of pegging global warming to an average of two degrees, and climate scientists increasingly convinced that our current path will take us to four degrees or beyond, I thought it would be worth referring back to the predictions that Mark Lynas made a couple of years back in his award-winning book Six Degrees. Here's a summary from Mark's website

3C-4C

Glacier and snow-melt in the world’s mountain chains depletes freshwater flows to downstream cities and agricultural land. Most affected are California, Peru, Pakistan and China. Global food production is under threat as key breadbaskets in Europe, Asia and the United States suffer drought, and heatwaves outstrip the tolerance of crops.

The Gulf Stream current declines significantly. Cooling in Europe is unlikely due to global warming, but oceanic changes alter weather patterns and lead to higher than average sea level rise in the eastern US and UK.

4C-5C

Another tipping point sees massive amounts of methane – a potent greenhouse gas – released by melting Siberian permafrost, further boosting global warming. Much human habitation in southern Europe, north Africa, the Middle East and other sub-tropical areas is rendered unviable due to excessive heat and drought. The focus of civilisation moves towards the poles, where temperatures remain cool enough for crops, and rainfall – albeit with severe floods – persists. All sea ice is gone from both poles; mountain glaciers are gone from the Andes, Alps and Rockies.

It's time to stop faffing around and ensure that our politicians, civic leaders, business owners and policy makers understand what the 3-4 degree and 4-5 degree forecasts do to their busines models. Or maybe they'd prefer to rearrange the deckchairs, which will be floating on the tide anyway

Cutting Carbon Wales

A day spent in S Wales with 40 climate change specialists from business, government and third sector, looking at a range of topics:

Dr Andy Fraser - Policy and community context,  Andy Middleton - Understanding the urgency for change

Usha Ladwa-Thomas - Behaviour change tools, Cathryn Al Kanaan - Global to local experience

Aled Owen - Community Councillor Experience

Andy Fraser - Head of Climate Change Policy, WAG

www.wales.gov.uk/climatechange

Developing policy on mitigation and adaptation for whole of Welsh Assembly Government, working closely with the communication & engagement teams - helping communities meet the climate change agenda is the most important thing that we need to be doing in Wales. Key messages:

The scientific case for action to tackle climate change is clear. IPCC's have said that that evidence for anthropogenic climate warming is 'unequivocal'. Neither Andy or others he's been working with in the US are optimistic about immediate prospects for change at Copenhagen. We know that we will be affected - opportunities for greater tourism for instance will be greatly outweighed by the negatives.

The UK Climate Impacts Programme produced, in June 2009, three different emissions scenarios on how the climate will change in 20, 30 40 years ahead. WAG have been working with UKCIP to understand what their forecast changes mean for Wales - broadly speaking this means warmer, drier summers in which the short periods of extreme heat that we've experienced in the past will become standard - meaning that we'll need to think about that impact on health, water, food, transport and much more. Milder wetter winters will bring floods and storm damage.

In the week beginning 23rd November, the team are running half day sessions on interpreting UKCIP's information for different sectors.

WAG's 'One Wales' multi-party strategy agrees to "carbon reductions-equivalent reductions of 3% a year by 2011 in areas of devolved competence'. The baseline data for reductions will be an average of emissions in 2006-2010. The emissions targets covers all areas except large business and energy generation (which are included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme). Older approaches which use a 1990 baseline are a) inaccurate, b) out of date. One of the problems with using an '06-'10 baseline is that WAG won't have the figures until 2012 because of reporting times.

Through the Kyoto targets and the Climate Change Act, there is a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 against 1990 - Wales' targets are slightly above this.

Andrew expected that Copenhagen, although probably lacking the big changes that might have been hoped for, are still likely to produce the framework between Annex 1 and Annex 2 countries that can lead to serious agreements over the following 12 months. It's quite likely that the UK's CO2 targets wil then get ratcheted up.

WAG have just completed their second consultation on the Climate Change Strategy - Programme of Action, and the team are busy working with the key people in other areas to work out what needs to happen to deliver the 3% reductions, and are working with the Climate Change Commission to shape the climate change strategy.

Main principles that focus the Programme of Action:

WAG has made a big commitment to do what it can do, and there's a recognition that the government cannot do this alone - all other sectors have a role to play, and without that, there is no chance of hitting the targets. The science [from Tyndall Centre's Kevin Andersen and others] is showing that reductions rates need to be at 6%, not 3.

Leadership by example and building climate change into Assembly Government will be essential, and improving energy efficiency across all sectors will be key to this.

Identifying where Wales' natural resources, land management patterns and economy can contribute to reducing emissions in Wales. In terms of energy generation through renewables, there are huge opportunities across the country.

Socially just measures are key too as the impacts of climate change will affect those least able to adapt the most, both in our own country and in developing countries.

23 measures are set out in the Programme of Action, in the following sectors: transport, business, residential, waste, public sector, agriculture and land management, behaviour change and adaptation.

The ability to measure and manage carbon emissions is key, and through approaches including the UK-wide Carbon Reduction Commitment and the Wales-based Glas Tir land management framework, changes will trickle in from a wide range of sources.

In terms of behaviour change, the engagement process is probably the most critical area of all as without a political mandate, the politicians are not able to lead with the actions that science is demanding. 3% is a political targets, and there is a clause that says "we will look for opportunities to go beyond 3% to emissions reductions of 6% and 9% a year). A report from the Tyndall Centre will be published at the end of November talking about what bigger steps look like in terms of policy.

Community Action for Climate Change

Events in Newport, Llangollen and Aberystwyth

Three pathfinder projects in Cardiff, Carmarthen & Wrexham

Age of Stupid

Funding for 'cautious community' groups

Pilot training module for Communities First

Simple works good

Water water everywhere? If only. Much of the world lives hundreds of miles from plentiful, accessible water, which brings its own legion of health and food problems.

Whilst charities such as Water Aid, who TYF have supported for years, do outstanding work in many countries, there's also a place for simple, practical solutions such as the Water Cone, which popped up on my radar thanks to the observant folk at Quiet Riot.

A couple of decades back, I worked as an exploration geologist in a gold mine in the Great Sandy Desert, arguably (as people who live in hot places do) the hottest place on the planet. The guy I replaced had died of dehydration in the desert, running out of shelter, support and water. Learning how to look after ourselves and eke water from a black bin bag of grass left in the sun was training that could separate life from death.

Recognition of the need to find more practical solutions to the world's emerging water crises has prompted a reinvogorated movement that includes the folk behind the Water Cone and EcoSapiens Associate Michael Pawlyn's work on salt water greenhouses and algal biofuel.