Taking it on--towards sustainable development.

THE Sustainable Development Strategy must be strong on implementation, and this will require co-operation between central government departments and also between national, regional, and local levels and other government agencies.

The Government's own principles and approaches, affirmed by Defra, are helpful in pointing out what is expected in day-to-day policy and management, but they are not owned wholly across government or elsewhere, and are therefore patchily and inconsistently applied. The notions of environmental limits and stewardship for the long-term public interest (with consideration for people and places beyond short time scales and narrowly defined localities) are key issues that are often ignored.

Many public plans and programmes fail to convey a clear, consistent, and coherent message about what sustainable development entails as an approach and, more crucially, about the minimum standards that should be expected across the public sector. At the very least government plans and programmes should be subject to sustainability appraisal (SA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA), just as much as those prepared by regional and local planning bodies are.

Indicators are important tools in assessing progress on sustainable development, but they should not oversimplify issues. They should be supported by targets, to give focus to implementation and help demonstrate what sustainable development means on the ground to the public and other stakeholders. Nevertheless, there is a need for a simple measure of sustainable improvements in the quality of life. Economic growth is a means of achieving a better quality of life, not an end in itself; the New Economics Foundation's (NEF's) 'measure of domestic progress' (MDP)--see http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/news_mdp.aspx--should be adopted as the best available single indicator of sustainable development, but it needs to be coupled with a measure of resource use intensity, such as carbon dioxide emissions per unit of MDP.

Education, awareness, and understanding are critical elements of a shift to more sustainable lifestyles, and they should be two-way processes--i.e. from government, planners, and other decision-makers to the public and other stakeholders, and visa versa. Such an approach will help to ensure better understanding of the standpoints of different groups their various needs. Education, in particular, should be a continual process, and one that starts at an early age.

The Government's consultation paper on the UK Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) posed, under various category headings, a number of specific questions. An edited selection of the TCPA responses to these questions are reproduced below.

What is sustainable development, and how do we do it?

Is an explanation of what sustainable development means based on the UK Government's foul objectives approach of the 1999 strategy useful?

It is arguable whether the simplification of sustainable development into four objectives does more harm than good. Reducing sustainable development to what is little more than a set of seemingly 'motherhood and apple pie' one-line slogans means that just about anything can be justified as 'sustainable development'--even a third runway at Heathrow. What is lost is the new thinking on the need to work holistically, outside of economic, social, or environmental bunkers, and the need to generate new types of 'win-win' solutions to so-called 'wicked' problems that cross disciplinary boundaries.

In particular, sustainable development requires us to think more carefully about the long-term future, through techniques such as horizon-scanning (the identification phase of an early warning system), and about our lifestyles and quality of life--how to improve the latter, especially for those with below average quality of life, while decoupling improvements from resource use. Economic growth alone will not do this, as the work by the NEF on the difference between GDP and the MDP demonstrates.

Although the Government's explanation of sustainable development based on the 'four pillars' can at times be helpful, it raises a number of concerns--for example it is questionable whether 'high and stable levels' of economic growth (as in the fourth pillar, 'maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment') are necessarily sustainable in all cases.

Setting priorities

What issues are important, or better dealt with, only within the separate UK Government, Scottish Executive, Welsh Assembly Government or Northern Ireland strategies, or at a regional or local level?

Sustainable development involves taking into account a vastly complex set of interrelated and often competing factors. Consequently, it is often very difficult to say whether an issue should be tackled at any one particular level--climate change, for example, is a global issue with implications for plan- and decision-making at all levels. However, in general decisions should be made as locally as possible.

The purpose of the SDS should be to set down a series of sustainable development principles for the UK that can be translated into detailed actions and incorporated into plan- and decision-making at supra-national, national, regional, and local levels. The strategy should set out the key responsibilities and functions of each level, sector, etc. in addressing particular issues. Ensuring that local, regional, and national bodies are aware of what is expected of them, while leaving the specifics up to them, will help improve implementation while retaining the flexibility to address locationally specific issues.

When deciding on the most appropriate level for addressing an issue, a number of questions should be asked, including:

* Is the issue geographically unique?

* Are the most appropriate mechanisms for addressing the issues area-specific?

* Would the outcome be more enduring or robust if it emerged from the bottom up?

* Will addressing the issue at a particular level require structural or organisational changes, and what are the implications of such a change?

* Can the issue be addressed solely at one level? If not, how will the inputs from multiple levels be co-ordinated?

Climate change and energy

How can more people and organisations be encouraged to consider the impacts of climate change on their activities, and to respond to them? What are the opportunities for, and barriers to, progress?

A key requirement is for firm government guidance to local authorities on their wider responsibilities. There is also a need for financial and human resources to enable local authorities to look beyond their boundaries and engage with appropriate networks of other authorities. It is the experience of many working in local government that many councils have been unwilling to do so.

Coupled with a rigid command-and-control style of leadership in many councils, this has prevented many staff from being able to effectively implement sustainable development initiatives. Progress to date has frequently depended on the chance that a committed and high-ranking councillor or chief executive has given personal backing.

There is some, albeit patchy evidence of sustainable development objectives being integrated into specific action-oriented programmes, especially at a local level--for example the work of local strategic partnerships (LSPs). Many community-based leaders understand the principles of sustainable development and the need to make links, but are not able or encouraged to link them into the day-to-day funding decisions on, for example, the neighbourhood regeneration programmes that are the key drivers of community activity. Further research on how this should be done is essential. Ideally the final SDS would include guidance on how to put the findings of such research into practice in documents such as local development frameworks, community strategies, etc. Making effective use of sustainability appraisal or strategic environmental assessment will help ensure that the impacts of climate change are integrated into policy- and plan-making.

The Government needs to develop a carrot and stick approach, whereby people and organisations are encouraged to act in more sustainable ways by making it more expensive or difficult to be unsustainable--for example, by charging variable rates for rubbish collection depending on the quantity of waste and amount separated for recycling. Local authorities should also be rewarded financially for recycling/reducing more waste.

Similarly, individuals and organisations need to be encouraged to think more about energy consumption. Green tariffs are now widely available, and many are no more expensive than a standard tariff, but more effort needs to be made to publicise them. Making green electricity noticeably cheaper than standard electricity should be part of this. Similarly, far more incentives need to be made available and publicised to encourage micro-renewable technologies, such as solar PV and micro-wind. Once energy-efficient alternatives are in place and consumers are aware of them, the costs of standard energy can be raised. Consumers are then more likely to demand greater energy efficiency in homes and products.

Environment and social justice

How should we bring together 'environment' and 'social' concerns at national, regional or local level?

Initiatives such as the Government's 'Sustainable Communities Plan' can, if properly implemented (i.e. by planning and resourcing homes together with transport and community infrastructure, retail, leisure, etc. and recognising the need for jobs), bring together environmental, social, and economic concerns in a co-ordinated and effective way. The resulting communities are likely to be more robust, inclusive, and vibrant than housing estates developed in isolation.

However, the increasing divergence between the 'Sustainable Communities' agenda and the sustainable development agenda is a serious cause of concern. There is an apparent lack of willingness in the former to move beyond local improvement to the more difficult issues of the long-term future--especially the impact of Western lifestyles on global environmental quality and global quality of life. This raises the issue of the need to take responsibility for our actions.

There has been much talk about the need to avoid food deserts in disadvantaged communities. Action between Government, local authorities and food retailers can help to overcome such problems. However, there is also the need to address inequalities in other areas. For example, the centralisation of services such as hospitals in the pursuit of economies of scale over the past few decades has had an adverse impacted on some groups in society. For example, larger, more centralised hospitals have resulted in more and longer car journeys for most, and while this saves costs for the health authority, it simply externalises those cost savings to society as a whole.

More effort needs to be made by the Government to link up environmental, social, and economic agendas. A spatial plan for England and the regional spatial strategies (RSSs) should be used to ensure that the strategic planning of infrastructure providers, departments of health and education, regional development agencies, regional housing boards, etc. are all co-ordinated.

What more could be done to tackle environmental inequalities?

Ensuring that community involvement is carried out effectively and inclusively is one method. It is unfortunate that it is usually a small minority of often white, middle class people who take part in community involvement exercises, leaving the voices of minority groups unheard. This in itself can result in decisions being made that do not adequately reflect the needs of those living in poorer areas, whose environments may already be stressed. Far more thought needs to be given to new forms of governance that tackle the 'democratic deficit' and ensure that the views of a genuine cross-section of society are reflected. The TCPA's ODPM-supported Stakeholder Involvement in Regional Planning report published last year makes recommendations as to how this can be achieved--making use of umbrella organisations; adequately funding the community involvement process; ensuring that there is adequate understanding of how the decision-making process works and how people can become involved are some of the methods recommended.

Beyond the UK--sustainable development in Europe and internationally

What lessons can we learn from other countries to shape our sustainable development strategies and how we put them into practice?

The UK can learn a huge amount from other countries in shaping sustainable development, particularly on sustainable housing. Standards in countries such as Germany and Norway far exceed those existing or planned in the UK.

The Habitat project, for example, which comprises over 3,000 housing units on a greenfield site near the Expo 2000 exhibition in Hannover, showed that significant improvements can be made with minimal effort and without expensive gadgets. A stepped approach was used to reduce energy consumption by 47 per cent, through the use of high-quality construction, extra insulation, combined heat and power, and energy efficiency.

Getting the structures right for leadership

What more do we in Government need to do to improve our own leadership in sustainable development? How would you like to see reporting improved?

The 'joining-up Government' agenda needs to be revisited. If sustainable development is to become genuinely embedded in government and its initiatives, better links need to be developed between departments, agencies, and infrastructure providers. This would ensure that the various strategies and plans prepared by these bodies were all working towards the same goal. It would also reassure the private sector and other stakeholders that the strategy or policies of one will not be contradicted by those of another.

Sustainability reporting from these bodies needs to be standardised so that progress can be accurately judged. Indicators for achieving departmental or agency goals need to be assessed to ensure that they do not conflict with sustainable development indicators--this could take the form of a comprehensive SEA or SA for all government departments and agencies.

Working to a set of obligatory sustainability principles that particularly focus on resource use and environmental stewardship could form the basis of a public service protocol that could be operationalised, challenged, and scrutinised. It might apply to all those involved in the delivery of public services. There appears to be a strong case for making it obligatory for local authorities to demonstrate how they are mainstreaming sustainable development throughout policies and processes.

What do you see holding back effective action by Government?

A lack of awareness and understanding on the part of the general public and other stakeholders limits the degree to which they are able to put pressure on Government to take action and improve policy. Likewise, this lack of awareness and understanding can also hold back the Government and prevent it from taking more radical action. This is particularly true, for example, in relation to renewable energy. The public in general is very supportive of renewable energy, but beyond this black and white choice all the public tends to see is applications for large wind farms. The Government needs to lead a high profile and grown-up debate on all the options, what this will ultimately involve, and the linkages between this debate and other key policy areas.

How can regional chambers, regional development agencies and other regional organisations better deliver sustainable development? What contributions from a notional and local level would help the regions to improve delivery of sustainable development?

There needs to be better co-ordination of roles at the regional level. There is currently a plethora of regional strategies and plans in most regions, and while there is some involvement in each others' strategies, this is not sufficiently formalised. One strategy must be primary, and in an ideal world this would be the regional spatial strategy (RSS), owing to its spatial nature. Other strategies, such as the economic strategy or the housing strategy, should be developed using the RSS as the cornerstone. This would help to improve co-ordination and reduce confusion among stakeholders.

Using government policy and guidance as a basis, regional strategies need to set a framework for sustainable development in that region (and across boundaries where necessary). They need to set out clearly how plans at local level will deliver sustainable development. This will involve:

* RSSs that require local development frameworks (LDFs) to define sustainable development in terms of location, layout, landscape, design, and construction;

* policies that encourage local planning authorities to go beyond simply developing stronger LDF policies in promoting sustainable construction--using supplementary planning documents or planning conditions, for instance;

* RSSs that identify the resources and resource cycles that are important for sustainable construction and locally distinctive buildings;

* RSSs that encourage LDFs to require higher standards of housing (beyond building regulations); and

* regions that develop programmes of sustainable construction education and training, delivered through a regional network, for planning officers, councillors, developers, and other stakeholders.

* The full TCPA response is available online at http://www.tcpa.org.uk or from the TCPA Policy Officer. T: 020-7930 8903