Manukau City Council builds a community blueprint based on The Natural Step Framework

The Manukau City Council has embarked on sustainable development effort called “Towards 2060 – Our City’s Future” in partnership with The Natural Step in New Zealand.  By taking a 50 year view, the initiative aims to develop a community led vision for Manukau that will help shape future growth options for the city’s diverse communities.

Located immediately to the south of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, Manukau has a diverse ethnic population.  Almost one fifth of the people are of Maori ethnicity, and around a third are Pacific peoples making Manukau a global Polynesian cultural centre.  Manukau City Council has always maintained a strong focus on social sustainability issues and is known for its effective approach to engaging with the local people and communities. 

Based on successful pilot workshops with two of Manukau’s local community boards, the council has engaged over 70 municipal employees in two day Natural Step Framework training workshop.  This knowledge of the Framework will be blended with a range of other engagement tools to engage local communities in this same learning process and provide them with a forum to contribute their ideas for the future of their community in a meaningful way.

“The feedback from the workshops has been really positive.  The TNS approach revealed a fresh perspective about what sustainability really means at a community level”, explains Senior TNS Advisor Simon Harvey, who has guided the engagement with TNS collaborator Steve Henry. “It became evident that most of the current sustainability initiatives were diving in at the action level without any real understanding of the underlying system, or any agreement on what constituted a successful and sustainable future.  It’s been a revealing experience for all concerned.”

The project continues to gather momentum and will provide a community blueprint to inform the future when Auckland’s eight local councils merge to form a new regional Auckland council in October 2010.