Manukau City walks the sustainability talk with TNS and Transition Towns
The Natural Step NZ and Transition Towns teams have been working in partnership with Manukau City Council on the Towards 2060 project. The Towards 2060 programme has been developed, and is being led, by Maggie Lawton, Manager of Strategy and Policy for the council. Maggie is an accredited Natural Step advisor and accomplished sustainability practitioner in her own right.
Towards 2060 is based around a series of open invitation Design the Future workshops in each of the Manukau City wards. The workshops have two main aims. They are to provide a platform for the sustainable development of communities in Manukau, and provide community members with an enhanced ability to think about their own long-term needs, their own actions and advocacy.
The combined knowledge, resources and skills of the council, The Natural Step and Transition Towns teams have been usefully combined to help communities come to grips with taking control of their own future. The Natural Step framework has served as the anchor for the process by providing a solid basis for understanding the challenges, and underpinning a more strategic approach to planning for the future. James Samuel, the National Coordinator for Transition Towns Aotearoa, has played a leading role through the series workshops. James has brought his considerable experience of inspiring communities into action at the local level, with a multitude of examples of how local communities can make a real difference.
Design the Future workshops have been rolled out in seven ward areas of Manukau – Botany, Clevedon, Howick, Mangere, Manurewa, Otara and Papaptoetoe with Pakuranga being the eighth. The products and outputs from the community sessions are available on the Towards 2060 website with more to come as the work is completed. The programme is also being extended into a number of local schools, and additional sessions are being run for the disabled community and the business community in the coming months.
“Combining the simple strategic vision enabled by the Natural Step framework with the practical local action of Transition Towns has been immensely valuable”, says TNS NZ Chief Executive Simon Harvey. “Manukau City Council has shown genuine leadership and true stewardship of its communities with Towards 2060. The programme has gently exposed local community leaders to the many unspoken realities of our current development trajectory, and then used the experience of the Natural Step and Transition Towns teams to provide an opportunity for them to decide how they want the future to really pan out. It’s been enlightening to see how many people want a future that is quite different to what they are currently being given. I think people are generally disappointed in the way that central and local government are ignoring a sustainable development approach in favour of the business-as-usual, short-term approach that leaves them with a costly legacy to pay for in the future.”
James Samuel is keen to add that the Manukau City Council team have been truly fantastic to work with. “The energy of the council team has been inspiring, and the combination of Natural Step and Transition Towns has worked really well. Using a back-casting approach for planning, we’ve enabled many communities to realise that they can achieve the ideal future they’re looking for by starting with some simple steps today. It’s been marvellous to see how strong and cohesive the local communities in Manukau are.”
Towards 2060 will gently wind down in the run up to the new Auckland Council launch in November this year. In its wake the programme will leave local community members and leaders who are far better informed about the future, and who have a much stronger belief in their ability to aim higher for their communities. As Maggie Lawton explains, “The central purpose of Twoards 2060 is to enable communities to ask better questions of their leaders and themselves. People are quite capable of understanding the issues when they’re clearly explained, and have a real desire to own local community outcomes. What they’ve often lacked in the past is a comprehensive and understandable framework to help them structure their thoughts and ideas. The Natural Step has filled that gap very well, and I can see the framework being put to great use across New Zealand at a community level to help us develop stronger local resilience and a more proactive approach to sustainable development at both an economic and community level.”
The Towards 2060 website is itself a legacy to the community. It’s packed full of community facilitation tools and resources, as well as slideshows and a host of useful videos. Just go to the website and use the navigation toolbar on the left hand side to have a look around.
For further information about the Towards 2060 programme you visit the website; or contact Maggie Lawton at Manukau City, Simon Harvey at TNS NZ or James Samuel of Transition Towns.
