It’s the first day of 2020. Usually the new year brings a sense of celebration – joy, optimism and anticipation for the year ahead. This summer holiday season has felt quite different, with no end in sight to the endless drought, and devastating bushfires seemingly burning for months with little respite for many.
As this is essentially an IP&R blog, it has got me thinking about what this ‘apocalyptic’ situation means for local government planning and community engagement.
I think if you’d asked many IP&R practitioners a few months ago about the next cycle of IP&R, many would have said that they felt their local community’s current Community Strategic Plan was largely still relevant. Therefore, their community engagement activities for the coming cycle would be focused on confirming that way forward and identifying the priorities for their council to capture in developing the Delivery Program and Resourcing Strategy.
Now, I wonder how local communities’ priorities might have changed in response to the worsening drought and devastating bushfires. Along the length of eastern NSW there are few (if any?) local government areas which haven’t been impacted by the fires – including significant infrastructure damage for councils to address.
And across NSW, and particularly in the west, as the drought worsens and more people make the decision to leave their farms after generations on the land, the knock-on effect for local communities already under pressure will be significant.
How then can local councils utilise a robust planning framework like IP&R to sensitively engage people from across their communities, including those affected by these ongoing disasters, to ensure council decision-making appropriately addresses contemporary community needs and aspirations?
For many councils it will mean critically examining some long-held beliefs about their communities, and perhaps taking on the uncomfortable role of challenging some of those community assumptions. It might be leading difficult community conversations about, for example, water use, land clearing, economic and industry diversification, renewable energy options, population and development.
Our elected councillors will need to be active agents in these community discussions, but as council practitioners, the provision of evidence-based facts to support these conversations will be essential.
When the IP&R framework was introduced back in 2009/10, it was always assumed it would take several cycles before it was effectively and maturely rolled out across the sector… we always said it would be the cycle following the 2020 elections that the bugs would largely be ironed out, its value would be recognised, and it would be really embedded into the way councils do their business. We’re close to that being the case, and it might just be these extraordinary environmental disasters that really push councils to best utilise the IP&R framework as it was intended: responsive, accountable, evidence-based planning for and with communities, sustainably utilising the available resources.