Blog 3 - Four essentials for local action
“The local beach is eroding”, “there are no jobs locally”, “the village is in disrepair”, “climate change is flooding us out every year (don’t mind your 1-in-100year storm!)”, “our local heritage is being lost to development”, “we are being over-run with tourists”, “there are no fish left in the bay”…..
The list of problems faced by local communities up and down our coast is vast, daunting and depressing. It’s like a desolate Samuel Beckett scenario, but his characters usually kept going nonetheless. And that’s the main idea here, despite everything we can go on. The following are some easy steps will increase your community's likelihood of success in tackling these issues.
1) Organise
You can’t do it alone, and no one will listen to you (well it’s much less likely they will). To have any sort of say in decisions that are being made (or to put it another way – to have any power) you need to come to the table with a sense that what you are saying is shared by many. Those in power are more likely to listen to a group of people (for example, “these might be votes for me in the next election ”) that have clearly thought about an issue and have put some work in to show their genuine interest. Forming an association or an official body of some type is straightforward enough. Taking this bold step with others also helps in feeling that the workload will not be too much, with people bringing different skills and abilities to the initiative.
2) Work with …
There are two aspects to this: Firstly, make sure to include ‘high-level’ support in your group from an early stage [this may be someone in a Local Authority, in National Government, or a government agency, a powerful local landowner or businessperson). Ideas that form within partnerships like this are much more likely to be implemented than if you bring a fully formed idea to the ‘powers that be’ at a later stage: where they will begin taking apart the idea, purely looking after their own interests, and they’ll have no ownership of the idea. If you are knocked back with initial attempts trying to get somebody to work with, don’t give up – local government and similar organisations are large and often a willingness to get involved is an individual’s decision, so chip away until you get someone.
Secondly, do not exclude those that do not share your views on things. Having dissenting voices in your group (or at least engaging with them in some form) will only strengthen ideas and make them more implementable. You may even need to work with those who are actually completely opposed to your ideas, having conversations with these may also ultimately be fruitful: for example, you may lose out on one idea, but another may be palatable to them, and vice versa.
Both of these builds trust between interested parties (or even where there is open distrust, ways of working around that). Here is an interesting podcast that discusses some of these ideas:
3) Dream
The key to this one is to focus on a point in the future and work towards it. It needs to be well into the future (say 10 years minimum, shorter goals are of course needed but they are just steps) so that current practices/rules & regulations/attitudes aren’t seen as insurmountable barriers now. And dreaming mad ideas like ‘looking after the local economy AND our social and cultural welfare AND having a health productive natural environment’ are achievable goals: that it’s not one or the other.
There are lots of ways of doing these visioning exercises, an example is the Community Futures method being implemented in some Irish localities right now. Again, the key is getting decision-makers involved beforehand (we have seen many examples of well-intentioned visions going nowhere). Having a long-term shared vision can help steer short-term decision-making. It becomes strategic rather than reactionary.
4) Go, then go again
There is no right answer, no black and white, no quick fix, no scenario where everyone wins all the time (be very wary of those that tell you there is). We need to be willing to try things, fail (or succeed), rethink, do it better or change direction if needed. Of course, the options we ‘try’ need to be based on sound evidence (including science and local knowledge), but there will be no scenario where we are 100% certain a particular option will work. Therefore, we need to be able to agree to try options where we lack all the information we’d ideally need, in other words where the outcomes are somewhat uncertain. To undertake an option where ‘uncertainty’ is present, we should be able to measure its success and review our decision at regular intervals (annually). This flexible type of decision-making counters uncertainty and we can change direction before things go too far in the wrong direction. A good example of this is nature-based solutions: we know the benefits and the negative impacts of the alternatives, but we have not fully quantified either, or even figured out ways to do that, but in theory they should work and we should try them now rather than waiting until it’s too late.
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