Policy integration: seeing the big picture or tilting at windmills?

What is a thriving neighbourhood Thriving neighbourhoods are not only sustainable and liveable: they are vibrant places where communities are resilient, healthy and productive, and where the natural environment is flourishing

Reductionism vs integration Reduction of a complex system to manageable components is appropriate for day-to-day management and reporting But policymaking, innovation and optimising economic, environmental and social outcomes needs a multi-disciplinary, big picture approach ie integration We need ‘creative tension’ between the two approaches

Policy integration: current LG practice Most Councils take the managerial approach – ie a checklist of economic, environmental and social issues Interest is growing in the integrated approach – assessing policy alternatives for economic, environmental and social and then exploring synergies and trade-offs to optimise the policy choice This involves a lot more ‘front-end’ thinking - using sustainability assessment/TBL tools (eg Ryde, Cairns, ACT) for both project planning and policies

Higher dimensions: QBL Governance (North Sydney) Culture (Norwood) Civic Leadership (NSW) Technology Human capital

Australian legislation The NSW Local Government Amendment (Planning and Reporting) Act 2009: Councils should prepare a single Community Strategic Plan, which ‘must address social, environmental, economic and civic leadership issues in an integrated manner.’ Councils are responding by developing comprehensive sets of indicators Queensland is heading in the opposite direction

From EIS to SIA “the systematic and iterative process for the ex- ante assessment of the likely economic, social and environmental impacts of policies, plans, programs and strategic projects, which is undertaken during the preparation of them and where the stakeholders concerned participate pro-actively.” European Sustainable Development Network

Final decisions still require judgments and trade-offs

Practical difficulties Need for a broad data-set can lead to greater bureaucracy Co-ordination of multi-disciplinary teams Methodological issues for predicting, assessing and measuring impacts Weighting of different factors – and different values among stakeholder groups

Working with the private sector 1200 Buildings Program – repairing a market failure Community enterprises Utility integration and natural monopolies

An emerging field of knowledge The principles are well understood Rudimentary frameworks are in place But we need to share experiences to build a comprehensive body of knowledge and experience to create effective tools This workshop is a step in that direction