OPM’s blog articles

Common values for sustainability

Work we have done to highlight the values and beliefs of practitioners in the field of sustainable communities could be used to help the UK address the environmental challenges it faces, while maximising overall social results.

Max Hogg explains how.

The environment has shot up the public agenda. Looking to the future, how can we get the best social results from policies such as the Climate Change Bill? One way is to ensure policy makers and practitioners understand and apply the complex notion of sustainable development throughout their work.

In our recent work for the Academy for Sustainable Communities (ASC) we highlighted a set of common values that need to be there if sustainability is to succeed:

• People should be able to exercise power over decisions that affect them and be responsible for outcomes. They need to feel that their views are heard and taken account of.
• People should feel proud of, and connected to, their community.
• People should experience a community which balances, economic, social and environmental considerations.
• People should be able to live and work in safe, healthy, clean and well serviced communities.
• People should respect their community heritage, enjoy it and plan for the future.

We held discussions throughout the country. Policy-makers and practitioners attending these agreed that the above values do help to provide a common understanding amongst the very diverse group of professionals and community leaders working towards sustainability. Such values complement the specific technical skills that a professional or community leader needs, and act as a set of ideal behaviours for every sustainable communities practitioner to follow.

Why defining values for sustainability is important

The notion of sustainability can be hard to pin down, even for practitioners in the sustainable communities field. At the same time, these specialist practitioners are tasked with taking, and accounting for, decisions that can have wide-ranging and unpredictable effects. They really need to be inspirational, knowledgeable and effective leaders. But they also need a simple, common and effective basis on which to work. The ASC’s common values for sustainability provide such a basis.

Adopting the ASC’s values and acknowledging the suggested behaviours will help specialists within the field to look beyond their specialism in order to account for a comprehensive set of expected outcomes through any policy change or community activity. Accounting for such a broad set of outcomes remains a challenge for any policy-maker or practitioner, but it is essential if communities are to become truly sustainable in terms of the economy, the environment and society.

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