Investigation
Addressing sustainability is a complex and difficult process, with no single solution for any place or any community. For Canberra to become more sustainable, we need our community to accept and be willing to make the necessary changes.
Six workshops
This project began with some of Australia’s leading thinkers, community members and government and industry representatives coming together in 2008/09 to define the issues and start the discussion. In a series of six workshops, they:
- investigated Canberra’s sustainability issues
- determined their relative priority and
- explored the community’s ‘appetite’ for change and action.
Workshop topics were:
- Transport / Communication – towards an accessible Canberra
- Culture / Knowledge – Canberra’s community living sustainably
- Energy – towards a carbon neutral Canberra
- Water / Infrastructure – securing the city
- Bush capital – our city in the landscape
- Economics and administration of sustainability – valuing and administering a sustainable future for Canberra
Participants discussed proposals for short, medium and long-term actions, and these were captured in the Workshop findings report.
The report was made available for public comment for three months. Comments could be made through a survey or by individual submission. There were 170 responses.
- Summary of issues raised during public consultation
The key findings from both the workshops and public comments were:
- Complexity - solutions are multi-faceted and cross over workshop topics
- Governance - the community wants solutions implemented across sectors, with strong intergovernmental collaboration
- Research - the community expects reviews of planning instruments and policies to take account of current research and information
- Approach - the most important barriers to change are outmoded thinking and inappropriate resourcing
- Drivers for change - the most important sustainability issues are population, urban design innovation and sustainable behaviour reducing consumption
- Planning for climate change - the highest priorities are water scarcity, biodiversity and bushfires.
