APPENDIX 32
Letter and Memorandum to the Clerk of
the Committee from Peterborough Environment City Trust
I attach Peterborough Environment City Trust's
contribution to the above enquiry, which I hope is helpful.
To give some general background, I have forwarded
copies of our recent Annual Reports by post together with other
supporting information.
Our submission makes reference to two PECT projects,
the Greener Futures/Lifestyles Audit website and our Business
and Environmental Management Pack. We believe it would be helpful
for members of your Sub Committee to see these in practise and
to receive the views of users.
I would therefore by very pleased to arrange
for your Sub Committee to visit a Peterborough school to see children
operating the Greener Futures website resource and talk with business
managers who have used our Environmental Management scheme.
If it were not possible for your Sub Committee
to see these projects at first hand, it may be possible for school
children and participating businesses to travel to London and
provide their further evidence and contributions in Westminster.
I hope these suggestions are helpful. Please
let me know if I can assist your enquiry further.
February 2003
Memorandum from Peterborough Environment
City Trust
CONTENTS
1. Summary
2. Introduction
3. Education for Sustainable Development—A
Practical Definition
4. Scope of Response
5. Peterborough Environment City Trust
6. Education for Sustainable Development—Some
Preliminary Observations
7. Response to Specified Questions
7.1 Lack of Public Engagement
7.2 Need for a National Strategy
7.3 Existing Good Practice
7.4 Existing Education Programmes
(i) The Greener Futures/Lifestyles Project
(ii) PECT Business & Environmental
Management Scheme
1. SUMMARY
Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT) has
more than 10 years' experience of working at household, community,
local authority, regional and national levels to make sustainable
development a practical reality.
A key barrier to engagement and understanding
at all these levels is the lack of hard information to enable
the complex ideal of sustainability to be considered in manageable
and meaningful parts.
Through household diaries, its Greener Futures
project and the Business and Environmental Management Scheme,
PECT has had some success in engendering community engagement
and at the same time collecting data so an accurate, measurable
picture of the sustainability of lifestyles can be built up.
Without such information, it is difficult, firstly
to progress the sustainable development agenda at the grassroots
level and secondly to assess if local or national campaigns and
actions are resulting in real and lasting changes in behaviour.
Our experience is that in addition to better
knowledge, a far stronger sustainability infrastructure needs
to be in place to make it easy for individuals to recycle, use
water efficiently etc. and so adopt more sustainable lifestyles.
We believe that a national strategy for environmentally
sustainable development is required. A decision to progress a
national strategy should not delay, dilute or deflect existing
ESD initiatives. A key part of the national strategy should be
the development of mechanisms to inform at the grassroots level
so engendering shared ownership, community responsibility (citizenship)
and shared actions.
Ultimately, global sustainability can only be
achieved by people ACTING LOCALLY.
2. INTRODUCTION
Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT) has
a successful 10-year track record of building partnerships between
individuals, households, local and international businesses, community
and environmental groups and public organisations, to transform
the concepts of sustainable development into reality.
It can demonstrate significant achievements
in creating physical infrastructure and development and pioneering
research, intelligence and educational resources to equip individuals
and communities with the information and skills to learn how to
live more sustainably.
Initially, PECT's work was centred on Peterborough
but over the last five years our projects have become increasingly
relevant and influential at regional and national levels. We therefore
feel able to make an informed contribution to this area of the
Sub Committee's work.
Two of our current projects, the Business and
Environmental Management Scheme and the national Greener Futures/Lifestyles
Audit Schools website are at a particularly timely stage of development
in relation to the researches of the Environmental Audit Committee.
3. EDUCATION
FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT—A PRACTICAL
DEFINITION
Education for sustainable development is the
process through which people acquire information to equip them
to make choices and decisions, act upon them and realise their
potential to make the fullest contribution to the long term well
being of society and the planet.
So, if society is to benefit from the greater
knowledge and understanding of its individuals, it must make sure
the infrastructure and resources are in place to enable the individual
to act and make their contribution toward long term sustainable
development.
For the purposes of this paper, sustainable
development is taken as an ideal, which can and must be worked
towards but can never be fully achieved. Therefore, reference
is made to development, which is more sustainable.
In practical terms, this is an important distinction
because, psychologically, people relate better to the achievable
rather than to a concept, which cannot be attained.
4. SCOPE OF
RESPONSE
This response to the Environmental Audit Committee
is by Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT). PECT has more
than 10 years' experience of making the global environmental issues
meaningful and relevant at the local level and developing mechanisms
through which local people and businesses can take some ownership
and contribute personal actions toward sustainability.
PECT has worked with formal education providers,
including universities, colleges, local education authorities,
schools etc. It has also developed partnerships with organisations
with a particular interest in environmental education including
the Environment Agency, Cambridgeshire Environmental Education
Service and CEE.
PECT's contribution is as an organisation, which
considers education for sustainable development in its widest
sense, going beyond the formal education system and with a strong
emphasis on the practical aspects of delivering more sustainable
development and more sustainable lifestyles.
5. PETERBOROUGH
ENVIRONMENT CITY
TRUST (PECT)
PECT was set up in 1993 to bring together public,
private and voluntary sectors with the objective of ensuring that
Peterborough acts locally whilst thinking globally.
It quickly became apparent that successful partnership
action is dependent of a shared understanding (of sustainability
issues). Yet, in most subjects there was a lack of information
and where data did exist, it was not accessible in ways which
would bring about shared understanding and co-ordinated actions.
For example, many organisations are concerned with energy efficiency
in housing but there was little information on the current efficiency
of the housing stock, the types and levels of fuel consumption,
the purposes (for heating, lighting, appliances etc). So, since
it was not possible to assess the energy consumed, calculating
CO2 emissions and the most effective way of reducing them to meet
Kyoto targets was more than problematic. Communicating energy
efficiency to householders in a meaningful way was therefore difficult
and assessing if behaviour changed and CO2 levels decreased was
impossible.
Equally fragmented knowledge bases applied to
biodiversity, transport, waste and recycling; in fact progress
toward communicating almost every aspect of sustainability was
hindered by a lack of the key facts.
At this formative stage, the PECT partnership
debated if its future was to be as an awareness raising, campaigning
organisation but rejected this in favour of the far more challenging
role as a partnership which works to empower ordinary people to
live more sustainable lifestyles, to assist businesses deliver
(more) sustainable development and to equip the public sector
with the tools to build better policies and plans for sustainability.
An approach to managing for sustainability was
developed around the following cycle:
| shared information
| | is required for |
| shared understanding |
| which brings |
| shared responsibility |
| and |
| partnership working |
| and |
| joint resourcing |
| leading to |
| community actions |
| in turn, these bring |
| better information |
| |
| shared ownership |
| |
| shared responsibility |
| and so on. |
| |
|
In practise, PECT brings together interested organisations
and individuals through a series of specialist working groups
(SWGs). Each SWG works with PECT's core staff to assemble comprehensive
databases in their subject area. The databases are built by aggregating
existing information from different sources and conceiving projects
to fill information gaps. An audit is then carried out in partnership
with a recognised organisation (Cranfield, Newcastle, Luton universities)
to establish a credible and consensual benchmark. This can then
define what needs to be done by Peterborough (householders, business
and public organisations) to comply with local, regional, national
and international sustainability targets.
This data collection and audit process involves local people
and sections of the local community. For example, local companies
assisted with the Transport Audit by getting their employees to
maintain diaries recording all their journeys for one week, whilst
the Natural Environment Audit involved the Women's Institute,
secondary schools etc in extensive ecological survey work.
It quickly became clear that as individuals methodically
record an aspect of their lifestyles or a natural resource, it
enhanced understanding of their impacts on the environment and
resulted in changed behaviour and more sustainable lifestyles.
PECT's audits have also had significant effects on public
sector policy, decision making and action for sustainability.
Our research on household waste was the foundation of the public/private
sector partnership and funding package which led to the establishment
of the city's materials recycling facility; the Natural Environment
Audit was cited by English Nature as "the UK's first local
biodiversity action plan" and has subsequently been adopted
as supplementary planning guidance to Peterborough's statutory
Local Plan. Our Transport Audit's data aggregation and monitoring
systems have been incorporated to enhance Peterborough City Council's
transport research capability.
Having demonstrated that city-wide sustainability audits
are a practical way forward, PECT then began to consider ways
which encouraged people to live more sustainably and at the same
time provide mechanisms which would accurately monitor progress
from the benchmark established by the audits.
In short we have sought to devise educational resources which,
through their use, provide an accurate sustainability barometer
at grassroots level.
The Greener Futures/Lifestyles Audit project is a schools
educational resource, which monitors the sustainability of households
through children.
The PECT Business and Environmental Management Scheme is
a simple, effective environmental management scheme for SMEs which
measures and monitors key environmental indicators including waste,
fuel use and water consumption.
6. EDUCATION FOR
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT—SOME
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS
Use of the Term "Sustainable Development"
The widespread misuse of the term sustainable development
and use of phrases such as sustained development, sustainable
economic growth has led to considerable confusion.
Sustainable development and sustained growth appear to be
becoming interchangeable.
The Economic Growth Driver
A key message in some national and regional policy documents
appears to be that achievement of economic growth is the pre-requisite
to social equity and protecting the environment.
Our understanding of sustainable development is that it strikes
a balance between economic, environmental and social issues.
Stronger direction is needed by government to ensure this balance
is properly addressed through policy and the allocation of resources
to fulfil policy objectives.
Information
Our experience is that information at the global level is
available and understood. Evidence of global warming, sea level
rises, loss of rainforests etc. is widely publicised on a regular
basis and, as a consequence, there is a general understanding
of these macro issues.
At a local level, there is a general lack of information
on sustainability issues. As a consequence, there is a significant
lack of understanding on how household actions have local and
global impacts. We have run an Energy Advice Centre for some years
and a business and environmental management scheme for three years.
The majority of households and business managers do not know how
to read their electricity meters, have little idea of units of
energy consumed and do not make the connection between energy
use and CO2 emissions. Yet, people are readily able to acquire
and absorb complex technical data on, for example, the capacity
of home computers or technical specifications of cars!
The amount of energy we consume, volume of rubbish thrown
away etc are not big household issues in part at least because
there is simply no information readily available. Yet mechanisms
to address this information deficit are already to hand.
Introduction of a national home energy rating system could
make household CO2 emissions as much a part of our everyday lives
as house prices.
At local authority level, the unavailability of basic information
is equally problematic. The Home Energy Conservation Act simply
does not require sufficient rigour or comprehensiveness. Yet,
our work on the Peterborough Energy Audit using household diaries
illustrated that it is perfectly possible at modest cost for each
local authority to accurately benchmark the total CO2 emissions
of its public and private sector housing stock. Armed with this
information, resources can then be targeted effectively to address
social and CO2 issues with in-built measurable means to accurately
report progress.
A similar position exists in many other areas. For example,
Safe Routes to School initiatives can only be reasonably planned
and their effectiveness assessed, if firstly there is proper understanding
of the origin, destination and modes of journeys to school.
Our contention is that sustainability at national and international
levels will be best achieved by actions at community level. However,
communities must have the information to make the global relevant
at the local level.
PECT's system of city-wide environmental audits has demonstrated
that it is possible to engage local people to build accurate informative
assessments of waste consumption, CO2 emissions, biodiversity
etc.
Infrastructure
Having the information to learn how to behave differently
is a start. The tools to enable action for sustainability are
also needed. If there's no bus service, public transport is not
an option!
In the mid 1990s Peterborough's household waste recycling
rate was 7-8%. This was achieved by awareness raising campaigns
supported by comprehensive systems of bottlebanks, paperbanks
etc. As soon as a central materials recycling facility (MRF) became
operational and each household could be equipped with a green
recycling box, recycling rates rose to 17-18%. Having put this
basic infrastructure in place, people have the ability to make
positive decisions about sustainability. In turn, this generated
a sense of accomplishment; their efforts can make a difference.
With the tools in place, awareness raising become more effective—Peterborough's
recycling rates now exceed 24-25%.
Yet, there is no regional waste policy to develop a geographically
even spread of recycling plants ensuring urban or rural communities
can make their contribution to solving a national problem. A more
even distribution of facilities would also alleviate the current
position whereby recycled materials are being transported by road
up to 50 miles to the nearest MRF, thereby solving one problem
and creating another!
A similar lack of infrastructure, absence of a strategic
overview and apparent lack of means to put either in place, remains
a significant barrier to changing established patterns of behaviour.
If people are going to behave more sustainably, we have to
make it so easy that it becomes the norm, not the exception!
7. RESPONSES TO
SPECIFIED QUESTIONS
7.1 Is a lack of public engagement and understanding a
real obstacle to the Government's progress on its sustainable
development agenda? Have there been any studies to show this?
Please refer to practical examples where possible.
For the reasons stated in Section 6, it is PECT's experience
that there is considerable confusion between "sustainable
development" and "sustained economic growth".
The economic prerogative appears to greatly outweigh social and
environmental aspects of the sustainability triangle.
Our experience with business and business representative
organisations is that there remains scepticism about the "environment",
which is still perceived by many to be an additional cost
and a potential barrier to economic growth.
Sustainable development is all too easily portrayed as some
conceptual idealistic state with little practical relevance to
the decisions of everyday life. This is a major barrier to public
acceptance.
The standard definitions revolving around "leaving a
world for our children" are high on sentiment but low on
practicality. Our collective inability to measure and define sustainability
at the household and business levels mean it is all too easy to
talk the talk, but avoid meaningful action.
Our work in Peterborough and elsewhere confirms that measuring
household fuel consumption, water use, waste streams, journeys
to work etc bring a practical dimension. This leads to better
understanding of what sustainability practically means and most
importantly, what individuals can do to play their part. The ability
to measure and demonstrate an ordered incremental approach cannot
be under-estimated. For householders and business managers, the
idea of progressing towards a (more) sustainable future is
easier to grasp than suddenly achieving this indefinable state
of sustainability.
PECT has begun to demonstrate that measuring sustainability
through households can form the building blocks of measuring,
benchmarking and setting SMART future targets for sustainability
at town, county, regional and national levels.
This grassroots approach is fundamental to the local ownership
and action necessary to compliment and ultimately fulfil
the national Sustainable Development agenda.
7.2 Is there a need for a national strategy for education
for sustainable development? Would additional infrastructure
be required to deliver a coherent, national strategy?
If all governments' social, environmental and economic strategies
and policies properly incorporated the principles of sustainable
development and required its implementation, then it could be
argued that a national strategy for ESD may not be necessary.
The reality is that an overarching national strategy is needed
to give sustainable development the required substance, weight
and priority for effective delivery.
However, the case for a national strategy should not result
in any dilution or delay to current efforts and initiatives for
ESD. Indeed current examples of good practice could form the building
blocks of the new national strategy.
Our experience points to two critical elements in a coherent
and effective national strategy. Firstly, it should revolve around
detailed information to benchmark current sustainability performance
and enable progress toward a (more) sustainable future to be accurately
charted. Secondly, it must be acknowledged that sustainability
will be delivered by people changing their behaviour in homes,
schools and workplaces.
The case for additional infrastructure parallels that for
a national strategy. Again, the reality is that a considerable
amount of physical and organisational infrastructure exists at
local, regional and national levels but it is not sufficiently
well joined up to have the impacts needed at household level and,
as the waste recycling example illustrates, there are significant
gaps. An assessment of physical and organisational infrastructure
would seem to be a useful start point for further consideration
of a national strategy.
7.3 Are existing awareness raising Government campaigns
such as "Are you doing your bit" effective and well
targeted? Have past campaigns been evaluated? How could they
be improved in the future?
Awareness raising campaigns can only be judged as successful
if the result is a change in behaviour. PECT has no information
to suggest that national campaigns have been accurately monitored
and confirmed to result in measurable and lasting changes at the
local level.
The "Einstein" based national energy efficiency
campaign made no detectable difference to enquiries to our Energy
Advice Centre and more importantly made no detectable difference
to households actually installing more energy efficiency measures.
Our experience is that, if people are to adopt more sustainable
lifestyles, mechanisms must be in place to make the change an
easy and (almost) inevitable step. Preferably, the change should
be accompanied by a benefit or reward. If householders are to
recycle, they need a large green box; to lessen (costs and environmental
impacts of) fly tipping, an efficient, bulky goods collection
service is required. In the case of businesses the reward should
preferably be financial; households may be motivated for more
altruistic reasons, but will not generally incur additional costs.
In addition, mechanisms through which householders and businesses
can educate themselves are more likely to generate receptivity
to change. An ability to accurately record progress will assist
continuing commitment towards (greater) sustainability. Accurate
local records should be capable of aggregation so informing regional
and national progress towards sustainability reporting. Such data
is in itself an important educational resource. It would also
assist more accurate targeting and monitoring of future campaigns
and initiatives.
7.4 Are there existing education programmes relating to
sustainable development which might be considered good practice?
These might include in-house training schemes for environmentally
sustainable development for employees and stakeholders within
businesses, the civil service and other organisations. Are there
elements of successful, strategic communication programmes in
other areas, which could be applied to environmentally sustainable
development? For example, from other Government awareness campaigns
such as those for drink driving, AIDS and smoking.
PECT has two programmes which may assist the Committee. One
has been developed to capture home lifestyles through school students,
the other is for SMEs.
7.4.(i) Greener Futures/Lifestyles Audit
Greener Futures has been developing over a 7-year period
during which it has responded to the rapidly increasing sophistication
of ICT and been updated in line with emerging Government policies
for education and sustainable development.
Greener Futures originated as a Key Stage 2 schools resource
in CD ROM format and proved extremely popular with staff and pupils
during extended trials in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
In partnership with the Environment Agency, it is now being
redeveloped as a national web based resource for infant, primary
and secondary schools (Key Stages 1,2 and 3). Materials available
at each stage include personal and household sustainability questionnaires,
a data analyser facility, an interactive panorama with games and
quizzes and further information and fact sheets.
The whole package has been designed to fulfil key national
curriculum requirements. The questionnaires have been formatted
to directly inform government sustainability targets and indicators
for transport, CO2 emissions, water use, health and diet, biodiversity
and greenspace and household waste and recycling.
As each child completes the Greener Futures programme, they
create a dataset of their lifestyles and that of their households.
By Key Stage 3 this is detailed and sophisticated including, for
example, the BRE's home energy rating, precise weights of waste
recycled and landfilled and water usage per household.
The website software is then able to aggregate each child's
and household's dataset by class, school, local authority area,
regionally and nationally. The data can then be downloaded by
authorised users, which include participating schools. So, it
will be possible for a class in a Peterborough school to directly
compare their home recycling performance and other key areas of
sustainability performance with their peers in any other school
in England or Wales. The educational potential nationally and
even internationally is enormous.
Local authorities will be able to use this Lifestyles Audit
facility to, for example, track the origin and destination of
every journey to school and work, accurately record diet and precisely
analyse the use of greenspace and so on.
At regional level Greener Futures will deliver a sufficiently
robust sample of data to accurately estimate, home CO2 emissions,
household consumption and other key indicators. The data can also
be aggregated to inform national progress towards sustainability.
The data is logged on an annual basis so as successive year groups
use the resource, it will record lifestyles changing over time.
Greener Futures therefore has the potential to be a powerful
educational resource reaching children and their households and
act as an accurate barometer giving measurable readings on environmental
and social aspects of the sustainability of the nation's lifestyles.
7.4.(ii) The PECT Business and Environmental Management
Schemes
The mechanics of this project mirror Greener Futures but
it is targeted at SMEs. The scheme arose because managers of SMEs
and their representative organisations asked PECT to assist them
to meet increasing supply chain pressures for environmental management.
In essence, the scheme enables SME managers to accurately
record energy consumption, raw material usage, packaging, water
use etc. Having established this benchmark, future targets can
be set by the company to save money and become more sustainable.
As each company is audited, the original benchmarking data
can be compared against measurable progress towards the target.
Data from individual businesses can be brought together and analysed
by business type, location, size etc.
The scheme works equally well for manufacturing and service
based companies and has been successfully used by English Nature
to audit all 21 of the regional offices and the national headquarters.
A key to its success are the support services/materials and training
and educational programmes.
In partnership with the Regional Development Agency, the
scheme will extend from its Greater Peterborough pilot area to
cover East Anglia over the coming 2-3 years. It will then be possible
to monitor the sustainability performance of participating SMEs
on a regional basis.
February 2003
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