AFTER SPENDING YESTERDAY at the Climate Action Conference at the University of Sydney, I realise that there is a communications deficit between the established environment lobbies, the climate action network and other groups that address climate change issues indirectly and in ways other than lobbying.

The event was organised by the Climate Action Research Group in partnership with Friends of the Earth Sydney (FOE). The Group appears to consist largely of academics who investigate the politics and methods of climate action in Australia. For someone whose approach to climate change adaptation is indirect, coming mainly through education and advocacy on food-related issues, it was a worthwhile experience to mingle with the milieu that takes primarily a campaigning approach to the climate issue.

By way of explanation

By way of explaining my approach, I see food choices — as well as impinging on community health, water conservation, urban landuse, community development and energy issues — as prime determinants of an individuals or a family’s relationship with climate change adaptation and mitigation.

This comes through the oil dependency of our agriculture, food processing and food distribution networks and the production of food wastes. It makes food choices, and how and where food is produced, new avenues through which to approach climate change… avenues that have been shown to be often more inspirational and participatory than that of the campaigning and lobbying of Australia’s climate change groups. This is not to criticise the climate change groups now found through urban and rural communities — their role in directly engaging with the political process is valuable, however it is my observation that it is potentially less participatory than other community-based approaches.

Observations

My impressions of the event remain largely undiscussed and unanalysed, so I haven’t had the opportunity of changing my mind on them. Here they are…

Academic origin clear

Reflecting the organisers of the event, academic terminology, discourse and approaches were dominant in some of the papers presented, interesting though they were. Some reflected the academic approach of structuring findings within a context of theory. Theory, of course, is of great help in attempting to understand something but it may also apply limits to thinking if the researcher cannot step outsides the boundaries of someone else’s ideas.

There were frequent references to Marxist analysis. Marxism in an academic context means something different to what it means in the broader community where it is associated with particular political movements which elicit either support of abhorrence, depending on the audiences experience of Marxism as a political movement. In academia, it is an approach to analysing social trends and structures and is largely free of its baggage as a political form. Mentioning it in the academic context would only be confusing in communicating with communities.

Applicability of content

The theme of the event was less the production of useful, directly applicable findings than self-examination. Before this is written off as navel-gazing, let’s recognise that evaluation is too-seldom done in civil society organisations, mainly because people are too busy getting on with the job. This I found while working for an international development NGO.

Many community-based organisations would do well to reflect on their practice to derive useful learnings from it. The concept of Peter Senge’s ‘learning organisation’ has yet to filter from the corporate to the world of  community organisations.

Mark Diesendorf, a campaigner for and author on renewable energy systems and who is employed at UNSW, and Ben Spies-Butcher from Macquarie University’s Department of Sociology, were, for me, the speakers with applicable, practical information to offer. Likewise Linda Connor from the University of Sydney’s Anthropology department whose reflections, which concluded the event, offered valuable insight as befitting the anthropological approach to research that consists of observation and, sometimes, immersion in the field of study.

A limited appreciation of organisations active in climate change

Climate Action Network Australia, Friends of the Earth Sydeny, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition were represented. All are organisations with a direct lobbying role in the politics of climate change and, as such, deserved a place at the event.

Other groups deserving a place in talks on climate change are those taking an indirect approach through some other focus. Unfortunately, they were conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps this has to do with the narrower framework through which the Climate Action Research Group and groups like FOE and the ACF view those active on climate change issues. Perhaps they are simply ignorant of the existence of these groups. Perhaps they view themselves as a more elite group and self-position themselves as ‘leaders’. Perhaps those other groups are regarded as minor entities because they work within the sometimes confusing and changeable swirl of citizen initiatives. Most likely is the fact that their approach to climate change is not campaign-based and, in some cases, seeks personal and community behaviour change rather than taking a directly political approach.

Also missing as speakers was anyone working on climate change in local government.

That those among campaigning groups may be unfamiliar with contemporary thinkers on sustainability education was made clear when a local government sustainability educator in the audiences mentioned the work of Bob Doppelt, an acknowledged thinker and doer in community sustainability education and behaviour change. The speakers were all seemingly familiar with Bill Moyes work on social action movements, howevert no other thinker was mentioned.

The groups I refer to above as missing from the event include those in the Transition Towns movement, a social movement that has significance because it was only released upon the world in 2006 and has now gone global. It inspires people because it is necessarily participatory and action-based. Climate change is one of the main topics it addresses in seeking to build local, citizen-based resilience.

When a woman from Transition Katoomba mentioned Transition Towns, it provoked no response from either the audience or the speakers. The impression was that they had been presented perhaps with something they might have heard of but something that was beyond their frame of reference when it came to climate action. If true, it suggests the perceptual divide between academics who study social movements and those who make them reality. It also adds to the perception held by many in the community sector that academics study things but seldom return a great deal of applicable, useful value to movements.

Also absent was any representative of the Permaculture design system. Permaculture, which offers a systems approach to sustainable living, has been talking about climate change since the early 1990s, perhaps before that. Is it Permaculture’s eschewing of the campaigning approach and its preference for individual and community action that makes it invisible, especially to those who see the only valid form of climate action as lobbying?

Although individuals within the Permaculture design system participate in campaigning and other actions on climate issues, it is true that Permaculture as a social movement generally does not. This stems from the attitude of one of its founders, Dr Bill Mollison, that campaigning expends much energy for little result and that building a broad community of practice at the grassroots level is the way to build a constituency for change.

The question of membership

There was polite disagreement among representatives of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, the Climate Action Network Australia and Friends of the Earth Sydney on the role of members of green organisations in formulating and enacting what it is they stand for.

For someone who has worked in local government education programs and local government policy development for community food production as well as in community food systems and other organisations that were unrepresented at the event, the idea that members of organisations participate in policy formulation and in enacting the agenda of the organisation is… well… a basic assumption. It was almost peculiar to hear of supposedly community organisations where this was not the situation.

Listening to the conversation among the three representatives, I realised that people who simply pay membership dues and make donations to groups like, say, Greenpeace, are simply outsourcing their activism. This is reasonable when people are time poor, have demanding work and young families. It is not, however, engaging of member’s skills and motivation.

A good point was made by one of the speakers, I don’t recall who, said that the money Greenpeace spends on putting recruiters and donation collectors on the street would better be spent on salaries for community organisers. Despite the noble intentions of their organisation, these Greenpeace fund raisers have simply joined all of the other streetfront hustlers to blend into the category of ’social pest’ whose cheery, false greetings (so like those of supermarket checkout operators) are best ignored.

Worthwhile way to spend a day? Yes

This was an event for campaigning organisations yet it is unfortunate that they were the only type of climate change organisation recognised. Perhaps this signifies an academic-community disconnect. The observations disclosed were valuable but, in the case of FOE and ACF, they were those of the elite, professionalised environment groups. Community climate change groups have a greater grassroots presence, or potential for that, however they engage members only in campaigning rather than if some broader form that combines this with personal behavioural change.

It seems there are two structures operating when it comes to climate change —  that of the established professionalised groups like ACF and the newer, less-formal formations such as Transition Towns and Permaculture that are firmly grounded in the social grassroots.

They are not protagonists, however, but allies in that their different foci are complementary. Campaigning and political lobbying are needed as are personal and community behavioral change towards sustainable living. What is not happening is effective exchange between the two approaches and the realisaton that they take different approaches to similar ends.

It’s quite possible, however, that this divergence will grow wider. There already has been discomfort with the start-up of local Transition Towns groups that established environment groups see as impinging on their territory.

Maybe this can be seen from a different angle. As the big, established environment groups become more ‘professional’ so as to become more effective lobbyists, they abandon their old grassroots niche which is colonised by the newer, more flexible and adaptable groups like Transition Towns that give to their participants the opportunity for direct action and influence.

This was a worthwhile conference and it suggests the organisation of future symposia at which the different roles of campaigning and lobbying and that of community action can be explored. Hopefully, better understanding of the complementarity of the approach would emerge…. and who knows…collaboration, even?