Sustainability Links is the national
information service
linking sustainability, communities and
local democracy
Support
“Believe it or not, all the building blocks are now in place to help deliver sustainability at the local level - both official and grassroots, and Sustainability Links is there to help people make those connections and in the process empower real change on the ground."
Jonathon Porritt
Founder & Director of Forum For The Future.
This site “will be useful to teachers and others working with schools”.
Ben Ballin
Teachers in Development Education.
“This is a great project.”
Chris Church
writer, developmental community worker and sustainability consultant.
Welcome to the home page…
It’s an exciting time for those of us trying to raise the profile of sustainability through local democratic processes.
Next year sees another Earth Summit – the first for ten years – and one specifically organised to mark the 20th anniversary of the first, held in Rio de Janeiro during June 1992.
The last Summit was a huge disappointment and any progress on mainstreaming sustainability concerns over the last two decades has been slow. Twenty years on and the word ‘sustainability’ has not even entered our vocabulary.
“The glass of development has been snatched by a greedy few who are slurping noisily on their straws while the rest look on anxiously as the contents rapidly disappear.”
Andrew Ross
editor of eg, the professional journal for sustainability practitioners.
Links’ material has been developed for your use and is to help you bring grassroots concerns about our global unsustainability into grassroots decision taking.
Since the United Nation’s Agenda 21, Britain’s seen an unprecedented increase in opportunities for communities to be directly involved in democratic processes which can enable all of us to participate in local efforts to address the world’s environmental, economic and social breakdown.
It’s hoped that the site can inform local councils, LSPs and VCOs, communities of interest, neighbourhoods and individuals to help localities promote sustainability in our dangerously unsustainable world.
Sustainability Links will do this by:
Bringing key sustainability concerns to the fore in local decision making processes.
Bringing together news about topical sustainability and participation developments.
Providing a reference resource.
Offering a networking opportunity.
The Sustainability Links website is being reconceived and refreshed ready for the new year and build up to June’s Summit.
In the meantime you can easily keep up with developments in a number of simple ways.
1. Online Information
This home page will include information about preparations for the 2012 Summit and news on how grassroots decision making is rising to the challenges of an unsustainable world. Until the 2012 site relaunch the Links website will contain a Green Websites directory listing all those other organisations now working on sustainability and / or participation concerns. The Case Study page will be introduced shortly:
Home
Page
The Home Page flags new Website and Document Store material, some favourite features and a few comments about Sustainability Links’ work.
Green
Websites
Green Websites enables visitors to find out more about some of the projects, organisations and businesses involved in S&P. Such a listing could never be complete, but the addresses included here serve to indicate the range of both high profile concerns and below radar activities, outlining the diverse areas of human activity where S&P action is now being taken. These range from finance, production and consumption to science, agriculture and education; from transport, diet and health to spirituality.
Case
Study Material
The Case Study Material webpage will enable visitors to find out more about some of the communities of interest are trying to bring sustainability into grassroots decision making. It is currently under reconstruction.
2. Free E-bulletins
S&P
Report
This is a monthly newsletter looking at topical VCO information. Different third sector news-streams focus on various sustainability and community work concerns. .The S&P Report aims to take an overview, drawing on the information covered in a range of these, while highlighting the importance of democratic participation in problem solving.
The periodic updates will summarise news from a range of sources, including the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development (and associated UNEP and UNED and Stakeholder Forum); from key national players, such as Urban Forum and the New Economics Foundation, and from wide support base campaigns like WWF, Campaign for Better Transport, Friends of the Earth, Stakeholder Forum, Soil Association and Jubilee Debt Campaign.
Links’ S&P Report is the only place collecting topical information on:
1 Sustainable Communities
2 Sustainable Environment
3 Sustainable Economics
4 Education News
5 Third Sector News
S&P
Forum
File 01: Keynote Themes
A collection of articles considering the key issues in drawing together sustainability and participation work, including:
6 Is Community Empowerment Leaving Community Groups Behind? Matthew Scott, Director of Community Sector Coalition, says that "collective and independent principled action has never been more urgent" in this article that first appeared in Urban Clearway issue 64.
7 Why Does Our Third Sector Have its Head in the Sand?
8 Matching Up Funding Availabilities and S&P Work.
File 02: Articles
The first edition – which is still available – included articles on:
9 Campaign for Honest Money
10 Ethical Consumerism
11 Community Empowerment
12 Community Voices
13 Locality Working and the Sustainability Imperative
14 Unsustainable World - Untenable Politics
15 Will Community Empowerment Empower Communities?
16 The Credit Crunch, Sustainability and Participation,
17 Democracy and the English Regions
Coming shortly:
18 Are Third Sector Assemblies More Inclusive than LSPs? LSPs are widely criticised for exclusivity, their memberships failing to adequately represent women and ethnic / cultural groupings – not to mention those organisations and other communities of interest working on sustainability concerns. How are TSAs measuring up?
19 From the Grassroots Up. A look at how we can all help localities respond to green community initiatives, such as those being rolled out by the Fairtrade and Transition movements.
File 03: Debate
The Links views-paper, bringing together visitors’ input on S&P issues.
20 Talking Points
21 Letters
22 Queries
File 04: Exhibition Area
A changing collection of images reflecting key issues in S&P work, this file showcases visitors’ photos, cartoons, drawings and design on today’s most important issues.
File 05: Advertising
Information about S&P-related books, magazines, films and other products and services.
3. Free pdf Guides
Great news… Links has now set up a Document Store where you can find guides providing lots of information to help you get world-wide sustainability concerns into local decision making. This is just in time to build grassroots support for next year’s United Nations Earth Summit.
PDF material
To access Links’ Document Store using this email link, click on our email address, insert the words Send Files under Subject then list the name of the files you’d like.
info@sustainabilitylinks.org.uk
Discover new ways to influence local decision making
Leafleting, petitioning, literature sales, letter writing – these are all well established ways of raising concerns in order to effect change. But there is now a broad raft of new working methods available empowering sustainability organisations. These openings will bring the role of participatory democracy to the fore in local policy making.
Greening
Local Democracy
File 01: A History of Action
This file aims to place grassroots action for a less unsustainable world in the context of global concerns about environmental, economic and social terminality and international policy making. The file notes some early international and UK initiatives addressing the unsustainable nature of our present lifestyle. All too often those of us working at local level can feel marginalised until we look again at the bigger picture.
File 02: Ways to Participate in Local Decision Making
This Ways to Participate file features a useful A to Z of participation opportunities (with briefings on local empowerment law and guidelines on initiatives such as the Sustainable Communities Act, Unlocking the Talent in our Communities, Communities in Control and CCES). The file also considers several issues:
23 Participation – Who’s Leading?
24 The Different Levels of Participation
25 Benefits and Disadvantages of Participation
26 Council and LSP Website Searches
27 Six Key Questions to Ask Local Policy Makers
File 03: Best Practice & Policy Making
The Best Practice and Policy Making feature is being developed to show what sustainability concerns are being addressed through local participation processes, bringing together various best practice and policy making initiatives. It also includes details of successful council resolutions such as those on the Sustainable Communities Act and Transition Town status.
The aim of this feature is to aid locality working through the provision of best practice examples to inspire other LSPs, Councils, Citizen Panels, Third Sector Assemblies, VCOs et al.
Do you have an idea you would like to see adopted locally? Or perhaps you are looking for ways to get an idea off the ground? If you're involved in local SCS, LSP or other participation processes why not check off your own work against this page's best practice and policy tick lists?
File 04: Model Sustainable Community Strategy
Although inspired by Agenda 21, Sustainable Community Strategies treat our global unsustainability as the elephant in the community. How would these Strategies look if they addressed our predicament, as intended at the United Nations’ 1992 Earth Summit?
File 05: Helpful Lobbying Tools
The Helpful Lobbying Tools file includes dummy letters, such as one making a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, and useful print outs on:
28 Participation. Print out copies of this page and keep a record of your own participation in local processes.
29 Networking. Network with others trying to promote sustainability concerns through locality working.
Do climate change and the other major threats to life on Earth concern you? Are you trying to do something about it? Are you involved in your area's LSP or locality working initiatives? sustainabilitylinks.org will soon be able to help you network with others like yourself. The activists’ networking service is returning soon.
30 Supporter Registration. As a supporter gain additional help from Sustainability Links.
As the general publication of email addresses is open to abuse by spammers, Links’ email address book is only being made available to registered supporters. In due course Links mailing lists will also target supporters with information on specified concerns.
31 Your Feedback. What do you think about Sustainability Links?
Appendix: About Sustainability Links
About sustainabilitylinks.org – and why you need Sustainability Links.
Where
to Get Help
File 01: Helpful Books
This file notes books that are essential reading if you’re involved in any of your area’s participation processes. These are grouped into the topic and action themes identified by many Sustainable Community Strategies.
Helpful Books contains almost 200 titles, which will also help communities monitor SCS processes and aid increased participation in local decision making. The file includes a list of some of Links’ early information sources.
File 02: Helpful Magazines
There are countless periodicals that can provide up-to-date news about a wide range of S&P concerns – these really should be used to inform locality working processes.
File 03: Helpful Addresses
The VCOs contact file provides an ongoing compilation of details about those third sector organisations working on S&P concerns.
It‘s encouraging that as the environmental, economic and social unsustainability of our way of life increasingly impacts upon us all, there’s a growing network of organisations striving to establish alternatives; hopefully these will help to ensure that eventual systemic collapse is less traumatic for us and, more importantly, for those to whom we are bequeathing a seriously damaged earth.
The pdf file gives some indication of the areas of human activity where action is now being taken, and the changed perspectives and practices being urged.
The listing is primarily of third sector organisations, though it does also include some government-funded and business-based initiatives.
Dictionary
File 01: Glossary
There are many technical terms used in both sustainability and community work. This file brings them together. Vocabulary is an important cultural cornerstone and has a vital role to play in ongoing culture change.
File 02: Abbreviations
Links material uses many of the abbreviations common in community and sustainability work. Why not download / print out the Abbreviations page for easy reference while you work?
Abbreviations
S&P? UNCED? Both sustainability and community work are littered with abbreviations and other jargon. This guide is an invaluable reference tool.
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“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced – a major shift in the priorities of governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources.
This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
United Nations Agenda 21, 1992.
Some key issues being addressed by Links
Overlooked – or excluded? 1
Many VCOs will simply not be represented in local Strategy and Partnership related work – even though they will have members and supporters living locally, if not active local contacts or groups.
Perhaps VCS representatives already involved in LSP and locality working should be more actively encouraging and supporting input from those colleagues working on sustainability concerns?
Just how successful can local lobbying be?
How will those currently responsible for decision and policy making be judged by future generations?
Site visitors will soon be able to refer to our Logs to see the ways local processes can respond to the challenges of global unsustainability.
Initiatives Sustainability Links has promoted over the years include the Nottingham Declaration, the Sustainable Communities Bill, fair trade, the Earth Charter and the damage caused local public service provisions by economic globalisation.
Why not help Links help you network?
Please help Links help you to network your events news – send information to:
info@sustainabilitylinks.org.uk
Also, please could you send Links copies of any sustainability-related practices, policy and resolutions to enable them to be seen and perhaps used by other organisations?
Participation opportunity
Why not make an ongoing record of your own approaches and responses and see just who's doing what – and who isn't – in the age of stupid?
Overlooked – or excluded? 2
Are sustainability groups being actively excluded from local processes? Or simply marginalised? See what you think when you use the Comprehensive Community Engagement Strategy (CCES) guidelines.
Stay in touch
All of Links’ material is periodically updated – stay in touch on:
tell
your friends & colleagues about this website…
Please
contact us with any information or feed back:
E-mail - info@sustainabilitylinks.org.uk