Newsletter and Technical Publications
<The Councillor as Guardian of the Environment>
An Essay and Workshop for Local Elected Leaders on Environmental
Governance
with Emphasis on Adopting Environmentally Sound Technologies (ESTs)
- Training for Elected Leadership -
Part II - Workshop on the Councillor as Guardian of the
Environment
- WORKSHOP -
WORKSHOP COMPONENTS
13.6 Exercise: EXPLORING THE FUTURE
| Time Required: 240 minutes |
To begin the process of establishing an effective and appropriate
environmental planning and policy-making capacity in local government through a
creative process for thinking about the future.
Provide each participant with a copy of the worksheet An "Inspired"
Vision of the Future (next page). Explain that participants will be
working in their groups to construct an ideal future relative to the
environment problem selected by their group. Remind participants that the end
result of this exercise is not to construct an accurate picture of tomorrow.
This is an unrealistic task. Rather, it is to give environmentally conscious
local officials a tool they can use to ask better questions and make better
decisions.
Before breaking into small groups, explain that participants in
each small group are to work together to complete the worksheet. In other words,
each small group is to prepare a single group vision. The resulting group
vision should be printed, sketched, or otherwise entered on newsprint as a group
report.
When all groups have their visions recorded on newsprint, each
group is asked to join the other groups and present its vision in any way it
chooses. Encourage groups to be creative in their presentations (e.g., a public
presentation; television show; article in a local newspaper or international
news media; a large, dramatic drawing). Ask participants in each group to make
notes on themes they hear from other group reports and prospects for change or
improvement they find interesting.
| Alternative Design: Groups of
participants who know each other and work together can construct 10-15
year visions for environmental conditions in urgent need of attention in
their own communities based on results of their pre-workshop awareness
assignments. |
Creating an "Inspired" Vision of the Future Worksheet
Creating an "Inspired" Vision of the Future Worksheet - Part
2
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| Identify trends in the economy that could affect the
future in relation to this problem (e.g., use of industry incentives
to encourage greater energy efficiency, decline in energy intensity
of industrial production, more universal environmental standards
and enforcement.) |
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| Identify social trends that could affect the future
in relation to this problem (e.g., redistribution of work patterns
that reduce commuting distances, increased environmental education,
greater reliance on community initiatives and lower cost technologies). |
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Creating an "Inspired" Vision of the Future Worksheet - Part
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| Identify political trends that could affect the future
in relation to this problem (e.g., government policies that encourage
investment in energy-efficient industrial products, restructuring
of investment policies favouring energy-efficient technologies, greater
public participation in decision making). |
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| Identify technological trends that could affect the
future in relation to this problem (e.g., transition from gasoline
powered vehicles to electric powered, removal of air pollutants from
fossil fuel combustion processes, new communication technologies
leading to a redistribution of work patterns). |
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Creating an "Inspired" Vision of the Future Worksheet - Part 4
| Step 3. Put yourself ten to fifteen
years in the future. Assume that local government in this city has become
committed to a sustained programme of effective action to eliminate
problems that are known risks to the local environmental and has made
appropriate and consistent use of environmentally sound technologies. Keep
in mind the trends and conditions identified earlier as a reality test,
but don't spend time speculating about what local government actually did
to make this happen. Simply visualize the situation as you would want
it to be if this was your city and as if the vastly improved condition
you are visualizing actually exists in the present. Spend enough
time to imagine in the most vivid detail possible what this situation
would be like. When you have pictured the situation in your mind, describe
it in the space below. Remember, this is an exercise in creative,
"inspired" visioning?of the kind of sustainable environmental
condition that you would feel pride in having helped to create. And also
remember to stay on track by avoiding concerns about how to achieve
the vision and avoiding a tendency to become preoccupied with the
obstacles that always confront any significant effort of this kind.
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