"Sustainability requires us to take up leadership that runs through the entire organisation. Leadership isn’t about top to bottom, or even bottom to top, it’s about leadership being in everyone. It's being in the heart, minds, activities, and belief patterns of the whole organisation."
Professor Tim O'Riordan
Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Symposium Keynote Speaker
More than 200 senior managers and councillors from across NSW attended the 'Integrating Sustainability in Local Government' symposium held by the Department of Environment and Climate Change NSW and the Environmental Trust on 24 and 25 November in Sydney. Over 40 per cent of delegates were from outside the Sydney Metropolitan Region.
Attendees took part in forums and lively discussions focussed on four key themes:
- Integration – Working across the organisation is important to achieve sustainability outcomes including departments, disciplines, issues and sectors.
- Strategy –Long term strategic approaches to tackle local challenges in a regional, national and global context. Effective visionary strategic plans as a critical foundation for connecting various activities and issues over time.
- Relationships – A range of professional relationships (networking, sharing, collaboration and partnerships) are needed from within and outside of councils to effectively deliver sustainability.
- Learning – Creating a culture of sustainability is fundamentally a learning process for individuals and their organisations.
At the end of day one, seventy two delegates committed to become 'Champions' to continue the conversation with their organisations about 'how do we create a culture of sustainability?' During the Symposium many councils shared their positive experiences of sustainability.
Resources from the symposium will be available on the Our Environment – It's a Living Thing website later this year. Councils can also contact Ben Roche ben.roche@environment.nsw.gov.au