Responses to net-zero monitoring and evaluation survey February 2022

Dr. Amy Burnett, Centre for Environment and Sustainability (CES), University of Surrey/ Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP)

Opportunities for innovative metrics and approaches to measure progress towards climate and ecological emergencies

• In an age of cuts to local government budgets, new and innovative ways to raise resources for climate change action are needed.
• Calls for ‘regenerative development’ models where development and design methodologies are centred on ecological, integrative principles (Gibbons, Cloutier, Coseo, and Barakat, 2018).
• Increasing moves towards Doughnut Economics (Raworth, 2018) by different actors, i.e. Cornwall County Council to help shape their decision-making processes during project, policy or service design, as well as for commissioning and procurement and budget setting.
• There is a plethora of New Economy financial incentives and a Commoning of governance that promise multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral alignment and ecological and social benefits (e.g. Social Value, Environment Bonds, Municipal Bonds etc).
• Incentivising action and monitoring outcomes requires a more interdependent approach to drive green initiatives at all scales. This includes greater information sharing amongst stakeholders on sustainability gains, incentives towards promoting climate action, matching of stakeholder needs and interests to maximise sustainability impact, and reconsidering ‘value’ at a systemic level.
• Engaging with different actors to share insights, frustrations and opportunities across ‘scales’ and ‘sectors’ could help to overcome institutional silos through peer-to-peer collaboration.
• There is a role for indexing and incentivising organisations, sectoral bodies or communities that demonstrate positive sustainability action and exploring redistributive support mechanisms to support 'under performers'.

This Presentation captures the findings from a survey on Monitoring and Evaluation and desirable functions of sustainability platforms and reporting tools.

Summary insights and questions based on survey responses are indicated as discussion points.

Thank you to all of those who responded. Since responses were anonymous, it's not possible to email respondents the results directly.

The response rate for the survey was lower than anticipated, so while the responses are not statistically significant they nonetheless give an insight into emergency declaration planning, reporting and additional needs in this area.

Findings of survey on Monitoring and Evaluation needs and priorities

Respondents: 68 (43 Parish or Town Council level)

Government respondents (at any level of government) accounted for 69% of respondents. Elected councillors at parish or town council level accounted for 97% of respondents (32), 3% at district level (1), 10 clerks, and 1 Chief Executive.

The next most significant being non-profit or community organisations, which accounted for 13% of respondents (including 3 charities, 2 NGOs and 1 social enterprise) and community organisations, including a religious organisation.

5 businesses responded (7%), which included retail, hospitality, engineering and planning consultants. One academic institution responded.

Despite the survey targeting public sector planners and ecologists, none of these groups responded to the survey.

Why, other than an even more targeted approach to planners, might planners not have capacity/time to respond? What does this indicate about the pressures facing planners to deliver multiple spatial goals, net-zero and nature recovery? How can we work more collaboratively to support resource sharing and mutual understanding?

Geographical representation

Most respondents were from South West England (29%, 18), followed by the South East (24%, 15), the Midlands (11%, 7) and 6%, 4 in both London and the North East and 2% (1) in the North West. While there were two respondents from Wales, no other respondents from devolved territories responded. Though there was one international respondent.

Length of time in roles

The mean length of time in respondents' roles was eight years. Specific environmentally-focused roles included: Environment and Climate Change Advisor, Head of Sustainability, Climate Change and Sustainability Manager, Resilience Manager, Consultant in Government, Health and Sustainability Teams, Cabinet Member for Sustainability, and Chair of Environmental Committee.

Party political representation

Most respondents were either from the Green Party (28.6%) or an independent councillor (43%). Some respondents stated that they were not party-political at parish council level, while being a member of a political party themselves.

"Party politics has no role in the Parish Council business".

"The Parish Council is non-party-political".

Why is it that party politics has no role at a local level but that it does higher up the political 'food chain'?

Centrality of sustainability to respondent roles

Sustainability was defined as:

"Encouraging positively reinforcing socially equitable, environmentally regenerative and economically inclusive outcomes that do not stretch the Earth's planetary limits".

Overall, 35% (20) respondents said that sustainability covered a "moderate amount" of their role, with 28% of respondents (16) said that it was central to everything they did in their job, covering more explicit environmental roles described above. 19% (11) of respondents said that it covered most of what they did, but, equally, 19% (11) respondents said that sustainability only covered a little or indeed none of the activities in their roles.

Is sustainability being framed in the right way to make it central to parish and town council duties?

Committing to net-zero

Of those who had made a net-zero commitment, 29% (11) aimed for more ambitious commitments before 2030, while 13% (7) were aiming for after 2030. However, 58% of respondents had not yet set a date to become net-zero by, most of these parish councils.

What is stopping parish councils from making net-zero commitments?

The SDGs

The SDGs were not a common framework being used by organisations, particularly parish councils, to orientate their environmental/sustainability activities. Only 14% of organisations (7) were using them, while 16% (8) preferred to use other frameworks. These included "New Zero", "One Planet Living", incorporating climate change in every decision or writing their own climate change strategy, and "Renewing Pilgrimage (church-based organistion). One respondent said that as they worked worldwide, it is inappropriate to use one model only. One town council respondent said they have "struggled" to encourage their town council to use the SDGs, politically, not helped by the lack of a suitable methodology that can be used at a local level to apply the SDGs.

The lack of application of the SDGs at a local level may affect the translation of internationally-driven goals and the realities on the ground, if they are not captured in a systematic way. Does a lack of standardisation matter, does it help to spark creative and locally-focused solutions?

Is there unmet appetite to use the SDGs by local councils that needs addressing?

Climate and ecological emergency declarations

Somewhat surprisingly, 39% of respondents (23) were not planning on declaring either a climate or ecological emergency - reflecting the lack of net-zero commitments by 58% of respondents described above.

For those that had declared an emergency, interestingly it was roughly split between a climate emergency (25%, 15) and a climate and ecological emergency (22%, 13). For those planning on declaring an emergency, there was a slight preference for a climate and ecological one (7%, 4) as opposed to 5% (3) for a climate-only emergency.

Made declarations were mainly done between 2018-2021 (an average of two per year), with one declaring an emergency before 2016.

How can we reach the 39% that are not planning on declaring a climate or ecological emergency? Are there any particular strategies or ways of understanding their hurdles in a way that supports a co-benefits approach, e.g. relating regenerative and circular economy benefits to economic ones?

Climate and ecological action plans

Most respondents had a climate/ecological plan, either complete (28%, 16) or in progress (37%, 21). However, similar to the 39% of those yet to declare an emergency, 35% did not have such a plan - suggesting that with a declaration comes the added governance 'push' of creating a deliverable action plan.

Is there a way those who have completed or are carrying out a climate action or ecological plan can mentor those yet to get started? Is there a repository of templates and tools that can be created for local councils (e.g. Climate Emergency UK work focuses at district and above).

How can we use commitments and frameworks to support nudges towards sustainable action, e.g. amending standing orders, changing constitutions to encourage regenerative and accountable governance?

Of those involved in developing climate action or ecological plans, these tended to be department or organisationally-driven (30%, 3 each respectively), one was developed by a community organisation.

Only one was developed exclusively through a partnership approach with other stakeholders. One town council respondent said that their Operations Manager developed the council's net-zero plan and they are seeking to develop a community-wide net zero vision to complement the organisationally-driven plan.

While the average declaration for an emergency was roughly two a year (from 2018-2021), action planning seems to take more commitment and have a longer time lag: five plans were complete in 2020, one in 2019 and three in 2021. Partnership-based action planning will often take longer than an organisationally-driven approach.

How can we make partnership-based approaches more attractive to local councils, e.g. could multiple parish or town councils supporting create shared action plans to leverage resources, accountability and commitment? How can or should partnership become more agile than working in siloes?

How can we go further so that climate and environmental action planning works more with partners and other stakeholders?

Using climate and ecological emergencies in decision-making

Of those who had declared an emergency, in the main these were being used as discussion points within departments on a monthly basis (32%, 7), and some more frequent than this (with 14%, 3) using them on a daily or a bi-weekly basis. However, there was a sense that within departments that commitments were made and then they dropped off agendas - 5% (1) used them quarterly but also annually or less than this (9%, 2, respectively). Unfortunately, 18% (4) said they are never used in departments as a discussion point, though this may also be attributed to not all organisations have 'departments'. However, the fact that 15% (4) also said that they are not discussed in their organisations makes this seem less so. Similar figures were found regarding use of emergency declarations at an organisational level, with the exception that no respondents were using declarations on a daily basis but more frequently on a quarterly basis (19%, 5). However, there still seems to be a gap between the more active environmentally-focused roles or members and wider organisational adoption of goal-focused and accountable decision-making on declarations to action in this area.

The issues that most affect respondents' ability to monitor and evaluate sustainability within their role or organisation were:

• Lack of funding
• Lack of appropriate tools and the time to learn new ones
• Not being aware of appropriate tools
• Not having a one stop shop for tools etc
• Unsupportive policy context
• Lack of alignment to SDGs
• Lack of training
• Too many conflicting priorities
• Not being seen as a priority at an organisational level

The following potential features to help improve how respondents approach sustainability in their roles were:

• Peer to peer exchange on sustainability issues
• An Ideas Bank to log new ideas and help resource them
• Benchmarking my/my organisation's progress on sustainability
• A reporting function e.g. for customised quarterly or annual reporting
• A searchable database of sustainability tools and approaches
• A single digital platform that consolidates different sustainability reporting tools
• An ability to log my actions according to customised organisational or personal indicators
• An ability to log my actions according to national or regional indicators
• Values mapping function i.e. seeing what kinds of approaches, people and partners I might work well with
• Indexing my/my organisation's progress against others in the same field

Recommendations

• An integrated approach between different markets and sectors i.e. appropriate political-institutional arrangements for an integrated economy with strong redistributive and incentivising components of the co-benefits of sustainable action
• Standardisation of key metrics and reporting frameworks
• Penalties (negative incentives) incurred on organisations found to be acting unsustainably by community regulators (overseen by the local government), according to a set of commonly defined metrics.

Operationalising Regenerative Value in a systems approach

Potential outcomes

• Can advance transition management and positive actions on climate change
• Could play a pivotal role in promoting sustainability and inclusive, pro-poor development
• Transfer resources from the traditionally resource-rich private sector to community groups
• Raise resources to improve local government capacities for achieving sustainability at the local level
• Ensure that local actors work towards a common framework in order to avoid penalties
• Strengthen the ‘localism agenda’ by building community cohesion whereby local actors have a collective decision-making role in deciding both the allocation of Regenerative Value dividends and how the corresponding projects would benefit local communities

Contact

amy@developmentintransition.co.uk