Planning

From ClimateNetworkWiki

Institutional planning processes create strategies for moving forward. There are planning processes for recruiting students, for campus development, and for creating new programs. It is only natural that to address the problem of climate change we are going to need to plan.

The interesting thing about climate change is that it is a challenge that extends far beyond the Ivory Tower. It is a problem facing our communities, our province, and our country. And more then any other institution, education institutes have the capacities and resources to do more to solve the climate crisis than they do to cause it.

Education institutions have a unique combination of tools and capacities to support our communities’ climate change strategies. Our learning tools include education, research, and knowledge. Our economic capacities include campus operations, economic impact (investments and purchasing), and land-use. Most importantly, educational institutions unite thousands of creative thinkers and researchers from across the province with the passion, resources and energy to create change. To go beyond climate-neutral these opportunities must be woven together to create integrated plans that catalyze change in our communities while reducing our campus-based emissions. The challenge of going beyond climate-neutral is already bringing out the best of our education institutions: bringing people together to solve these complex problems while training generations of B.C.’s citizens to be part of the solution.

Back to goBEYOND

The goBEYOND Approach

The goBEYOND Planning Pillar will work with institutions to develop collaborative planning processes and shared governance structures.

Climate change is a complex challenge that does not fit into a single discipline and requires custom solutions in different places. Collaborative planning combines the knowledge and perspectives of many people and stakeholders to create effective solutions and builds the support needed to make these plans a reality. Collaborative planning brings together students, staff, faculty, and administrations with community partners to create a shared vision for moving forward.

goBEYOND also advocates for shared governance structures. Just as students, staff, faculty, administration and community partners work together to create their climate strategies they will need to work together to implement them. Administrators have the power to achieve carbon-neutrality by implementing campus emissions reduction projects and offsetting. Yet it is only with the involvement of students, staff, faculty and regional partners at every step of the process that institutions will be able to move beyond climate-neutral. Shared governance structures will bring the partners together to define, implement and renew the plans from year to year.

Planning Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base on this website is designed to support Planning for Climate Change with an emphasis on Solutions, Places, and People.

2009/10 Program Planning

At the 2009 Programming Development Summit the participants agreed on three priorities for the Planning Pillar: building capacity for student groups and administrations, engaging directly with administrations to ensure they are following through on their committments for collaborative planning, and developing province wide initiatives for inter-campus collaboration.

Lessons Learned

We have identified the following as core lessons that we have learned from our experience with the first year of the Planning pillar:

• The planning situation is different at every school and planning strategies need to take this into account
• There are many different ways to participate in collaborative planning processes, with various levels of engagement and value
• There is a wide range of administrative capacity, and a need to share learnings
• There are many projects that would benefit from inter-campus collaboration and provincial scale
• We need to be explicit about the role of collaborative planning in giving people a voice and inspiring change

Broad Framework

The broad framework for this pillar is to both engage people accross the province in a shared collaborative planning around cross-provincial ideas, and to provide support and capacity building for local planning and action through resources and peer-to-peer learning.

Goals and Objectives

2009/10 Planning Pillar Goals and Objectives:

Result Goals:

• Help students, staff, faculty, and regional partners work together to achieve institutional victories
  • Objective: # of institutional victories

Process Goals:

1. Build relationships between students, staff, faculty, administrations, and regional partners

• • Objective: # of meetings with administration
  • Objective: # of meetings with regioanl partners

1. Provide custom planning support for campus students, staff, faculty, administration, and regional partners

• • Objective: # of people that learn from the Collaborative Planning Guide
  • Objective: # of people that participate in peer-to-peer webinars and the # of webinars (or equivalent)
  • Objective: # of groups directly supported about their local plans

1. Develop an inter-campus collaborative process to develop a strategy for cross-provincial action to move institutions beyond climate-neutral

• • Objective: # of people aware of cross-province strategy
  • Objective: # of people that vote and/or give feedback on the cross-province strategy
  • Objective: # of people, organizations, and institutions that participate in implimenting the cross-province strategy

1. Inspire people about what their institutions can become and the role that they can play in it

• • Objective: # of Visioning Sessions and # of people that attend

Program Timeline

1. Outreach about 6-ideas for cross-province collaboration (July to September)
2. Outreach and organizing for the strategy that emerges from the voting and feedback (September to December)
3. Collaborative planning training and visioning sessions (September to December)
4. Organize information sharing and feedback on challenges and opportunities in going beyond climate-neutral (October)
5. Planning webinars (January?)

Programming Elements

Collaborative Planning

• Provide advice and support for local groups
  • This is one area where a direct connection with the Challenge Pillar would be highly valuable to show support for ideas and help groups build capacity
• We are building the Challenge to build power and we are using collaboration to give students a voice. We need to make this clear - we want to be positively assertive.
• We will create a Guide to Collaborative Planning that will target students, staff, faculty, and administrations
  • We will embed the Guide in a combination of conventional documents, wiki-based tool-kit, and web videos.
  • This will be the basis for delivering training to students.
• The Guide will cover the following learning objectives, not in any particular order:
  • Why participate in institutional planning?
  • Why collaborative planning?
  • What are the institutions committed to? (targets and scopes)
  • Case studies!
  • Student options for change (provide a decision-making flow-chart for students about how to engage on an issue given context)
  • Collaborative planning process (values, who says "no")
  • How do you institutionalize the plan?
  • How do you evaluate the plan and maintain change?
  • How do you talk to and interact with different stakeholders? (including
• This will need to put things in the context of giving students a voice

Visioning Sessions

• The visioning sessions complement the student training process with the planning guide. The visioning sessions focus on back-casting from a climate-neutral campus in 2050 to show the action that is possible now
  • These sessions will be connected to the design labs for Invent the Future.
  • A really key part of this will be making thinking, discussing, and planning for a climate-neutral future fun, interesting, and relevant

Cross-Province Collaboration

• The Ideas for Inter-Campus Collaboration have been developed and are now in the process of being distributed for voting and feedback
• The voting and feedback process will go into September, providing an outreach tool that links to the Challenge Pillar (i.e. by taking the Challenge you are showing your campus you support strong action)
  • There will be two major ways to participate in voting. First, voting online through the google form. Second, by doing a dotmocracy at outreach tables. People doing the outreach at dotmocracies should give their name and indicate whether they would like to be involved, both so that we can follow up with them and to avoid double counting.
• Votes and feedback will be used to create a cross-province strategy, with working groups and supporters lists established to help execute the strategy

Information Sharing and Capacity Building

• We will coordinate the development and delivery of a webinar series with a focus on capacity building for administration and staff.
  • One of the keys to this strategy would be to facilitate peer-to-peer learning.
• We will collect feedback on various aspects of the challenges and opportunities that campuses face as they try to go beyond climate-neutral, particularly in relation to meeting the government mandates
• Depending on the feedback that we get on the collaborative website idea we can look into developing the Online Community to meet that need
• We will work with the Education Pillar to develop the wiki with resources on solutions for campuses
• Info sharing and networking at face to face meeting - bth ones we put on, parnter with, or just attend

Case Studies

• Common Energy's collaborative planning process
• UBC's Climate Action Planning process
• UNBC's sustainability planning and use of dotmocracy for prioritization

Programming Development Workplan

Cross-Province Collaboration

• Produce a video promoting the 6-ideas (done)
• Develop a survey monkey for the 6-ideas (done)
• Distribute the 6-ideas (part-way done)
• Develop materials for September outreach for voting and feedback
• Develop background research for the 6-ideas and post it to the wiki (started)

Collaborative Planning

• Develop the Planning Guide
  • Jamie and Julianne work on outlining content (done)
  • Jame and Tria write content
  • Spencer edits content
  • Julianne reviews content
• Develop different platforms for the Planning Guide
  • Document, wiki, blogs, youtube
• Develop outreach strategy for 6-Ideas in September
• Ask groups about their plans for engaging their institutions in order to support them

Visioning Sessions

• Develop the Visioning Workshop
  • Develop marketing guides and strategy for folks
  • Jamie will develop this workshop for the YAG

Information Sharing and Capacity Building

• Find out what the Ministry of Advanced Education is thinking and planning these days
• Talk to Charlene Easton about what the campus sustainable professionals network is doing
• Talk with Rita Fromholt and others at UVic about collaborating on a potential peer-to-peer webinar series
• Develop a survey for administrations about the challenges and opportunities to go beyond climate-neutral
  • Include options for institutions to be on-the-record and to be anonymous
• Integrate with the Education Pillar's Regional Solutions Project to develop the Solutions, People, and Places knowledge on the wiki

2008/9 Programming

What can the Planning Pillar offer my campus?

*One on One Support: goBEYOND staff have access to over ten years of planning best practices from both the UBC Sustainability Office and the Sustainable Campuses Project. Since 1998, UBC has been leading the campus sustainability movement in North America. Likewise, the Sustainable Campus project has worked with and supported over 70 institutions across the country in the areas of: Greenhouse Gas inventories, institutional governance, Campus Sustainability Assessment and policy development. Also Common Energy has been at the forefront of collaborative beyond climate neutral planning both at UVIC and UBC. By working with the Campus Climate Network you can access the years of experience of these organizations.

*Guest Lectures: Want to learn more about collaborative planning? Our staff and volunteers can come to your campus to give workshops and presentations on collaborative planning,

*CCN Online Community: The Ministry of Advanced Education and the Campus Climate Network have partnered to develop an Online Community that can act as a platform for sharing resources and for facilitating planning processes. It is free to join and it will connect you and your campus to initiatives happening across BC! Log in now!

* Guides and Resources: The Campus Climate Network has developed guides and resources for learning about best practices in climate planning, innovative solutions from across the and tips for starting a planning process on your campus. Check out some Solutions to climate change that the Planning Pillar can help you and your school accomplish!

Next Steps for Action

• Find out what your school is already up to
• Work with your institution to conduct a GHG inventory: A comprehensive inventory of emissions is a basis for sound climate planning.
• Get your school to sign the University and College Presidents’ Climate Change Statement of Action or another commitment to taking climate action.

Check out the history of the development of this pillar Beyond Climate-Neutral Planning