Sustainable development presentation to local government and developers

Visitor Question: Do y'all have a presentation outline for someone to present to local government officials to get them interested in the topics of sustainable development and why this makes good sense? Also letters to these groups would be appreciated so we could distribute those to be sent in.

Thanks and love your website!

Editors Reply: We haven't written any presentation outlines for this website, but maybe we should think about that. Since your question seems to come with a dose of good humor, we will do our best to provide four points you can use in talking to local officials about sustainable development.

Below we are ignoring developers because we think the best way to get developers interested is to motivate your local officials. When the government is interested, suddenly developers take notice.

Developers that are persuadable will respond to the same arguments as your elected officials.

Here is the outline.

I. What is sustainable development in the context of our community?

Comments: Since the notion of sustainable development varies substantially from place to place, you need to make the definition practical for the local officials.

If your town suffers from frequent flooding, making the area more flood-resistant, and above all assuring that new development does not add to the flooding danger, is a critical part of sustainable development. If you have a lot of forest or brush near homes and other urban development, wildfire prevention will be a key piece of sustainable development. If your community is growing like topsy and you haven't done anything to reduce or hold steady the amount of automobile traffic, that's a sustainability issue. If you mean that your restaurants throw away too much food, send people home with gigantic foam containers, and supply only plastic utensils, that's about sustainability.

Or if you see a need for sustainable development because there is no place for the younger generation to make an honest living in your community, that's a sustainability issue in terms of the very survival of your town.

Just based on these examples, you can see that you will have to communicate clearly what you mean by sustainable development, or otherwise your local officials might think that you are advocating for only solar-powered houses to be built or that gasoline-powered vehicles will be banned. It's the nature of being a public official right now that they tend to imagine the worst if residents are not specific in their requests.

This would be especially true on topics such as sustainability, which could refer to an ecological, economic, fiscal, or social issue.

II. Appeal to their interest in future generations.

Comments: Asking people to be altruistic is almost always appropriate at the level of local politics, even if seemingly, altruism as a motivation is on the decline at the national level. So point out how the lack of sustainable development, as you have defined it, will affect the children in school now and the grandchildren of any older adults that may be part of your local government.

Sometimes the future generations argument "works" and sometimes it doesn't, but it is almost always appropriate to try.

III. Emphasize the popularity of the idea of sustainable development, or just sustainability, to some segments of the population.

Comments: Again, you must tailor this to take into account your community. If your community votes heavily to support a political party that is excited about sustainability, this will be easy, but it still bears repeating to your local officials. If a growing percentage of your population consists of young people, tell your local officials how much this generation cares about the environment and about sustainability in all of its broad connotations.

If you live in a community where the very word sustainability is deeply unpopular, of course you should ignore this step and just paraphrase. Even where the word is despised, often some of the concepts when applied at the local level will be popular.

IV. Explain any concrete advantages of adopting the type of sustainable development initiatives you would like to see.

Comments: For instance, if you are in a fire hazard area, could you reduce or stabilize your homeowners insurance costs? If you are in a sprawling suburb and want to stem endless sprawl, would that increase community coherence, improve physical fitness because people would be able to walk more, and reduce travel time and therefore reduce air pollution and gasoline costs for households?

In this part of the presentation, if you can figure out how to include it, the goal is to make the abstract more identifiable for your audience.
In my particular inner suburb, it's tough to explain to the population how a green dining initiative can benefit them as individuals because a paper straw doesn't feel better than a plastic straw to the average resident. (In fact, the opposite is true.)

If your interest in sustainable development takes you into some territory where it is difficult to describe advantages either to residents or to the city government itself, that's when you must go broad and rely on altruism. But that's a harder sell in most city councils.

Work your way through this four-part outline, based on the topics that are relevant to your own community. In most cities, omit topics that are not of immediate and obvious interest. (The exception is when you live in a serious college town.)

For example, talk of climate change (or its synonyms) may be very relatable in a town where sea level rise threatens existing buildings, but not so relevant where the weather is very changeable anyway and thus many people discount the existence or relevance of climate change.

After you have an outline of a presentation, write your letter based on the issues that are most salient for your town. Keep it to one page, about four meaningful paragraphs, which might correspond to the four-part outline described above.

I hope you have some other residents lined up to support your efforts. If not, work on doing that, because nowadays it is so easy for local officials to categorize one complaining or just vocal person as a crackpot. If you do have others interested in helping, ask them for their ideas about editing the presentation and the letter. If you have several thoughtful neighbors, this can result in a better, more locally relevant presentation and letter than we could possibly provide!

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