Knox 2008-2018 Sustainable Environment Strategy
The Knox 2008 – 2018 Sustainable Environment Strategy is an award winning planning framework developed in conjunction with the Knox City Council to guide the Council’s ambition of achieving a liveable city with sustainable development within a sustainable environment.
The strategy provides the framework for both Council and the community to move toward sustainability over the next ten years by setting broad goals centred around seven key areas of local, state and national environmental significance which are critical to the achievement of sustainability in Knox and to broader state and national environmental objectives. The seven key themes are: Biodiversity; Waste; Water; Integrated Transport; Climate Change; Sustainable Planning and Community Engagement.
Drawing on extensive community input through workshops, a web survey and dialogue groups the strategy captures the community vision for what a sustainable city and environment should look like, and maps out goals and approaches to successfully achieve this vision. Such extensive public consultation has helped uncover the stepping stones to realistic program delivery.
Use of dialogue groups was proposed by Context as part of our approach to community engagement. A dialogue group is a discussion group run by interested community members, enabling them to hold structured conversations with colleagues or friends to gather information and ideas as input into a strategic planning process. Each discussion group leader is a volunteer, and is supported with information and a briefing. The great benefit is that the process can reach out widely into the community, engaging people who would not normally participate in formal workshops. In this project, 20 dialogue groups reached more than 90 people.
Each theme in the strategy addresses key management challenges, draws on community views and visions for sustainable management in that area, sets goals to guide Council and community actions and performance indicators to measure trends and success against the outcomes defined in Council’s Vision 2025.
The strategy has been designed to be a living document that will be reviewed and updated annually. As a document that informs Council decision making, a rolling planning process ensures that Council’s decisions are based on accurate and current information. By incorporating a 4 year rolling action plan into the final strategy, the residents of Knox are assured the plan will continue to evolve along with the community.
The Knox 2008-2018 Sustainable Environment Strategy was recognised by the Planning Institute of Australia, winning the Environmental Planning or Conservation category at the 2008 Victorian Division awards.
The judging panel found that the strategy “successfully ensured the integration of a wide range of environmental measures within not only Council Planning policy framework, but the wider municipal decision making structure.”
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