Tackling climate change can appear daunting because the issues cut vertically across and horizontally through so many departments. The following are six sustainability program management principles to catalyze activity and build momentum.
- Engage – top down, bottom up, across, inside out: No small group inside City Hall can handle a big new sustainability agenda on its own. Effective and efficient engagement is critical to the success of most projects. Good engagement harnesses and builds the intellectual, social and financial capital of local government and the community. Better plans are developed. A more complete understanding of the challenges and opportunities is acquired. A stronger sense of ownership is achieved. Most big projects require some engagement from the top, i.e. council and senior management; from the bottom, i.e from line staff; across the organization, i.e. including more than one department; and inside-out, i.e. some community participation, potentially just key stakeholders but often citizens, too. Sometimes structures established to facilitate some of this engagement like Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development. Sometimes these structures are temporary like Boston’s Green Building Task Force.
- Integration over initiation: While it’s often necessary to initiate new programs or projects, it’s often better to integrate climate-protection and sustainability into existing projects, programs and job descriptions. Integration reduces the likelihood of programs working at cross-purposes or establishing a new sustainability silo. It also tends to be more cost effective. Recognizing that some families spend a high percentage of their household incomes on energy bills, San José, for example, has integrated into its low-income housing program a program for education, audits and retrofits to eligible families. Consider adding value rather than adding volume.
- Institutionalization over isolation: Many sustainability activities move in fits and starts, and their survival depends on good will exhibited during the budget process. However, most strong programs have been explicitly institutionalized. They have permanent budgets and staff members with climate-protection and sustainability objectives written into job descriptions. Some cities create a new office, as with Seattle’s City Green Building. If these institutions are engaging effectively inside and outside government, their economic, social and environmental successes earn their permanence.
- Think long-term. Act short-term: To deal with climate change and advance sustainability in truly meaningful ways, we will have to make transformative changes in how we get around, where we live, and how we consume and produce energy. Thinking and planning long-term is critical. But thinking far ahead about the magnitude of changes required can also leave politicians and staff feeling overwhelmed. Combat this by identifying practical, short-term stepping-stones that lead to the long-term goals.
- Build and maintain momentum: New programs face acute pressures to deliver successful projects on time and on budget. They need to build momentum. Pilot projects can start developing skills, knowledge, interest and acceptance inside government and the community. To build this capacity, projects can harvest low hanging fruit and critical best bets like many building commissionings (a low cost process of "tuning up" building equipment to ensure it is running at maximum efficiency) and retrofits. They can also benefit from innovative catalyst projects like a large high sustainability infill to capture the imagination of council, staff and the public and precipitate a series of ongoing changes. This principles reinforces many points addressed under programs strategy.
- Think local. Act local: While acknowledging global challenges, strong sustainability programs address core priorities of local government and the community, such as air pollution, jobs or traffic congestion. The government’s unique organizational culture is also considered in designing and delivering programs. This is addressed more thoroughly under integrated perspectives but cannot be overemphasized.
