Canadian Rural Partnership - Rural Research and Analysis - Sustainability Project on Sustainable Communities

Canadian Rural Partnership
Rural Research and Analysis

Sustainability Project on Sustainable Communities

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Rural Research and Analysis Unit
Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
1341 Baseline Road, Tower 7, 6th floor, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0C5
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E-mail: rs@agr.gc.ca

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Publication Number 94764E
Catalogue No. A114-8/2005E-HTML
ISBN 0-662-39378-3
This publication is available on the Internet at: www.rural.gc.ca

Également offert en français sous le titre : Projet sur les collectivités durables, Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada No de publication 94764F

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Executive Summary

So many individuals and organizations have generously donated their time and shared their knowledge and research that it would be impossible to list them all. That said, the authors would like to address special thanks to the members of Interdepartmental Working Group to Promote Sustainability in Communities and their staff for their time, support and guidance.

More thanks go to the researchers and other representatives from national and community organizations who have pointed us in new directions and agreed to share with us their research and innovative examples of government–community partnerships for the promotion of sustainability.

Finally, to all the people at the community level who have inspired us and provided us with the materials and ideas which were crystallized in project profiles, and which form an important component of this research project.

This research paper explores various options to link the federal initiatives and programs that promote sustainable community development. In recent years, a growing number of departments and agencies have been relying upon innovative partnership arrangements in order to support the economic, environmental and social well‑being of communities. In this context, the Federal government's Sustainable Communities (SC) platform was initiated several years ago to promote community capacity‑building for sustainable development. As governments are being forced to redefine their roles, as a consequence of a reduction in available resources, the value of community‑driven processes has been extensively documented, and the potential of equitable partnerships and multi‑sectoral initiatives are better understood.

This research project's main objective is to identify a limited number of alternative options for the Federal government to enhance the capacity of rural, remote, and Aboriginal communities to promote sustainable community development. Several research tasks were undertaken in order to meet this objective. First, a file and document review was conducted to learn about a limited number of community development projects and programs from other jurisdictions, with a view to analyzing their functional areas, service delivery structures, funding sources, partnership and collaboration dimensions, and impacts. Second, eighteen project or program profiles were written for the purpose of learning from instructive practices what works and what doesn't work in the area of service delivery at the community level using multi‑party partnerships. Third, consultations with a limited number of key stakeholders were conducted with members of the IWGSC; community leaders and group representatives; and government representatives from different jurisdictions; as well as with academics and community development experts. These consultations were designed primarily to provide the information required to flesh out issues relating to the development of the framework options.

One section of the report provides an overview of selected federal or joint federal/provincial/local initiatives aimed at promoting sustainability in communities. The intent was to report those programs and projects of direct relevance to the promotion of sustainability in communities and which provide insights on a federal framework for promoting sustainability in communities. This overview makes it clear that there are several innovative, government‑sponsored programs and initiatives that have effectively contributed to the promotion of sustainability in communities. Multi‑year funding on the basis of multi‑faceted partnerships, flexible pooling of funds, effective community capacity‑building, joint decision‑making, and a holistic approach to community sustainable development are some of the features embodied in most of the highlighted programs and initiatives. The analysis suggests that the success of these selected programs and initiatives often depends on the presence of a local champion, favorable circumstances, and supportive local conditions. It thus leaves partly unanswered the question of how can government successfully replicate or scale up these programs and initiatives.

A significant share of the research's efforts went into the development of eighteen profiles originating from all regions of Canada. The profiled projects/programs represent innovative examples of community‑based partnerships which integrate elements of capacity building, but not all touch upon the economic, social and environmental dimensions which are typical of initiatives designed to promote sustainable community development. In fact, a majority of the profiles emphasize environmental sustainability, but not necessarily at the expense of economic and social considerations. This "bias" is more by accident than by design, since the final project selection was guided by a multi‑faceted selection process.

Important lessons can be derived from both these profiles and the key stakeholder interviews. In terms of the federal role in building community capacity (CCB), the paper makes a first point that leadership development is an undervalued strategy for building local capacity. Cases such as Opportunities 2000, in the Kitchener‑Waterloo area, shows the importance of engaging in a long‑term process of community capacity‑building when tackling broad‑based problems and issues such as poverty. Another observation is that the specific mix of relevant capacity‑building interventions will depend on the community's existing level of development, the strength of its social capital, and the nature of its developmental problems. The paper further observes that support to both community‑based structures and development process which can promote community sustainability is essential given that a central thrust of CCB is the enhancement of a community's social capital.

On the same CCB theme, the paper highlights a number of overarching principles for government intervention. They include: playing a supportive, non‑directive development role; seeking partnerships and cooperation; paying attention to communities' organizational capacity; adopting a long‑term view on development; focusing on people's development; and integrating flexibility into program design.

The paper also discusses the nature of effective government—community partnerships and concludes, on the basis of the project profiles, that collaborative partnerships are not necessarily synonymous with equally shared partnerships. It makes the additional point that a predominant government lead role is to provide financial support, both to the structure of the partnership and to the specific projects or activities being carried out. By and large, the analysis suggests that government tends to play a significant, but rarely predominant, role in community‑based partnerships designed to promote sustainability.

Upon examining various funding arrangements, the paper recognizes that examples abound where government has provided funding which is consistent with the longer term, holistic nature of sustainable development at the community level, and that continuity of government commitment and support is vital for community capacity‑building. Interestingly, such type of long‑term, combined operational and project‑based funding can be found beyond the realm of pilot projects and in programs such as Industry Canada's (IC) Community Futures. In addition, several of the profiled projects feature one form or another of integration of hitherto separate funds into a unified financing vehicle. A central lesson here seems to be that flexibility exists within government to pool resources, as long as accountability requirements are met.

The paper provides a perspective on the role of information and communications technologies (ICTs) as a community development enabler. Several federal government initiatives are already actively promoting ICTs as a tool for accessing and using knowledge and information. Programs such as NRCan's GeoConnections and IC's Smart Communities are instructive in this regard. ICTs can also be seen as a means of fostering community sustainability by providing communities and individuals with a single access point for government services. In this context, Service Canada represents a government initiative aimed at providing a one‑stop access to government services. A third perspective on the role of ICTs is to view them as a means to promote the creation of community learning networks, which are community vehicles designed to increase citizen participation in lifelong learning. Here again, the federal government is already providing invaluable assistance. By and large, ICTs represent an effective enabler and supporter of community development processes, both by providing easy and comprehensive access to information, knowledge and government resources, and by providing the backbone to community networking and mobilization activities aimed at lifelong learning.

Another important lesson centers around the importance of sustainability indicators in the context of a federal framework for promoting sustainability in communities. At the community level, sustainability indicators can been seen as a tool for planning, monitoring and evaluating projects and initiatives implemented in the context of a community sustainable development strategy, and the integration of indicators into a planning process provides an opportunity for local citizens to develop ownership of the process. Governments are also recognizing the importance of measuring progress towards sustainability on the basis of indicators that track social, economic and environmental trends. Examples abound of tools that can be used both by communities and government for the purpose of monitoring and assessing progress toward sustainability. For instance, the case of the Oregon Benchmarks provides important lessons on how to integrate development indicators into a broad‑based framework for decision‑making, evaluation and accountability. The application of this framework has had the effect of shifting the focus of public scrutiny from specific government expenditures to targets and outcomes.

On the basis of these important lessons, the research paper describes some implications for the federal role. It first makes the point that a re‑examination of the central purpose of government and governance — which should be to enhance the human development of the population — is urgently warranted. At a more fundamental level, some authors have argued about the need for a shift from government to governance, the latter referring more broadly to the range of organizations and institutions, in addition to government, which take decisions affecting others.

Second, the paper examines what can be learned in terms of the most effective ways to promote horizontal programming. It concludes that there are no universally‑accepted regional or local structures which could play the role of a government‑supported intermediary organization and act as a point of access to the Federal government's community sustainability services. It further observes that incremental changes at the policy or program levels will probably not suffice to remove some of the barriers currently hindering program integration and horizontal programming. Finally, the paper reviews some of the barriers and challenges to government's efforts to replicate or scale up innovative models and experiments, noting that the key to significant change does not lie in the launching of more pilot or demonstration programs or projects.

The framework options which are proposed build upon a common vision statement and set of guiding principles, and a set of process and structure options. The proposed options for process and structure are based on the recognition that the promotion by government of sustainability at the community level requires two intertwined processes and structures: one for horizontal programming and another for collaborative government — community partnerships. The framework options thus rely upon two parallel streams — one at the regional/community level and the other at the government‑wide level.

The regional/community level process starts with the development of regional/local Sustainability Strategies and ends four steps later with the monitoring and evaluation of Sustainability Plans. The a government‑level process embodies six steps, starting with the development of a vision and a national Sustainability Strategy and ending with the monitoring and evaluation of the Strategy based on sustainability indicators. For each step, different options are presented in terms of design and implementation structures. The proposed framework options in some cases depart significantly from existing "ways of doing things". They rely upon communities to identify development issues, problems, and needs, and to participate in the solutions, and they move away from a strictly programmatic solution to problems and needs, relying instead upon the concept of a Sustainability Strategy as the means to achieve sustainable community development objectives.

The regional/community level process and structure rests upon five steps: developing regional/local sustainability strategy and identifying sustainability indicators; developing regional/community operational plans; identifying and allocating Sustainability Plan resources; implementing these plans; and monitoring and evaluating the Sustatainability Strategies. For each of these steps, different structure options are proposed, ranging from slight modification to existing delivery structures to creating new ones.

The need to account for a government‑level process stems from the recognition that such a process is needed to sort out issues of horizontal programming and integrated decision‑making. A six‑step process is proposed: developing a national vision and sustainability strategy, and identifying a core set of sustainability indicators; developing departmental performance targets; identifying departmental sustainability policy instruments; developing regional sustainability strategies; implementing these strategies; and monitoring and evaluating them on the basis of performance targets defined by sustainability indicators. Again, the structure options which are proposed range from incremental changes to existing structures to entirely new mechanisms.

By and large, the framework options which are presented in this research document provide policy makers with a broad range of possibilities in terms of how to better promote sustainability at the community level. The approach which is proposed builds on existing structures and processes, rather than to by‑pass them. It emphasizes reinforcing and extending community capacity and recommends breaking out of the repetitive pilot project cycle which has been so evident in recent years. The paper positively ascertains that there is extensive community sustainability activity already happening across Canada, and the Federal government has demonstrated innovation and flexibility. The challenge is to build upon this positive experience in a way which is responsive to community needs.