Citizen's Environmental Network
In the UK Strategy for Sustainable Development, the idea of a 'citizen's environmental network' was
proposed as a way of helping communities make action plans and tell others about their ideas and
achievements.
Factors that limit action are that community-led environmental improvements are often limited by
the lack of: -
-
a logical management structure which links objectives with grass roots operations,
particularly with regards monitoring the success in achieving practical targets;
-
a recording system for maintaining year on year momentum, which also has an integral
reporting system for keeping all members of the community up to date;
-
access to standard methods and procedures which have proved successful in the past;
-
the inadequacies of paper systems to centralise management, recording, and
communication.
To remove these limitations requires the national collection of feedback from communities who are
developing ideas and methods.
The Going Green Directorate grew from a 1994 gathering of school teachers and academics in
Wales who came together to consider how schools could help their communities move towards
sustainable development. The meeting was sponsored by the Countryside Council for Wales,
Dyfed County Council, and the local Texaco oil refinery. This partnership was based in the St
Clears Teacher's Resource Centre. From here, a successful award-winning pilot was led by
Pembrokeshire schools to create and evaluate a system of neighbourhood environmental
appraisals, and network the local findings from school to school.
The scheme adopted the acronym SCAN (schools and communities Agenda 21 network). SCAN's
aim was to help teachers create systems of appraisal within the National Curriculum to evaluate
'place' (historical, geographical, biological, and notional). The practical objective was to address
environmental issues which emerged from the appraisals in the context of their community's Local
Authority Agenda 21. You can reach SCAN in the National Museum of Wales at
http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/scan
The objective of the GGD is therefore to promote environmental appraisal and the long-term
management of neighbourhood historical assets, green spaces and home and community services
to promulgate a sense of place, improve quality of life, reduce environmental impacts of day to day
living, and enhance biodiversity.
