Supporting Institutions
in Transition
Institutions are increasingly required to show their sustainability. Climate change, biodiversity protection, freshwater stewardship are imposed by regulation and often demanded by citizens.
At the same time, the same institutions are expected to deliver jobs, growth, social services, international solidarity, innovation and quality of life.
Understandably, the agenda overload is difficult to handle – particularly when there’s a queue of suppliers of solutions outside the door.
PHGD offers comprehensive strategic support to institutions, helping them audit their baseline, make sense of their challenges and define relevant strategies. Taking full account of how things hang together.
Let’s have a look at what we have to offer public authorities engaged in environmental transition.
A baseline is what enables a public authority to specify what the problem of environmental transition is, in its particular context. Without a proper baseline exercise, there’s a risk of just reproducing off-the-shelf solutions that don’t suit the context.
FIGURES
Where are you starting from? In which areas could you imagine producing better or consuming less?
INSTITUTIONAL FACTS
Who has competency or authority to do what?
ACTION LEVERS
What can you act on, and over what timeframe? Distinguishing as required between technical, regulatory, communication, financial… levers.
How to baseline?
- Bring together relevant experience, throughout the institution
- Compare to good practices
- Assess the status quo
Consultation is what makes it possible to connect theoretical and regulatory issues to on-the-ground realities. Without consultation, there’s no chance that citizens will feel engaged in environmental transition.
SCENARIOS
Scenarios are the outcome of the baseline. They offer technically coherent alternatives that give a clear structure to public debate.
MEETINGS
Meetings with relevant stakeholder groups confront scenarios with real-world implementation challenges. They point to blindspots in the initial technical work.
FEEDBACK
Feedback turns the scenarios, adjusted as required, into coherent options for action that take account of the vision each territory has of its own future.
And a strategy is a framework for analysis and action that pulls together all the elements into credible and relevant proposals. Without a strategy, there’s no way to act coherently, and no way to know, as implementation proceeds, whether one’s going in the right direction.
There are three steps to a strategy.
PROJECT
Feedback in stage 2 leads to an option, possibly with variants, that has a clear timeline with detailed indications as to actors, actions, and success criteria. and conditions.
VALIDATION
The strategy needs to be submitted for validation to the people who’ll need to implement it. A strategy that is not actively taken on board will produce no results.
ADOPTION
And finally – amended as required – the strategy needs to be approved through the appropriate decision-making process for the particular territory, thus providing a clear framework for subsequent action.
Sustainable development expertise helps institutions to address environmental transition in the face of complex technical and regulatory challenges.
Strategic support for environmental transition improves lives and protects the environment, without unnecessary political tensions and on the basis of profitable investment.