How to Change the World. Clare Feeney
Ongoing program supportMore on the the seven steps and fostering partnerships within and beyond your organization, with some helpful logistical suggestions. This chapter also relates to the seventh of the seven steps.
A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
C S Lewis
Stories are the best way to explain the concepts behind the seven steps, so I’ll start by summarising the journey of the Auckland Region’s erosion and sediment control program, of which environmental training is just a small part. I will also give examples from the manufacturing, utility and primary production sectors.
Then, I’ll go through the core elements of a successful environmental training program and link to an Action Sheet where you’ll have space to do some thinking about each one.
Finally, I look to the future. Ways of learning are diversifying all the time, and much attention is on learning as the linchpin of the knowledge economy. We are also understanding more and more about the complex ecosystem processes of which we are part. So, in the final chapter, I present some ideas about what these trends may mean for environmental managers in any sector.
But first – a word about training.
What I hear, I forget, what I see I remember, but what I do, I understand.
Confucius, circa 500 BCE
The words ‘training’, ‘learning’, awareness’ and ‘education’ are often used interchangeably. Other terms like ‘professional development’ or ‘training and development’ are also common.
In this book, I use the term ‘training’ in a very specific way, as shown in the box below.
Training is the acquisition of work-related knowledge, skills and practices that will improve a specified aspect of on-the-job performance in measurable ways, ideally as defined in a clear statement of performance standards and/ or outcomes. This book focuses on environmental performance in the workplace.
Throughout this book, the term ‘training’ implies the existence of a measurable performance standard, benchmark or outcomes specified by an appropriate authority such as an environmental regulator, industry or professional association or similar body, in terms that enable the defined environmental practices to be:
Good training will provide the required workplace competencies and may or may not be supported by other statutory and non-statutory measures to encourage, require or enforce the performance standard. More on that later.
And yet training can also be so much more than this. The truth of the old adage ‘the best way to learn is to teach’ has been demonstrated by robust research20 describing the contents of the ‘black box’ of student learning and explaining it in the context of the ‘twin black boxes of teacher and student learning’.
The shift from ‘professional development’ (mere participation) to ‘professional learning’ (a serious engagement with our own learning)21 testifies to the transformational power of training. Successful training changes us as trainers and it changes our trainees, turning us all into lifelong learners who have ‘learned to learn – and it’s the holy grail of education’22. This ability, to know how to learn, and how to transfer that ability to applying learning to broader tasks (transferable knowledge), is what enables us to get out there and change the world – in measurable ways.
With this inspiration in mind, let’s look at the experience of Auckland, New Zealand.
Auckland’s erosion and sediment control program – telling the story
Developers must look at integrated impacts that do not stop at the boundary lines of their properties.
George Carl
When Auckland’s erosion and sediment control training program first started, Brian Handyside (my co-trainer) and I thought there might be two or three years of training to deliver, then everyone would be trained and we could stop. What actually happened turned out to be quite different: 15 years later, the program is still going and has been endorsed by major government agencies that require their service providers to attend. Moreover this highly successful program has – like the programs we looked at when starting out – inspired a number of similar programs. We’ve even had people from other countries attend our workshops to find out what we do.
So successful was the program that we ended up creating a whole new profession: environmental managers on large construction sites. These highly skilled people move freely between development, engineering design and contracting companies, as well as environmental regulatory agencies and specialist consulting firms. Over the years I’ve seen how this exchange of knowledge and perspective adds tremendous value to each of these organizations.
How did it all begin?
Figure 2 Auckland and New Zealand
The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) was one of the 14 regional agencies with environmental responsibilities in New Zealand, shown in Figure 2. In 2010, the ARC and the region’s seven local councils were amalgamated into a new Auckland Council that now combines all the previous councils and their functions.
Straddling three of the northern North Island’s biggest estuaries and any number of smaller ones, Auckland is home to the country’s biggest urban area and more than 1.5 million people (over a third of the country’s population).
The region will continue to grow to around two million people by 203623 – only 25 years from the date of writing. By 2050, 75% of all the world’s people will live in cities – and 2.6 million of them will live in Auckland24. All this new development will take place in an already heavily developed area that occupies a mere 2% of New Zealand’s land area.
It’s a ‘perfect storm’ of growth-related risks and environmental vulnerability for the beautiful harbors that the 1999-2000 America’s Cup yacht races showcased to the world.