Green Plans, working strategies for a sustainable future, a primer.

Chapter 1
What are green plans?

The commonly held belief that sustaining a healthy environment is overwhelmingly difficult—and economically disastrous—is a fallacy. Countries around the world, including the Netherlands and New Zealand, are proving that environmental sustainability and economic vitality are not mutually exclusive. Through a shared vision and cooperative effort among all sectors of society, these nations are demonstrating that a healthy environment, enhanced quality of life, and a vibrant economy not only can coexist, they must coexist to remain viable over time.

Although these countries are vastly different in geography, population, politics, and culture, they all employ a similar process for achieving their environmental and economic goals. That process is green planning.

Green plans are working models of sustainability in action. Unlike conventional approaches that address environmental problems in isolation of each other, green plans treat the environment as it really exists—a single, interconnected ecosystem that can only be safeguarded for future generations through a systemic, long-range plan of action.

The acceleration of environmental decline, in the United States and worldwide, demands a powerful response. The emerging success of green plans proves that the capacity now exists to learn the lessons of sustainability, apply them in both the public and private sectors, and begin a new era of environmental and economic prosperity.

What are green plans?

Green plans are long-term environmental management strategies that have the ultimate goal of achieving environmental and economic sustainability and a high quality of life, whether for a city, state, region, or nation. They replace traditional single-issue policies with a comprehensive, integrated plan of action. Like business plans, green plans guide the efficient use and intelligent investment of resources to ensure healthy growth and sustained prosperity.

Green plans are comprehensive because they embrace all environmental and resource issues, across media and across geographical boundaries. They integrate the interests that must be involved for long-term solutions to be realized—interests of industry, government, community groups, and the general public. They also integrate environmental efforts across institutional and jurisdictional boundaries, providing a framework to coordinate activities among, for example, competing government agencies or industries. Success is not measured by imposing one agenda over another, but by finding solutions that integrate many needs and concerns.

Green plans accomplish this complicated task through the use of systems analysis, a discipline that dissects complex problems into basic elements and subsystems. Only in this way can the underlying interrelationships and patterns of change at the root of a problem be properly evaluated for the development of an effective response. Systems analysis sets the stage for crafting a strategic environmental management plan (or green plan) that enables a city, state, region, or nation to move toward a shared vision of the future.

Strategic environmental management:

• anticipates problems rather than simply reacting to them;
• establishes short- and long-term goals, as well as strategies and timelines for achieving them;
• allows flexibility in determining how goals will be achieved and encourages innovation;
• utilizes a mix of legal, regulatory, and voluntary measures; • includes provisions for monitoring and evaluating progress toward goals and reporting the results;
• provides mechanisms for incorporating this feedback into the plan;
• can change in response to new information;
• is based on data deemed sound by credible scientists; and
• uses information systems and technologies to support decisionmaking

Examples of systems-based thinking include New Zealand’s shift to managing resources by watershed or river catchment systems rather than arbitrary political boundaries. Likewise, the Netherlands developed a systems approach based on the following key attributes:

• eight over-arching environmental “themes,” including climate change and waste disposal;
• five levels of geographic scale, from local to global; and
• nine primary “target groups,” or social sectors responsible for environmental problems (and their solutions), such as agriculture, industry, the energy sector, consumers, and the retail trade.

While traditional resource management tends to rely mainly on the natural sciences, green plans are based on a multidisciplinary approach that utilizes a variety of experts, including economists, management specialists, and sociologists, among other types of researchers and professionals. Environmental considerations are integrated into all decision-making processes, particularly into economic decisions and policies. In part, this means developing better cooperation and coordination among various government agencies and ministries. However, it also involves the incorporation of environmental costs into pricing systems through the use of economic instruments (e.g., taxes, fees, and subsidies), and the development of policies and planning mechanisms that not only give equal weight to the environment, but encourage and support positive environmental behavior. Depending on individual circumstances and needs, each green plan will utilize a different mix of these elements in order to optimize results.

Essential to the success of any green plan is extensive cooperation. All facets of the community, all types of businesses, and all branches of government are required to identify priority needs, develop trust, and work toward a shared vision of a healthy future. Achieving this level of concerted action is neither unrealistic nor Utopian. On the contrary, it is based on intensive negotiation, problem-solving, and a commitment to reversing environmental decline. Through the green planning process, the stakeholders are able to move ahead collectively —avoiding the wasted time, money, and effort associated with the typically contentious approach to environmental management.

In any green plan, all interests participate in the process of setting environmental goals, but responsibility for specific strategies is left to individual actors. The Dutch green plan, for example, has encouraged a cooperative relationship between government and the business community. The government set twenty-five-year environmental goals to be achieved by different industrial groups, but asked the groups themselves to design credible strategies for meeting these goals. The Netherlands recognizes the proper roles of the public and private sectors. The private sector alone could not choose an optimal level of environmental protection, but it should be given freedom to devise the most cost-effective way to assist in achieving the country’s environmental goals.

The green plan process ensures the development of consistent, longterm environmental policies that can survive political change. Green plans are not political or ideological documents; they are formulated by multi-party, multi-interest coalitions. They cannot be implemented or thrown out by any individual constituency or interest group. Because no single political interest owns the green plan, none will be especially motivated to dismantle it. Since all sectors of society are involved in developing the plan, there are countless and diverse advocates to see that government fulfills its green plan obligations.

Green plans are not single, static documents designed to be carried out and then placed on a shelf when the work is done. Rather, they provide a dynamic structure within which an ongoing planning process can take place. When new information becomes available and new problems and solutions emerge, green plans are modified as needed. While green planning sets objectives to be achieved over decades or even generations, it also recognizes shortterm goals that serve as indicators of general progress.

Finally, there will never be a single green plan template that can be adopted and followed step by step, because each plan must address the specific environmental, economic, and social conditions of a particular place. The form a plan takes will grow out of a public debate that clarifies long-term goals in order to enable the most effective course of action to be taken. Through an analysis of green plans worldwide, RRI has identified ten defining features of green planning—shown on the following page. The specific principles, practices, and products of green planning are outlined later in the primer (see the chapter, How are green plans initiated and sustained?).

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