St Clair to St Kilda Coastal Plan

The purpose of The St Clair - St Kilda Coastal Plan was to engage the community in developing a plan to adapt the effects of coastal hazards and climate change, ensuring the people understood it and had the opportunity to input.

Location

Dunedin, New Zealand

Client

Dunedin City Council

Awards

2022 Nancy Northcroft Planning Practice Award and NZPI Best Practice - Consultation and Participation Strategies and/or Processes

The St Clair – St Kilda Coastal Plan engagement process is a rare example of a community-centred approach to climate adaptation. Community visioning played a central role in steering project direction and saw a diverse set of groups and individuals engaged using a variety of methods.

The purpose of engagement was to develop a plan to support the coast in adapting to the effects of coastal hazards and climate change and to ensure that the community understood the plan and had opportunity to input. The engagement process saw groups and individuals from across the city engaged across the spectrum levels.

CLIENT BRIEF/PROJECT CHALLENGES

Beginning in 2019, the Dunedin City Council took its first steps in developing a forward-looking and community-oriented climate adaptation plan for the city’s much-loved Whakahekerau – Rakiātea coast (St Clair – St Kilda coast).

The primary objective of the St Clair – St Kilda Coastal Plan engagement was to work with the community to co-create a vision and climate adaptation plan for the St Clair – St Kilda coastline by:

Understanding the community’s collective values and aspirations for the area
Identifying options that could support the sustainable management of the coast in line with the community’s ambition for the area
Educate the community on coastal processes and climate change

OUR SOLUTION

The engagement journey began with a period of critical review and reflection – this was not the first time that this community had been asked to provide input on this coastline. This preparation was crucial to preparing staff for conversations that in many ways had been started, but in the community’s eyes, left un-finished.

A diverse range of methods were used to encourage participation in the process:

Online engagement techniques included:

Basic surveys
Social media
Ideas walls (sharing photos and ideas)
Multi-media/interactive surveys
Educational videos
Complex surveys designed to assess community values and priorities

Face-to-face engagement included:

Drop-in sessions
Workshops
Printmaking sessions (art workshops)
1:1 meetings (with stakeholders)
Beach walks (informal conversations)
Talks, seminars and lectures at schools and the local university

The art workshops proved to be a particularly effective method of connecting with new segments of the community. We partnered with a local creative group (local artist and science communicator) to host a set of printmaking sessions to involve younger individuals and families who previously hadn’t participated. Individual prints were woven together to create one overall art piece that illustrates “one community and one voice”. Stories were analysed for data collection and reporting purposes.

Multiple printmaking sessions were run at local schools where we also used sand models to communicate the science of coastal processes and sea level rise, teaching young people about their valued coast and listening to what they love about it.

These methods helped to diversify our set of engagement tools and mitigated several key engagement risks such as certain groups being under-represented, Covid-19 restricting face-to-face engagement and overcoming a history of distrust in decision making at the coast.

COMMUNITY/ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS

Through the engagement process we received feedback from more than 2000 individuals, with several thousand others also being reached. More than a dozen different engagement methods were used to source feedback and many more methods were used to advertise and supplement our engagement activities. We navigated a national Covid-19 related lockdown, all while retaining momentum and using delays as opportunities for iteration and improvement.

Three key outcomes:

Substantial engagement contribution to DCC’s first climate adaption plan, especially during the visioning component of the plan
Establishment of trust and communications lines between council, community and stakeholders – supporting ongoing engagement through implementation of the plan
Plan process feeding into ten-year plan process (council’s funding process) - allowing community input to directly feed in and influence funding allocation and priorities

KEY FACTS

The engagement process resulted in feedback from more than 2000 individuals
More than a dozen different engagement methods were used to source feedback
Transparency was key to running a clear, upfront and honest process - providing our community and stakeholders with opportunities to be involved in a meaningful way
Inclusiveness and accessibility - the breadth, and accessibility of our engagement was key to drawing in a broad and diverse community