Clermont Preferred Future: Stakeholder Reflections on a Community Foresight and Planning Initiative

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the potential of the mining industry to contribute to social development (community building, resilience and wellbeing) and to economic transitioning post-mining. A number of factors may facilitate the realisation of this potential, in particular community engagement activities that build community resilience and capacity to adapt to changing environments. This paper reviews a community foresight initiative, named Clermont Preferred Future (CPF), which is associated with a coal mine development in the town of Clermont in Queensland, Australia. The purpose of CPF, which was adopted in 2008 and is intended to continue to 2020, is to facilitate a transition to a prosperous and sustainable future by leveraging opportunities from coal mining while reducing dependence on the industry. CPF has been cited as a successful model of engagement and community development, and was highly commended in the Community Economic Development category at the 2011 Australian National Awards for Economic Development Excellence. This review draws on the experiences of stakeholders involved in CPF, and on foresight, community engagement, and community development literature. It identifies what has worked well, what has fallen short of the project’s rhetorical aspirations, and how processes and outcomes might be improved. It also trials artwork as an engagement tool. The findings are valuable for Clermont specifically, but also for the mining industry and mining communities more broadly, as well as for other industries in the context of community engagement and strategic planning

Towards a Theoretical Grounding of Climate Resilience Assessments for Smallholder Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…One possibility is to integrate processes of learning and social learning into both the development and application of resilience frameworks and tools [43]. Putting this into practice may require multi-disciplinary research teams and wider stakeholder engagement [87]. Smallholder farmers often have significant expertise when it comes to managing their farm system [88].…”

Community visioning

“…Obviously, it is highly desirable for a CV process to occur before a project commences. A crucial time to repeat the CV process is prior to project closure, when local communities need to plan for a future life without the project (Parsons et al, 2013). Since the values and aspirations of a community are likely to change over time, the community vision should be updated periodically, perhaps every 10 years or so.…”

Community engagement, public participation and social impact assessment

“…It should not be expected that all engagement should always be at the top of the ladder (IAP2USA, 2012). Although ground-breaking for its time, there have since been many criticisms of Arnstein's ladder (Ross et al, 2002;Parsons et al, 2013;Hurlbert & Gupta, 2015).…”