Toondah Harbour - A good decision but no answers for the future

Any solutions to the mess we are in with climate change and biodiversity loss have to combine environmental, economic, social, and cultural outcomes.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the Toondah Harbour proposal and the campaign against it. Even though I have strong links in the environmental movements, I consistently refused calls to be drawn into their campaign.

The recent decision by Tanya Plibersek was a good decision as far as protecting the RAMSAR wetlands is concerned, but I think it should be seen as the start of doing things differently and not the end of development in that space.

What’s this got to do with verge gardens? Read on…

The politics and issues surrounding this proposed development are not simple. The Redlands council asked for it to be a Priority Development Area (PDA) to boost the local economy and create local jobs. The Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation (QYAC) also wants economic benefits from some sort of redevelopment. (http://www.qyac.net.au/docs/FactSheet10-ToondahHarbour.pdf) Nurturing a local economy is part of the job of councils. Listening to those councils and residents is part of the job of government.

The decision to reject the current proposal hasn’t changed the need for creating a sound economic future for the local residents and their children. It takes us back to where we started with added anger and frustration.

There’s now talk about asking for the PDA to be revoked or reduced. To many environmentalists, PDAs are a bad thing. However, PDAs can be a way to show how development can be done to a much higher standard for the environment and sustainability without the need to compete with lesser quality in the open marketplace.

Any solutions to the mess we are in with climate change and biodiversity loss have to combine environmental, economic, social, and cultural outcomes. PDAs are a way to do that. Toondah Harbour PDA could be the way to do that in Redlands.

The part of this PDA that is an ugly car park and ferry terminal aren’t wonders to be preserved. What is the effect of that existing development on the wetlands?

What if the development on that part looked in to a thriving land-based community and not the usual residential view out onto the water? What if the proposal was something more imaginative than a hotel and accommodation for tourism? What if everyone stopped shouting at each other and started working together to come up with innovative solutions?

This is the stuff of the ShapingSEQ plan. And Doughnut Economics. And Strategic Doing. Bringing diverse and conflicting interests together to form new understandings and productive collaborations is what I think some of us hoped the now-defunct Regen Brisbane might do.

Collaboration is the key

Nobody, no organisation, no sector, no discipline has the answers to how we make the changes we need to make. Teamwork, creating coalitions of like minds with familiar approaches, just drags us down into the jobs versus environment, science versus culture, and developers versus protestors battles.

We need truly diverse collaborations - where we get out of our silos, and off our pedestals, and out of our comfort zones. We need to share the different and competing views, and learn to have the type of conversations that build the trust and relationships needed to find a common purpose. Only then, can we nurture recombinant innovation instead of repeating the same old patterns and mistakes.

Collaboration means looking at the whole bundle - not cherry-picking the bits that fit our worldview and purposes. Doughnut Economics is a good start for everything we need to consider for collaborations for a sustainable future.

Learning to manage the conversations needed to form and manage these diverse collaborations is where Strategic Doing stands out. That is why I’ve adopted many of the practices of Strategic Doing into working out how group projects and collaborations can succeed in Shady Lanes.

What’s it got to do with Verge Gardens?

Verge gardens are a like a classroom for the approach needed for collaborations with diverse networks of people where nobody is boss.

On the verge, you don’t get to choose or control who your stakeholders are - the users and uses of your verge are determined by the world around you and they are open to change every time a new neighbour moves in, when a development in the next suburb means your street carries more traffic, or as your council tries to get more street trees planted to tackle urban heat.

The verge is a place where everyone is of equal status. Your qualifications mean nothing. You can contribute knowledge and skills but not impose them. You are all just everyday people in a public space. Being the gardener gives you no special rights.

Learning to recognise all those different users and uses is the first lesson. Learning to adapt your solution (the design of your verge garden) to incorporate the needs of people you don’t know and may never even meet is another. And then there’s learning to understand the different viewpoints if you want to shift social norms without getting into a destructive dispute.

Verge gardening can challenge your views of your place in the community and the world.

The disputes that erupt over verge gardens are similar to the Toondah Harbour protests. Full of emotion, too much shouting, too little listening, good guys and bad guys.

The inspiration for Shady Lanes

It was the unusual aspects of the conversations I had with strangers on my verge that got me thinking about a verge garden as creating a unique place for social change. (Disclosure: spoken discourse analysis was a key part of my degree)

Around the same time, I did an online course, “Tech for Good: The Role of ICT in Achieving the SDGs, that got me thinking about how my years working in online publishing and marketing with its evolving business relationships formed around open source and shared data could be relevant for a project relating to tackling climate change.   

What’s Next?

I think Doughnut Economics as a framework and Strategic Doing as way of operating is a way to bring it all together. Add our verges as safe places to build the trust and relationships needed, as the connectors to create a network of networks collaborating on many large and small projects for a more sustainable future.

Many cities have started Regen networks based on the principles of Doughnut Economics including Regen-Sydney and Regen-Melbourne. The attempt in Brisbane didn’t work out.

Is it time to start Regen-Brisbane afresh? Or Regen for Greater Brisbane or Regen SEQ? If you are in this region, do you want to explore the idea further?