What does the word community mean in the sustainable development field?

The term community can be correlated to several fields of interest, from biology to sociology. This post will only focus on a general sociologic definition and on a particular aspect of it, the virtual community. Those approaches best apply on the sustainable development field.

On one hand, the definition of The Free Dictionary gives a general view of what the word community means and includes: a community could be “a group of people living in the same locality and under the same government”, “having common interests” to form “a community of interests” with a sense of “community spirit”. On the other hand, the virtual community coined by Rheingold, refers to a “self-defined electronic network of interactive communication organized around a shared interest or purpose” (Castells, 1996) but also to “a group of people, who may or may not meet one another face to face, who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer Bulletin Board System (BBSs) and other digital networks” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). How could the characteristics of both definitions could apply to the sustainable development field?

A conference has been hold at Bond University on wednesday the 24^th of march 2010 about developing a sustainable campus community. It was explained that a community on a campus has to rely on several particularities: having an institutional culture that is fostered by the governance of the campus, planning operations and strategies, and involving education. Given the exemple of Bond University, a few engagements are taken, for exemple the “Talloires Declaration” (create a framework to enlarge, support, and reward good practice in civic engagement and social responsibility) has been signed up in 2008 and a Sustainable Management Development Plan for 2010-2015 has been proposed. Moreover, in this conference, it has been suggested for exemple to improve environmental lessons in classroom and social interactions in order to provide messages about how do sustainable things, when and why do it. The sense of community here has a meaning of how to change behaviour through the use of different communication tools, and engagements.

The professor Tim Jackson from the University of Surrey, proposed a Community Engagement Framework in which people are enabled and encouraged, community are engaged, and examples are used (have a look on the diagram below for more information).

From those physical engagements, it is possible to enlarge them to virtual engagements and actions. Given the example of the fight to increase the health quality of Indigenous people in Australia, the “Close the Gap” day exemplify the interdependency of virtual and physical engagements. A website has been made to gather people and make them propose actions to raise funds, write to the government, or sign a pledge. The last one offers you the choice to have your name written in their website to tell the world that you have taken action.

We could now give a new definition of a green community in the 21^st century: it refers to a group of people having common interest that could form interactive online network, and who may or may not share green ideas in face to face meetings, and who take actions in the virtual or physical world.

Community has protean meanings in the sustainable development field and all of them are interdependent. For the next decade, the best that could happen is the development of local green communities (local producers and activist) in putting them in a major position of the green decision-making process of local governance system, and in their involvement in other online and offline communities. Another interesting change could be to create a major green browser. It could reference all the websites and blogs about sustainability to offers common people an easy access to green information, and spread it widely throughout the world. Green and sustainability is all about community as it is made by people.

References:

virtual community. (2010). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 26, 2010, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9470936

Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the network Society. UK: Blackwell Publishers Inc.

Tufts University. (2005, September 17). Talloires Declaration. Retrieved from The Talloires Network: http://www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork/?pid=17

Oxfam International. (2010, March). Close The Gap. Retrieved from Oxfam Australia: http://www.oxfam.org.au/explore/indigenous-australia/close-the-gap

Jackson, T. (2005, May 19). Motivating Sustainable Consumption A Review of Evidence on Consumer. Retrieved from Docstoc: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/7874847/Motivating-Sustainable-Consumption-A-Review-of-Evidence-on-Consumer