Australian communities are facing an unprecedented suite of sustainability challenges. CSIRO recognises these challenges are complex and multi-dimensional in both origins and solutions. No one sector - private, public or community - has the all answers or the ability to respond to these challenges in isolation. Effective solutions lie in integrating skills, knowledge, resources and passion from across the sectors.

To address this challenge CSIRO has created the Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI).  The SCI is an innovative program that brings together organisations from across the public, private, NGO, and research sectors, to work in partnership with communities, to develop and deliver solutions to local sustainability challenges and opportunities. 

The SCI operates as an 'action learning' program over a three year period from 2006 to 2009, undertaking partnership projects in a number of Australian communities in order learn and experience how to better work together to address local sustainability issues.

Individually, SCI projects deliver community scale benefits and create value for project participants. Collectively, SCI projects provide insights and evidence for informing future policy, programs and practice.

The SCI has just completed its second year of operations and has reported its activities, achievements, insights and emerging issues in the document "Working Together  ~ Learning Together II:  The Sustainable Communities Initiative Year Two Report." 

Emerging issues highlighted in the report include:

• Building individual and institutional competency and capacity for collaboration
• Identifying and supporting the development of partnership brokers and developing tools/processes to support the brokering function.
• Reconsider our traditional problem-solving approaches and explore alternative models for solution seeking that shift the focus from ‘symptoms' to ‘systems'
• Assist individuals and groups to balance their focus between being ‘advocates' for a position (or a solution) and being active ‘inquirers' into the most appropriate response/solution
• Consider collaborative approaches to ‘option development' as a necessary process resulting in better informed investment decisions and more effective ‘solution implementation'
• Explore how the cross-sector partnership model can be adapted to different contexts, and how these contexts might influence the nature of the partnering process
• Creating broader understanding of the challenges, opportunities and constraints inherent within the partnering model and how this relates to the ways in which policy and programs are conceived and delivered
• Understanding the role of ‘action learning' in partnerships as an approach to assist individuals and organisations deal with the uncertainty, complexity and risk inherent in complex challenges and opportunities

This report is now available on the SCI website - follow link www.csiro.au/science/SCI.html. (Note the link to the report is in the right hand column of the site under the PRIMARY CONTACT section)

It is anticipated that there may be some information and/or insights contained in the report that will be of interest/relevance to Open Forum subscribers.  I invite you to have a look at this report and welcome your feedback.

Sean Rooney is an emerging thought and practice leader working at the forefront of the ‘cross-sector partnering' and ‘sustainability' agendas in Australia.  He is Founder and Director of CSIRO's Sustainable Communities Initiative, Adjunct Associate Professor at Griffith Business School (QLD), consulting to a range of organisations in the areas of sustainability, organisational strategy, organisational learning and cross-sector partnering, and a faculty member of Cambridge University's - World Bank Sustainable Development Leadership Program.