COPPLANNING: community-based planning and participation for low carbon transition: a global South-North comparative study centring traditional and first nations communities

Abstract

This proposal, COPPLANNING - Community-based planning and participation for low carbon transition: a global south-north comparative study centring traditional and First Nations communities, combines forces in mapping best practice community-based planning and participation, including to deliver positive outcomes for traditional and First Nations communities as part of low carbon transition. Climate impacts and current business as usual urban design produce and distribute inequalities that affect traditional and First Nations communities in unique and significant ways. These communities are also often low income, and frequently most vulnerable in the face of climate change. While the implications of such climate induced changes are hotly debated among planners, geographers, sociologists and other experts, how to effectively - and inclusively - respond to these challenges remain poorly understood. This poses significant challenges for policy-makers and planners seeking to address such inequalities, and ensure climate justice in planning and policy processes. With this as background, the outcomes of this research will provide a unique platform to share practices and experiences in a global south-north dialogue, and with outcomes that can ensure planning and policy for low energy transition is commensurate with the lived realities of vulnerable communities, including traditional and First Nations communities. The combination of uncertainties, disparate and conflicting temporalities, disruption, lobbying and misinformation present significant challenges for participatory planning and knowledge transfer as the basis for a just low carbon transition. In this context, this project will deliver outcomes that inform policy making and participatory planning processes, including with a particular focus on traditional and First Nations communities. It will do this by combining the respective expertise of the two named institutions to foster global south-north dialogue, exchange and capacity building, including for ECRs and PhDs. This project will provide the groundwork for a long-term research collaboration (with funding sought from the Australian Research Council, or other similar agency) to undertake an international comparative assessment of new paradigms for inclusive planning and governing - including for vulnerable communities - alongside low carbon transition. This project brings together environmental and urban sociologists from The University of Queensland's School of Social Science, with environmental planners from the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). These scholars have shared interests and complementary expertise in climate change social research, alongside traditional and First Nations community-based planning and unequal development action research. While each of the universities that will drive this research are increasingly effective in promoting research-led teaching to their own students, this project will enable them to take the lead in promoting research-led participatory community-based planning and effective policy outcomes across global south-north comparative cases. The primary end goal of this research will include development of an international collaborative project in community-based planning and participation in an era of climate change, and it will achieve this via joint activities that entail participatory engagement with relevant technicians, planners and traditional and First Nations community partners in the respective countries. (AU)