Climate News 25:25
Early evaluation of the City of Darebin’s Solar Savers program, the model for council renewable energy and energy efficiency supplier panel programs, found that a key ingredient for why people liked the program was ‘trust in local government.’
This makes sense, especially when the initial audience was low-income homeowners, often pensioners, who were struggling to navigate a relatively unregulated rooftop solar market. Local government trust continues to underpin council climate engagement interventions, but what are the elements of how councils work that generate trust and are they under threat? OECD research shows that trust in local government is driven by a combination of factors, including acting in society’s best interest and transparency. This is not to say that tensions, especially in planning, don’t exist and can erode local trust. In addition, the increasing framing of local government as a place for political and ideological contests (often drawing on broader movements well beyond the scope of local government), has the potential to further erode trust. But that idea of ‘acting in society’s best interest’ is not only a good basis for local government climate outreach programs, it can also reinforce why communities should trust their councils. A stronger, localised focus on social outcomes (e.g. “we are protecting our community from the worst impacts of climate change” or “we’re supporting our local businesses during the energy transition”) is hard to argue against, no matter where you stand politically. It’s not to suggest that this approach will defeat the ideologies underpinning climate oppositional politics, especially where those ideologies are based on non-reality-based facts, but they can stymie the politics. Politicians at whatever level of government want to get elected and for that they need popular support. Well-designed programs that are based on and can increase trust in local government are a way to shape popular support to respond effectively to climate change.
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