Society and Environment

Community consultations and ‘stakeholder participation’ are often mandatory for addressing local concerns such as litter, pollution and transport, and for development planning, forest or protected areas management.

How can we make participation and community engagement representative and meaningful without it costing a fortune in time and money? How do we understand each other’s language and build consultation outcomes into effective policy, strategy and action?
           
Mind the Gap is usually asked for support in three ways:

1. Agencies in a particular sector wish to work with local people and community-based organisations, e.g. forestry, fisheries, wildlife, rivers, waterways, parks or protected areas
2. Work we are doing in one area (e.g. crime, health or education) identifies a need to involve an environment-related agency
3. Local government wishes to bring agencies, business and local people together to solve an environmental problem and build good relationships.

Within Britain we support effective dialogue among communities, agencies, the voluntary sector, private business, elected representatives and local government officers.  Recent Kingfisher Project reports from Burton upon Trent illustrate this.

Internationally, Mind the Gap works with local agencies, organisations and comunities, and with international NGOs and UN agencies on capacity building, programme management and policy research.

We have developed materials and training courses to support people working in biosphere reserves, parks and protected areas.  We are interested in developing this aspect of our work, especially with coastal communities, in eco-tourism and in uplands.