DR ROWAN DIXON
Principal Professional Sustainability and Resilience, WSP
Dr Rowan Dixon works with designers, makers, leaders and policy writers to help them embed sustainability into their systems, value chains and business models. He draws on experience in environmental planning, climate and trade policy and his time applying global sustainability standards, financial instruments and procurement systems. Rowan pushes for a socially-just and ecosystems-based approach to how we imagine, decide and build our future.
Abstract
The Sustainability in Sustainable Management
Like the purpose it serves, planning is up for change. Planning is being asked to step up into a broader role in today's environment and guide the strategic direction of New Zealand - as we expected it might when we studied our planning theory papers. As planners we rest between place and space, between mega-trends and local realities. We are an inclusive bridge connecting and balancing the needs of many and the few, within global and local evidence and values.
I want to share where I see these skills taking the profession now and into the future, as things become less predictable and more precarious. The security of our wellbeing has never been less certain. It will be our ability to bring people and ideas together that will define our, and other, professions.
I focus on climate change and sustainability, referring to sustainable management and the proposed RMA reform. I draw on recent projects as case studies to demonstrate what such planners do and how they do it. I share how we've found this influences strategic policy, Long Term Planning and economic development planning.
