A new role for regional development agencies and the transition to a low carbon place

Abstract

<p>The New South Wales (NSW) Government has identified that the achievement of net-zero emissions by the year 2050 is a policy objective. Regional development agencies could play a vital role in this transition to a low carbon place. Many climate scientists have indicated that human greenhouse gas emissions need to reduce to avoid very damaging future climate change. As greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase and build up in the atmosphere, policy approaches have not been able to achieve significant reductions. This professional doctorate innovation portfolio addresses this problem from the perspective of regional development practice in NSW, Australia. Using a multi-method qualitative approach as a practitioner researcher, practice-based evidence was gathered from a range of participants from agriculture, business, community, policy, research and development, and town planning to identify possible policy approaches. The data were then analysed and the researcher identified an innovation. The findings indicate that regional development agencies could adopt the learning organisation structure to better understand this issue, and use this new structure to introduce a suite of new low carbon programs to provide transitional support to regional businesses. These findings would be of value to policy makers and researchers studying climate change mitigation and regional development.</p>