Planning Professionalism: A Journey of Exploration, Knowledge & Personal Philosophy - Essay Sample

Introduction

As a planning professional, I have had a significant encounter with a variety of projects that have exposed to me to the world of science, culture, professionalism, arts, economics, and education among many others. Working with various organizations in different industries and fields, I have managed to acquire relevant knowledge and competence. I have also come up with personal philosophies that guide me in my day to day activities, and these enable me to deliver my best as a planning officer, something that has seen me have a handful number of return clients from the previous projects I handled. As a professional planner, one of my philosophies or professional standpoint is that I shall at all times maintain contemporary planning philosophy appropriate professional awareness, as well as techniques and practices. The implication of this is that as a planner, in all my endeavors I shall maintain the knowledge of the issues that are related to the society in which the project is by ensuring that the needs of the community are met.

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The project's deliverables should meet the expectations of the members of the society, the financiers, and other stakeholders having an interest within the project. The above-explained professional standpoint effectively applies to my cultural competence in several ways. In initiating and implementing any project, I have to acquire a clear understanding of the community in which the project is located by being able to interact with the people there and understand their knowledge of the various parameters like cultural, economic, and social aspects of life. The water saving project is a sensitive project both to the environment, the economy, and the cultural life of the community members and must be handled with apt professionalism and legal considerations, and these are some of the qualifications I have that would enable me to be the best project leader for this project.

Social Factors

The project is a world-class project, and it requires a unique approach that would facilitate the engagement between the market and the government in ensuring that the social and the environmental factors or outcomes are given equal consideration like its economic value throughout the project life cycle and the procurement process. Taking a look at the neighboring water saving project, Yanga National park, Nimmie-Caira is 2.75 times larger in size, and one of the defining features of its landscape is the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage (Valley, 2014). The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage is the place where there are all the items and places significant to the Aboriginal people owing to their traditions, lore, observances, customs, history, and beliefs. The implication of this is that the project needs a high level of professionalism and cultural understanding or knowledge to ensure that the culture of the Aboriginal people does not get interfered with in any way throughout the project life cycle (Valley, 2014).

It can be seen how significant the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage is essential to the people of Aboriginals and therefore, the project should aim at preserving it either by not interfering with it or by not making improvements to it. To achieve this, there is need to engage with the government, the aboriginal communities, and the industry stakeholders, and to come up with a land and water management plan for the area in which the project would get developed. The importance of this is to reflect the aspirations of the communities, provide protection, enhancement, and maintenance of the values of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage and the environment, and the landscape; and to understand the desire of these people concerning the economic activity on the land (Moore, 2017).

Institutional Factors

There are three critical elements to this project. One of them is to manage and fund the operation and maintenance of the government environmental water infrastructure. Another key institutional factor is the management and enhancement of the environment and Aboriginal cultural assets. The last one is the development and control of any commercial projects surrounding this project, like tourism and farming.

Several studies and the development of environmental and water plans in Australia are conducted by the state, private, and local entities. The motivation and direction of their actions are by a variety of local and state legislation, regulations, and rules; as well as private charters and agreements. In some cases, the management activities are independent, while in other cases, they are overlapping. However, often, the management is coordinated as being a section of the integrated environmental management program, and they usually have goals and objectives that are clearly defined and agreed on. The element of lack of coordination and integration also applies to the use and conduct of science, and this concept or assessment is no unique to Nimmie-Caira.

There is also the element of risk communication and risk perception. Risk communication has been defined in the past as the process in which expert knowledge gets transmitted in one-way to non-experts. However, the simple image has gotten replaced. Today, risk communication is perceived as a process of interaction where opinions and information gets changed among groups, individuals, and institutions. The success of risk communication is to the extent to which the understanding level of the members get raised and creates a sense of satisfaction among the concerned members that they are sufficiently informed within the limits of the existing knowledge.

One of the environmental factors is the attitude of the public towards the use of reclaimed water. Most of the water gets reclaimed from municipal wastewater, and other impaired quality waters and the opinions of the public concerning such sources control the factor. Indeed, the views of the public can never be ignored since they are the ultimate users of the water, and they have a significant impact on the costs of such operations. There is, therefore, the need to bring the public to the technical decision-making process at an early stage.

Legal Issues

One of the legal issues in water rights. A significant problem in groundwater recharge is the ownership of the recharge proposed water (Singer, Bennett-Levy & Rotumah, 2015). There must be legal rights by the proponent to use the source water or such purposes. To control the use of such water sources, there are legal rights that the project proponent should have against other competing users.

Another legal issue is the protection of groundwater quality. According to Moran (2009), when water is added to the groundwater, the quality of the natural groundwater might get affected. Most of the environmental laws focus on the quality of the underground. However, there is no comprehensive federal groundwater statute. There is a need, however, to note a corollary to groundwater issues coming from recharge projects. Projects using groundwater basin for storage purposes have the interest to protect the watershed from possible contamination.

The Principals for Building a Collaborative Partnership With the Indigenous Community

According to Carlson (2013), without the active engagement of the members of the community, it becomes challenging to meet the goals of any project, and the Nimmie-Caira Project is not an exception. Engagement needs a relationship that is established on essential qualities like trust and integrity, and it is a sustained engagement that exists between groups of people who work together to achieve a common goal. There is a need to have high levels of participation as opposed to lower standards to make a productive relationship. To effectively establish and build a collaborative partnership with the Indigenous community representatives, the following principals would be useful.

I appreciate the indigenous history, their contemporary social dynamics, and cultures (Gale & Bolzan, 2013). There is also a need to understand the diversity of the cultures of the indigenous people in this community. The cultural skills and knowledge of the indigenous people and community organizations should also be valued in the process of decision making and project implementation.

Another principle to achieve this is to be clear about the purpose and the engagement relative scale, which might lead to the calling of the multi-layers processes and the needs to engage the people about the wellbeing of the indigenous people. The relationships of trust should also be long-term, accessibility, honesty, and respect too. Besides, ongoing communication and information should be consistent and long-term as well. The project leader through professional skills should also incorporate measures that would ensure that there are effective governance and capacity within the government and the indigenous people themselves.

Another principle to ensure the establishment and building of a collaborative partnership with the Indigenous community representatives is to incorporate appropriate time frames that include responsive funding and deliberation where applicable. The importance of this is that there would be no delays in the project phases and communication process, and this further improves the relationship between the project and the community through an enhanced trust.

References

Carlson, B. (2013). The "new frontier": Emergent Indigenous identities and social media. In M. Harris, M. Nakata & B. Carlson (Eds.), The Politics of Identity: Emerging Indigeneity (pp. 147-168). Sydney: University of Technology Sydney E-Press. Retrieved from https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/844/

Gale, F., & Bolzan, N. (2013). Social resilience: challenging neo-colonial thinking and practices around "risk". Journal of Youth Studies, 16(2), 257-271. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13676261.2012.704985

Moore, R. (2017, June 12). History textbooks still imply that Australians are white. The Conversation. Retrieved September 10, 2018. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/history-textbooks-still-imply-thataustralians-are-white-72796

Moran, A. (2009). What settler Australians talk about when they talk about Aborigines: reflections on an in-depth interview study. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(5), 781-801. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870802023936

Singer, J., Bennett-Levy, J., & Rotumah, D. (2015). "You didn't just consult community, you involved us": transformation of a 'top-down' Aboriginal mental health project into a 'bottom-up' community driven process. Australasian Psychiatry, 23(6), 614-619. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1039856215614985

Valley, M. R. (2014). Commonwealth environmental water use options 2014-15. Retrieved from http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/0559e26a-8559-48ad-b0ac-0e98cfce0675/files/use-options-murrumbidgee-report_0.pdf

Wassens, S., Spencer, J., Wolfenden, B., Thiem, J., Thomas, R., Jenkins, K., ... & Kobayashi, Y. (2018). Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Long-Term Intervention Monitoring Project Murrumbidgee River system Selected Area evaluation report, 2014-17. Retrieved from https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/publications/commonwealth-environmental-water-office-long-term-intervention-mo-10