Position: Consultant
Disciplines: Sustainable Development, Community Engagement, Social Development, Poverty and Environmental Issues
Telephone: +44 (0)207 380 1006
Email: chrisc@suscom.org
Brief Biography:
Chris Church works independently on sustainable development issues and is a co-founder of Community Environment Associates. He is an advisor to the UK Community Development Foundation (CDF) and to a wide range of other organisations on sustainable development. He specialises in work at the local and community level, and on work linking social development, poverty and environmental issues. He works in the UK and Europe, lives in Hackney in east London and chairs the Board of London 21, a cross-London network of organisations working on sustainable development.
Chris worked for Friends of the Earth UK from 1984-1990 before starting to work freelance. He has since worked for many NGOs and other organisations including the National Trust, Charter 88, UNED UK, the Community Architecture Group, British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, Groundwork, Global Action Plan, ENCAMS, the Environment Council, Surfers Against Sewage, English Nature, the local government Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and the EU TACIS programme. He has also been extensively employed by the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on issues relating to sustainable development.
Chris works on policy issues, on infrastructure and project development, and on community engagement and participation and sees the linking of these three work areas as central to making sustainable development work. He has worked with many local authorities in the UK on their Local Agenda 21 programmes, on long-term projects, one-off events and training programmes and is now involved in helping several councils link this to their work on Community Planning. In 2005 he (with CEA) completed a review of how London Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) are dealing with sustainable development. This can be downloaded from the London Sustainability Exchange website.
In 2005 and 2006 Chris has concentrated on how non-environmental Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations can be enabled to play an effective part in work on environmental issues. He has developed extensive links with most of the large UK VCS networks and is happy to advise or suggest contacts for new projects in this area. Much of this work has been as part of the Defra-funded “Every Action Counts” programme which aims to recruit up to 14,000 community groups to do work on the environment and to embed sustainable development in the work of the VCS. This programme is being rolled out in October 2006. More on Every Action Counts can be found here.
An older (2005) paper on the engagement of the VCS in work on climate change can be downloaded here. In 2003 Chris wrote a 'plain language' guide to sustainable development for community groups, available from CDF publications here
Chris is doing further VSC related work with Bassac, the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres, on the "Community Impact Programme". Chris has also been developing a methodology to enable community organisations to assess their own impacts. This work is still being trialled: a summary pamphlet is available (see Publications below).
A major focus of Chris's work is the links between environmental issues, poverty and health. Recent publications include a book on Environment and Health issues and (with Maria Adebowale of Capacity Global) a report on ‘Environmental Justice in London’ for London Sustainability Exchange. He is currently working with Carolyn Stephens of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on a report on Environment, Poverty and Health links for WHO and the World Bank.
Chris works extensively in Eastern Europe. He co-chairs the Board of ANPED, the Northern Alliance for Sustainability, a network of NGOs in all regions of Europe, which is based in Amsterdam. He has worked with projects in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Russia, has run workshops in several other countries, and was lead advisor on NGO involvement to the EU TACIS programme on Environmental awareness from 1997 – 1999.
Chris is also involved in research and evaluation work. He has recently completed two research projects, one (“Seven Sides to every question”) funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the links between different disciplines working on local sustainability issues, the other with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on how community groups deal with technical information. He also evaluated a six nation programme on NGO development in Albania, Macedonia, Kazakhstan and other nations for the Dutch agency MilieuKontakt.
See Suscom for more info on Chris's work.
Publications that are generally available include:
A Better Place to Live (June 2003) a plain language guide to sustainable development. Available from CDF
Environments for All (January 2005) a book for BTCV on environmental work with minorities and excluded communities
Changing places, changing lives - a guide for community organisations on assessing their own impacts. Available free from Bassac (tel: 0845 241 0375) as a hard copy or download it direct here
Sustainable development and UK faith groups: Two sides of the same coin? A survey of UK faith communities' sustainable development activities and next steps for the future. This report (done with Jan McHarry) was for WWF and the Sustainable Development Commission and can be down-loaded at here
Seven Sides to every question? Towards effective inter-disciplinary action on sustainable development. A summary and full copy of this report, done for CDF and the Jospeh Rowntree foundation is available here
Healthy People, Healthy Planet - a review of work on Health and the Environment in the UK for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
Streets in the Sky, (with Toby Gale) - the first report of the National Sustainable Tower Blocks Initiative, available on the web here. For more information on this see the page on Sustainable Tower Blocks here.
High Life - a new guide on how communities can play a lead role in improving the tower blocks they live in, available from CDF.
A traveller's guide to Ullapool and the north-west of Scotland. Self published (up to 3 editions!) - email for details.
© 2010
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