Topic: Policy Brief

Choose your own sustainability issue or transition – eg increasing solar uptake, increasing use of electric cars, reducing waste, increasing access to community gardens etc.

Your task is to prepare a briefing paper that could be provided to the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet or DEWLP to address one sustainability issue or sustainability transition. A briefing paper provides a summary of facts about an issue, and includes a recommended course of action.

The document must be evidence-based to convince policy-makers of the validity of your argument. Your writing should be clear and succinct, and aimed at a non-academic audience.Use sub-headings, bullet points, images, graphs and tables as you wish.

Topic overview – Brief statement of the issue to be examined.

Background/Purpose – Why is this an issue/problem? What is the extent of the problem? Give evidence to support your argument.

Critical Analysis/Existing actions or policy – Is anything currently being done about the issue? Is this sufficient? Has any progress been made? What are the strengths and weaknesses of current practice?

Recommendations – Are there any major issues that need to be addressed by policy or programs? What are the priorities to address? What solutions do you propose? What has existing research found on the issue? Have other jurisdictions tried this solution? Did it work?

Conclusion – Summarise your points. Are there any complication to finding a way forward?