The Act on Climate collective’s latest report, VIC Climate Resilience Inquiry Analysed: The leading concerns & adaptation solutions, shares how Victorian communities can and want to adapt, as well as inspiring examples of what community-led climate adaptation looks like.
Find out the climate adaptation solutions Victorians want to see funded and enacted, then ask your MP to advocate for increased funding of climate adaptation and the climate adaptation solutions communities are calling for using our pre-written email.
More being invested in climate adaptation by the Victorian Government was the number one thing called for in the submissions to its Inquiry into Climate Resilience. This was strongly appealed for in submissions by councils, organisations, and community members alike, with 83.75% of submissions saying more funding is essential.
Adequate funding of climate adaptation is needed to keep people, Country and infrastructure safe from the risks presented by locked-in climate impacts.
This and other data from Resilience Inquiry submissions - the most mentioned climate impacts of concern and the most popular climate adaptation solutions put forward - has been published in AoC’s latest report: VIC Climate Resilience Inquiry Analysed: The leading concerns & adaptation solutions.
It shares how Victorian communities can and want to adapt, as well as inspiring examples of what community-led climate adaptation looks like.
Read the introduction below, and download the full report to read here: VIC Climate Resilience Inquiry Analysed: The leading concerns & adaptation solutions
TAKE ACTION!: Email a copy of this report to your State MP sharing Victorians' strong appeal for adequate funding of climate adaptation here: www.melbournefoe.org.au/email_mp_resilience_inquiry_report
Grassroots Voices Key for Climate Adaptation
The Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Climate Resilience took a much-needed look into the preparedness of communities facing climate disasters across the state. Friends of the Earth Melbourne’s Act on Climate (AoC) collective has been ensuring community members' voices are heard through this Inquiry, both their concerns and the solutions they want to see enacted.
Following the finalisation of submissions to this Inquiry, to ensure community feedback and the most urgent concerns for people across Victoria are heard, AoC gathered the data presented in this report from all of the submissions available for public viewing.
It is vital we take a grassroots approach to acting on climate, listening to those on the frontline of climate impacts and enabling them to lead on the climate adaptation solutions implemented.
Without this, the voice of many of those who will be most affected will get lost amidst the large-scale governmental and infrastructural plans to protect the most privileged. As highlighted by climate academic Alam in the Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation, ‘grassroots responses are key to facilitate communities to adapt to climate variability respective of their socioeconomic status’.
The findings from this Inquiry are vital to protect those most at risk, to raise awareness of the public’s genuine concerns and to target these concerns with tangible and immediate action. Community-led strategy has been heavily built on by the United Nations Refugee Agency, which concluded that ‘grassroot findings are just as important as seed money for investment’.
We sincerely hope that the data we have extracted from Resilience Inquiry submissions sheds light on the climate adaptation solutions Victorians want to see funded and enacted, and helps guide strategies that involve these communities in future adaptation plans across Victoria at large.
Impacted and Unprepared
Climate impacts are here now. Victorian communities are already battling escalating extreme weather such as bushfires, heatwaves, and floods. And this is predicted to get worse due to locked-in warming due to climate change.
‘Climate impacts’ are defined not only as environmental phenomena, but by their interaction with people. A growing body of research demonstrates that climate impacts are impeding Victorians’ way of life, increasing cost of living, making summer holidays chaotic and anxiety-inducing, and hindering the ability of many to do their job safely and optimally.
Food supply, health (mental and physical), source of income, cost of living, access to healthcare, housing, transportation, and recreational activities are all at risk.
Victorian Communities' Call Clear
In response to what it has heard when visiting communities around the state, AoC is calling on the Victorian Government to establish, and the Resilience Inquiry committee to recommend, a permanent Victorian Community Climate Adaptation Fund (VCCAF).
The fund would distribute money annually to community groups that apply to undertake localised adaptation initiatives. This would reduce costs to the Government and Victorians by keeping people, Country and infrastructure safe from the risks presented by the climate impacts that are unavoidable and here now.
The results of the Inquiry into Climate Resilience firmly back up this call.
Over three quarters (84%) of submissions to the Inquiry call for increased funding for climate adaptation, with half (49.5%) calling for ongoing funding and over a third (39.5%) calling for AoC’s VCCAF specifically.
Victorians are calling for support to implement the adaptation measures their communities need - they want funding now to prepare, not after the climate disaster has already occurred.
We need funding to fulfil our plans to build resilient communities in a changing climate and to keep those most at risk safe. Funding adaptation now will reduce recovery costs, as well as ease pressure on our health system and economy from climate impacts.
We need to spend money now to protect people later, as waiting to respond to these disasters greatly increases the long-term monetary and societal cost.
It is clear that Victorians need to be, want to be, and can be protected from climate impacts here now through a variety of ready and waiting climate adaptation approaches. And, it is an obligation for the Victorian Government in the Climate Change Act (2017) to implement the state’s climate strategy and adaptation action plans.
What is required from the State Government is strong leadership, greater support, and adequate funding for communities to implement their chosen adaptation pathway.
Ask your representative to help keep all Victorians safe by amplifying this call for increased funding from all corners of the state and all corners of society.
