Community sector vital to climate crisis response

A new Australian-first climate crisis plan sets out how the sector can use a local lens for mitigation.

Several communities across Melbourne’s west are joining forces in pursuit of climate justice, in a model that could serve as a lesson for other communities around the country.

The council areas of Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong, Melton and Wyndham have developed a Collaborative Action Plan, the culmination of work conducted by Jesuit Social Services’ Centre for Just Places (CJP) between 2021 and 2022.

With funding from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, CJP worked with more than 44 community health and community service organisations (CHCSOs) on the plan, which is part of the Mobilising Climate Just and Resilient Communities in Melbourne’s West project.

The plan is thought to be an Australian-first.

Based on place-based collaboration, the plan sets out what CHCSOs are already doing in relation to the climate crisis, health and social justice, identifies gaps, and provides a guide on what should be done to build the capacity of CHCSOs to respond to communities vulnerable to the climate crisis.

Pursuing climate justice for vulnerable communities

The plan seeks to provide climate justice to residents, a term that, according to executive director of CJP Susie Moloney, refers to “fairer outcomes under the conditions of a changing climate”.

There are specific health risks for suburbs in Melbourne’s west related to the climate crisis.

Brimbank, Melton, Maribyrnong and Wyndham have an average summer urban heat island  reading of 8 to 11 degrees hotter than non-urban areas, and two of Victoria’s air pollution ‘hot spot’ suburbs, Yarraville and Brooklyn, are located in the inner west and rank seventh and eighth in Australia for air pollution concentrations.

A lack of vegetation in Brimbank, Melton and Wyndham intensifies heatwaves.

The council areas that took part in the project also encompass suburbs of disadvantage and vulnerability.

There are high migrant populations, and an increase in people aged over 70 is expected to be concentrated in Brimbank, Melton and Wyndham. More than 90 per cent of people in that age bracket have two or more chronic conditions which will have implications on the local health services.

The western councils were chosen due to the correlation between environmental indicators and social indicators of disadvantage, Moloney said.

The research project aimed to build awareness of the intersection between health, equity and climate impacts.

“We really tried to identify where people are already thinking about climate change in their work, or how they are already seeing climate change impact on their work. It starts to really map out the social infrastructure gaps when it comes to thinking about climate change,” Moloney explained.

Barriers to action

The CJP interviewed a number of stakeholders for the plan, including CHCSOs, local and state government departments, water authorities, philanthropic funders, and community centres.

From those interviews, it was determined that the impacts of the climate crisis are often not seen as a core focus for the organisation.

Limitations in resources including staff and funding limit what these organisations can do to achieve climate justice. Funding for climate change responses was also reduced in the 2022-23 budget, compounding the issue.

The plan identifies three ways in which the climate crisis can impact health:

• Through direct exposure to increasingly severe weather events like heatwaves
• Through indirect exposure like poor air and water quality
• Through mediated exposure in economic and social disruptions, like mental stress and problems with food production.

Taking action

The plan highlights that a place-based approach is the best way to ensure that CHCSOs and communities are prepared for the climate crisis.

Five focus areas were identified to drive action in the local council areas involved:

• Context — ensure that understandings of climate justice are situated within the social and physical context of the west and reflect the diverse perspectives, priorities and activities of the region 
• Communication — draw from the wealth of experience and knowledge within the west to communicate a shared voice and vision for climate justice, to strengthen advocacy and dialogue between organisations and communities alike 
• Capacity — strengthen workforce arrangements that build capacity and contributions towards climate justice, including the need for learning and continuous improvement 
• Coordination — enhance the coordination of resources and knowledge sharing on climate justice, in a way that builds trust and leverages the diverse expertise within the region 
• Consolidation — align efforts cross-sectorally and cross-regionally to support the consolidation and integration of climate justice in organisational practices and planning, and enhance accountability for decisions, actions and outcomes.

The plan also refers to the eight Principles for Locally Led Climate Change Adaptation as a similar guide to action.

Moloney said the work undertaken to put together the plan “needs to happen across the country”, with other areas experiencing similar impacts and challenges to Melbourne’s west.

“One of the things that we’re seeing more of is that when you look at the response in Lismore and in Shepparton to the floods… you see how critical community organisations and the community sector is to recovery. So one of the arguments we are driving is that rather than wait for crises… you need to really work now to build a much more collaborative and engaged approach to preparing for these events before they happen,” she said.

“Community organisations and initiatives that are listening to the communities that they are embedded in and with understand the needs, they understand the issues, they understand the context, and they are developing relationships over many years to address a whole range of different social issues. And they are the ones that then become activated and mobilised when a crisis hits.”

There should be careful pre-planning and coordination between community services and emergency management services to best determine the approach to climate impacts, according to Moloney.

See more: Planning for needs of people with disability during disaster

But she stressed the plan is “not a prescriptive strategy”.

“What we are hoping it will do is really draw attention to the fact that we have to think about working in a much more cross-sectoral way… because everyone has a different lens on the sort of way climate is going to impact on communities,” Moloney said.

The importance of local reactions to the climate crisis was emphasised by Dr Portia Odell, director of Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership, who told Pro Bono News that local environments can have a “significant impact on the degree to which [people] experience climate impacts”, and local councils can play a vital role in leading the fight.

“Solutions based in collaborative local action holistically address the particular impacts of climate change on communities, and councils can play a key role in replicating such initiatives around Australia,” Odell said.

“Councils are the closest level of government to the community, therefore they are on the frontline of climate impacts. This places local government in a unique position to coordinate with community organisations to better protect their essential services against extreme weather.

“At the Cities Power Partnership, we know that collaboration and knowledge sharing are powerful in bringing new climate action to fruition. We encourage councils around Australia to support their communities to develop capacity and skills to tackle climate change.”

Read the full Collaborative Action Plan online.