About a Climate and Water Resilient Shire
This theme will focus on priorities and actions that will prepare Council’s services and infrastructure to the impacts of a changing climate. The climate predictions for the Victorian Central Highlands include a very high confidence of increased maximum and minimum temperatures, high confidence in increased number of fire weather days and high confidence in extreme rainfall events and including frequency of storms.
The specific focus of this theme is to create an action plan that will work towards achieving and maintaining:
- Climate change requires us to think differently about our future to better understand the risks we may face and what we can do to adapt and build greater resilience to change. Acting sooner rather than later reduces risk, reduces costs associated from not being prepared and assists our future liveability.
- Climatic changes impact the way we live, the way our buildings and neighbourhoods perform, the amount of energy we use and more. Climate proofing refers to planning for the future to reduce the impact of extreme weather on our lifestyles and the way we live. It can keep us safe and help us thrive.
- Integrated Water Management involves understanding the water cycle, how water cycle services are provided and the drivers or constraints that influence its management, such as climate change, population growth, land use change, environmental decline and community preferences. Our local water resources are precious and thinking about them in an integrated way helps build their resilience to change.
- Local climate change impacts are predicted (with high confidence) to increase maximum and minimum temperatures, number of fire days and extreme rainfall events. Knowing our risk, the preparatory action to take to stay safe, can make the difference between a good day and a not so good day. Knowing our neighbours and community networks are one of the best ways to build our resilience to disasters.
What projects (related to this theme) would you like to see introduced, repeated or expanded across the Shire? Feel free to direct us to good ideas from other councils and communities.
Actions that could contribute to this theme may be the development of climate resilience guidelines for future land use and building design, vulnerability assessments on the risks to council’s assets and services to the community as a result of local climate change impacts and improved community information on preparedness to climate change impacts.
