In September, Act on Climate facilitated two community resilience mapping sessions hosted by the Nillumbik Climate Action Team (NCAT). The proactive sessions in Eltham and Hurstbridge produced great actionable ideas for community members to start working on.
Appropriate and relevant climate resilience initiatives are key to keeping communities safe. This can take many forms, including preparing for and adapting to the changing climate and its impacts, for instance, by increasing disaster preparedness. Community resilience mapping helps communities understand their unique challenges and strengths, which climate impacts they’re most at risk from and who is most at risk, so that they can implement appropriate adaptive solutions.
The Act on Climate members who facilitated the resilience mapping session.
We're offering support to anyone who wants to facilitate Resilience Mapping in their own community. Check out our Community Resilience Mapping Facilitation Guide, which you can use to guide the running of your own event, and read until the end for more information. This activity was adapted from the Climate Resilience Project.
Community Resilience Mapping is used to achieve climate resilience by community members brainstorming strategies to keep their community safe. The session:
- Helps inform adaptation and emergency response plans & the prioritisation of time and resources.
- Results in practical community-led solutions & knowledge of how can stay safe.
Through identifying:
- Exposures, meaning various localised climate impacts.
- Sensitivities, concerning who and which areas are most at risk.
- Assets, meaning what is already in place to reduce or prepare for impacts.
- Adaptive Capacity, meaning where are the gaps in impact preparedness and how may they be addressed.
Read on for the outcomes of the community resilience mapping session with NCAT in Eltham. You can find the outcomes for Hurstbridge here.
Eltham
On the 7th of September, Act on Climate members facilitated a community resilience mapping session hosted by Nillumbik Climate Action Team (NCAT) at Edendale Community Farm, on the lands of the Wurundjeri-willam people of the Kulin nation. The workshop was attended by NCAT and other community members, who demonstrated incredible local knowledge and concern for climate impacts. People shared their lived experiences and examples of community resilience, highlighting where the work needs to be done.
Identified Exposures
The main exposures brought up and causing strong concern are:
- Bushfires (historically highly impacted area.)
- Seasonal disruptions (extremely seasonal fluctuations causing floods, storms, droughts and biodiversity loss.)
- Structural concerns around planning and governance (inequitable power structures that do not enable the ability for participatory decision making and lived experience wisdom to be integrated into climate impact response.)
Other exposures identified include emergency response and warning systems, community self-sufficiency in disaster events, energy security, heat, food insecurity and insurability.
After a large group discussion of the main climate impacts on Eltham and Nillumbik, three working groups formed to brainstorm and discuss the individual key impacts. The results of these small group discussions are presented here.
Bushfire
Identified Strengths
The group identified that the adaptive strengths for fire safety in their community are:
- Improved infrastructure (as compared to in the 2009 fires.)
- Shelter
- Lived experience
- Culture of strong community
Identified Sensitivities
The group identified why the community is underprepared for bushfires:
- Information accessibility
- Procedural injustice
- Inequities, insurance and perceptions about wealth
- Pinch points and risk difference across the geographical area
- Communication infrastructure
- Emergency response overburdened
- Community cultural memory, environmental knowledge and skills handover
- Structural and societal barriers to community consciousness and planning around disaster
Adaptive Capacity
The group identified many adaptive capacities for the community to be more resilient to bushfires:
- Alternative & coordinated transport for emergency evacuation
- Technology: Improve VICSES app or design an app
- Increase local capacity
- Run emergency response drills
- Long-term approach
-
Strong community that feels prepared
- Local process to determine what they value as a community
Seasonal Disruptions
Multiple impacts were bundled in this working group, such as floods, storms, droughts and longer-term threats to ecosystems and biodiversity.
Identified Strengths
The group identified adaptive strengths for seasonal disruptions, particularly flooding:
- Strong volunteerism
- Improved infrastructure
- SES
- Revegetation initiatives
Identified Sensitivities
The group identified how the community is at risk of seasonal disruptions and who is most at risk.
How?
-
Lack of knowledge and preparedness
- Emergency planning
- Information sharing
- Energy and communication breakdown
- Building infrastructure
- Short-term thinking
Who?
- Isolated community members
- Visitors to the area
- Housing locations
- Unhoused people
- People living with Disabilities
- People who are not fluent in English
- Renters
Adaptive Capacity
The group identified many adaptive capacities for the community to be more resilient to seasonal disruptions:
- Improve communication and information dissemination
- Local newspaper
- Register of people most at risk
- Interest-free loans/ subsidies
- 72h Emergency Kits
Planning and Governance
Identified Strengths
The group identified that the adaptive strengths for planning and governance in their community are:
- Flood mapping
- Council resilience plans
- Community networks and local action groups
- Existing social and community infrastructure
- Collaborative LGAs
- Infrastructure e.g. North East Link
Identified Sensitivities
The group identified several sensitivities to the communities planning and governance practices:
- Knowledge of topography is lacking
- Planning of infrastructure
- Strategy and information
- Information is siloed and inaccessible
- Inequities in community
Adaptive Capacity
The group identified several adaptive capacities and solutions addressing the current gaps in planning and governance:
- Support existing community groups
- Support local knowledge and knowledge-sharing
- Harness social infrastructure
- Counter misinformation
- Resource mapping
Conclusion
It was interesting to see the differences and similarities between the group discussions in Eltham and Hurstbridge. The connectedness of community members emerged as foundational to keeping the community safe. Social justice was central to many ideas with a focus on keeping people with disabilities, old people and unhoused people safe from climate impacts and centring their safety in emergency situations, such as evacuations. More funding was called for to support community-led projects, which are place-based and informed by lived experience.
Overarching themes of the Eltham sessions include:
- Information accessibility is inadequate and social justice is not prioritised in planning and governance, as well as in emergency preparedness. Therefore, there is a need for improved information dissemination, as well as participatory local communication networks.
- A strong community with local leadership must be supported, for example, identifying ‘Resilience champions’ that can take this work forward. Local knowledge and lived experience must be honoured, and acquired skills should be shared. Organising around resilience and adaptation can be built on existing groups and networks and should be accessible to people with different needs and capacities. Intergenerational handover of skills and knowledge, youth-based leadership, and finding ways to preserve the existing community-oriented culture were important. Community resilience through connectedness should be a priority.
- Improved infrastructure to serve the community and members most at risk was needed.
What's Next?
NCAT, Act on Climate and the community members who participated in the two Nillumbik Resilience Mapping Sessions will meet to discuss the learnings of the workshops and develop the next steps of action to address the identified gaps in climate resilience.
The community members are keen to action some of the initiatives and work with the local government to increase work on and funding for adaptation projects.
See what initiatives are already happening around you. Know of a climate adaptation or resilience project that isn’t on the map yet? Submit a request for it to be added here.
Want help making this happen in your community?
Visioning the future that we want to create is critical for adaptation to locked in climate impacts. What does adapting to a changing climate and building resilience look like in your community? What do you need to make your visions for a safe climate future come alive?
We're offering support to anyone who wants to facilitate the activity in their own community. Check out our Community Resilience Mapping Facilitation Guide, which you can use to guide the running of your own event! Read more on what community resilience mapping is and why to do it.
Uncertain about running a Community Resilience Mapping session in your community? We're happy to help! Contact Vicky Ellmore on [email protected] to answer any questions and walk you through running the event yourself, or we can come facilitate it ourselves, if possible.
Reach out for support to run Community Resilience Mapping in your community!
Stay tuned for further updates from Friends of the Earth's Act on Climate collective as we campaign for community-led climate adaptation by signing up for campaign updates here.
If you haven't already, please add your name to the call for a Victorian Community Climate Adaptation Fund. We need community-led climate adaptation that is continuously and adequately funded. This funding will enable communities to fulfil their plans to build resilient communities in a changing climate and keep those most at risk safe.
Mental Health & Wellbeing Support
Please be kind to yourself at this time and be aware of the impact of this on your mental health and wellbeing. Taking about, remembering and experiencing climate impacts and disasters can take a toll on your health and well-being.
If you need support, please visit the Climate Feelings Space, use Ecomind’s How are you feeling? tool, or attend an upcoming Climate Cafe.
Act on Climate acknowledge that we work on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people. Sovereignty was never ceded, and fighting for First Nations justice must always be a core part of climate justice work.