Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Firstly, heatwave risks lack the visual power conveyed by images of houses falling
into the sea, people kayaking down their flooded main street, or cars and houses
ablaze. They do not excite the public imagination or sentiment in the same
way as bushfires, floods or coastal erosion, and have not resulted in the same
level of policy review and reform after the event. Secondly, heatwaves are still
considered a public health issue, and this prompts a public health/emergency
management response rather than a long-term planning response. Thirdly,
there are many individual responses to heatwave that can be made simply and
cheaply, such as choice of clothing, diet and work pattern (Wang and McAllister,
2011). Redesigning and retrofitting Australia's cities will be far costlier and more
complicated. At four degrees of global warming, however, the efficacy of simpler
and individuated strategies may become more limited - for instance, we have
already seen power systems crash due to spiking demand caused by mass use of
air conditioning - and the constraints of our existing built environment will
become more apparent and harder to overcome. There is therefore a strong case
for greater attention to the planning considerations in order to ensure that future
urban spaces account for the possibility of much hotter conditions.
City-based adaptation planning initiatives
By far the most comprehensive Australian city adaptation plan, in terms of both
content and plan methodology, is the City of Melbourne's
Climate Change Adaptation
Strategy 2009
(City of Melbourne, 2009). The plan systematically identifies, assesses
and ranks climate change risks and adaptation options. It includes a list of 'high
value' adaptation options that will deliver benefits regardless of the future climate
change experienced in the city. These include expanding storm water harvesting
and re-use, developing and implementing a heatwave response action plan and alert
system, reducing the urban heat island effect, limiting the effects of sea level rise
through controls on development, enhancing communications and early warning
systems, monitoring potential exposure to legal liability and ongoing monitoring of
risks (City of Melbourne, 2009).
Coordinated city-wide adaptation planning is hindered by the division of
most metropolitan centres into numerous local government units. The City of
Melbourne's Adaptation Strategy applies only within the City of Melbourne, which
encompasses the CBD and inner city suburbs with a total resident population of
merely 80,000. This jurisdiction is small compared with Metropolitan Melbourne's
resident population of 3.6 million, so its coverage is obviously limited. It
nonetheless provides a valuable template for similar initiatives by neighbouring
councils or, better still, state co-ordination of a Metro-Melbourne wide approach.
To overcome this fragmentation of local government jurisdictions in NSW,
the State government is coordinating the Sydney Metropolitan Plan 2036,
one objective of which is that Sydney should lead the Asia-Pacific Region in
capital city adaptation to climate change (State of NSW, 2010c). Planning
is now underway on the development of an adaptation strategy for Sydney in
furtherance of that objective.
