Adaptation and resilience

Adaptation and resilience helps us to proactively plan for both the likely impacts of a gradual change in climate and more frequent larger scale natural disasters. This is important for our growing population and changing economy.

Based on the latest science and recent projections, we can expect our region's climate to change. These changes bring impacts to the way we live.

Our natural and built environments, and our communities, are likely to experience:

• More intense storms and flooding and the associated damage to buildings and infrastructure
• Prolonged heat waves, impacting public health, our ability to grow food and increasing bush fire risk
• Likely shifts in the composition and diversity of our plants and animals.

Becoming a well-adapted, resilient and climate ready community is a long-term strategy that requires sustained efforts by all of the community. It needs careful planning and timely action by householders, asset owners, communities, businesses, council and the broader community to:

• Build community safety and wellbeing
• Create a resilient built environment, where design plays an important part in ensuring our homes and infrastructure is designed in a way that minimises and positively responds to the impacts of climate change
• Empower each one of us to act and take responsibility for being well informed about the risk, management options and actions we can take to respond positively to climate change influences.

As a region, we need to be proactive with managing current and future risks. We need to increase our capacity to recover from disruptions, even see hazards as new opportunities to do things differently. Being agile and responsive is key to maintaining our liveability and success as a thriving community into the future.