2021-08-10 P&E Agenda - Item 7 - Attachment 1 - Climate Change Response Plan

                                                            Noosa Climate Change Response Plan




Theme 7: Resilient and adaptive
communities and built environments
Why this is important
Climate change will result in very real impacts on the physical environment, water resources,
health and human services, the local economy and communities. Homes, businesses and
community infrastructure will experience the effects of more extreme weather, bushfires, coastal
hazards, flooding, and heatwaves. These hazards put increased pressure on emergency
services and pose increased risks to people, including from increased vector borne diseases,
mental health, blackouts and power shortages. These impacts are likely to be felt most by those
already vulnerable such as the elderly and low-income earners.
We are already experiencing detrimental changes to our climate and built and natural
environments. These effects will worsen over time.
Adapting to a changing climate involves adjusting to short duration events such as cyclones,
floods and fires, as well as gradual changes such as sea level rise. Community resilience is
the ability to not only cope with the impacts but to adapt and recover. Increasing the resilience
of individuals, businesses and the community requires risk awareness, disaster preparedness,
careful planning and management to help minimise risks and recover and adapt more easily.
Increasing the resilience and adaptive capacity of our communities and the built environment
is about designing places, buildings and infrastructure to be more adaptive and sustainable,
creating more comfortable and safe homes and workplaces, and reduced emissions and
energy costs.


How we’ll achieve this
Council can support the community to increase resilience to climate change through building,
infrastructure and landscape design that is responsive to the subtropical climate, and that is
resource efficient for energy, water and materials, and minimises emissions. The Noosa Plan
2020 planning scheme (including planning scheme policy 5) sets standards for sustainable,
subtropical design. These standards will be built upon to ensure that design outcomes increase
the resilience and comfort of building occupants from climate risks, such as extreme heat.
The development of climate responsive design guidelines will help provide support to the
planning scheme, place making, asset management and infrastructure design. Localised
assessments of climate risk, such as flooding, inundation and urban heat risk, will also help
build understanding of appropriate design responses required for high-risk locations, including
along foreshore areas subject to sea level rise and inundation risks.
Council is responsible for its own capital works program which includes new buildings.
Buildings need to be designed and constructed to meet the 6 Star Green Building Standard
and national standards for carbon neutral buildings.




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