2019-02-18 GC Agenda Att 1 to Item 8 - Draft Environment Strategy

Climate Change Adaptation & Resilience
Goal: By 2030 the resilience of the Noosa community and environment continues to
increase

Climate change is already presenting new challenges in the way society plans and prepares for
disasters, designs developments and infrastructure, and manages our natural environments.
Worrying changes in sea surface and air temperatures, ocean pH, and regional sea levels have
been occurring over the previous century, and continue to do so at an accelerating rate.

The 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report recognised that to limit
global warming to 1.5°C requires urgent action by 2030, Global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions
must decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach zero by 2050.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO, 2018) expects
significant changes are very likely to occur to Australia’s climate without a significant reduction in
global greenhouse gas emissions and transformation of land use practices. In the absence of
these changes, the human and ecological systems that we currently benefit from – including in
Noosa – are expected to be negatively impacted.

Projections for Noosa show that based on current emissions trajectories, Noosa is likely to
experience an increase in the average duration of the longest heatwave in a given year extending
from fewer than five days to almost two months. The number of days per year over 35 degrees
Celsius could increase from fewer than three to over 35, by the end of the twenty first century.




Based on these projections, we can expect increased risks to people, property and natural
environments from sea level rise, coastal erosion, storm tide inundation, flooding, bushfires,
extreme weather, higher temperatures and changes in seasonal rainfall.

Changes to our climate will affect the way we live, how we recreate, our health and wellbeing, and
the health and survival of natural ecosystems and species. In response, this theme is progressed
under the following three strategies:
     Reduce emissions and resource consumption
     Increase community resilience and capacity to adapt to climate change
     Manage the natural environment in a way that improves resilience to climate change.




Noosa Shire Environment Strategy                                                                Page 34