2021-03-09 P&E Agenda - Item 8 - Attachment 1 - 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 and businesses will experience
more extreme weather, bushfires, coastal hazards, flooding, and heatwaves. These hazards put
increased pressure on emergency services and pose increased risks to property and people,
including vulnerable groups 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 and water, 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.

Council seeks to build awareness and preparedness for extreme weather events through disaster
management planning and response, development requirements, and resilient infrastructure design
and delivery. Individuals and households are encouraged to develop and maintain up to date
emergency action plans and Council collaborates with the State government as part of the Get
Ready program. Providing resilient community infrastructure and safe refuge spaces for extreme
weather events that are accessible to all community members is an ongoing priority.




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Noosa Climate Change Response Plan - draft for council endorsement March 2021