2023-01-16 General Committee Meeting Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                  16 JANUARY 2023


      to build a shared vision of a climate-ready region. This will be delivered through three priority
      themes with a set of associated focus areas under each:
      o     Building climate-ready councils;
      o     Empowering climate-ready communities;
      o     Advocating for a climate-ready region.
Through this project, it became clear that climate change is likely to present a multitude of risks to
Council. Building the resilience of our own services to climate hazards is thus a core responsibility.
Amongst others, this includes responding to:
     Increased demand on Council services
     Increased costs of service provision
     Reduced asset life and capacity
     Supply chain disruptions
     Workforce health and safety compromised
     Workforce disruptions
     Cascading impacts across divisions
     Health impacts from failure of services
     Disruption to social and community capital
There is also the potential for litigation risks, reputational risks, as well as transfer of risk onto
Council from private parties and other levels of government. This project and future climate risk
management work Council plans to undertake, aim to better understand these risks, manage the
risks, avoid long-term costs and create opportunities wherever possible.
Benefits
The following outcomes have been achieved through this project:
     Increased awareness of climate risk for each Council at each of the three organisational
      levels (operational, business and organisational).
     Improved understanding of Noosa and Sunshine Coast council staff regarding the locally-
      specific exposure and vulnerabilities for the activities and assets involved in provision of their
      service including the features of the assets, activities or population served that contribute to
      or exacerbate negative impacts.
     Recognition that critical infrastructure failure and cascading/compounding risks are a
      regional priority for action for both Councils and our key stakeholders.
     Methods and tools that will allow Council to quantify climate risk more effectively across the
      organisation while also growing internal capacity and capability to respond to the unfolding
      risks.
     Improved understanding regarding:
      o     Knowledge gaps relating to climate risk management decisions;
      o     Risks that are within Council’s capacity to control and manage;
      o     The need to develop capacity, capability, supporting organisational structures, culture,
            policies, procedures, and processes to enable action to identify and manage climate
            risk;
      o     A more current understanding of the extent of climate change governance within each
            Council and identification of available opportunities for each Council to improve their
            climate change governance.
     A Regional Climate Action Roadmap (the Roadmap) with associated resources and website
      (with QR code link available in the Roadmap).


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