2019-05-07 P&E Agenda - Item 3 - Attachment 1 - Noosa Sustainability Institute - Concepts and Options Report

1                Introduction
Australia has one of the cleanest urban environments of any nation. Our cities are also regarded as
among the most liveable in the world. Yet this liveability comes at a price as we also have one of
the highest rates of resource consumption per capita in the world. While all new homes that are
constructed in Australia are required to meet minimum standards for energy and water efficiency,
almost half (45%) of Australia’s existing housing stock is 30 years of age or older and was built with
little consideration for sustainability. When this is coupled with significant commutes to employment,
house sizes that are among the largest in the world, and considerable waste associated with
overconsumption, many of Australia’s citizens are leading a resource intensive and sedentary
lifestyle. Our urban environments continue to be a sink for resources and a source of wastes into the
environment. As the Australian population increases, this continues to place increasing pressure on
our urban, peri-urban and natural environments.
Many of these issues can be overcome or mitigated but to achieve this, information and research is
vital to inform on the mechanisms required. Done well, the research outcomes can provide essential
data for governments and the community on what is needed on a range of urban, peri-urban and
environmental sustainability measures. Such measures include investigating ways to maintain and
improve the security of water and energy supplies in a changing climate; decreasing traffic
congestion and travel times with a corresponding improvement in air quality; developing mechanisms
to reduce the impact of development; and finding new ways for towns to be built with near-zero
lifetime greenhouse gas emissions.
Sustainability measures such as these cannot be achieved without the active support of
governments and the community. As a result, there is a continuing need to undertake research and
develop tools that can model the triple bottom line implications of sustainability scenarios that
combine natural resource use, carbon sequestration, emissions reduction, energy system
performance, water use, urban form and density, liveability and access to housing and services.
A key challenge for Australia to plan, manage and invest in our settlements is the need to improve
sustainability and resilience into the future. This will need to be done, however, in a way that does
not devalue our standards of liveability. While the Federal and State Governments can provide input
guidance on sustainability measures, the true leadership needs to come from Local Councils and
communities, where “on the ground” sustainability efforts can achieve the greatest outcomes.
Improving sustainability is frequently thought of as being the recycling of wastes, along with
safeguarding and improving in the local environment and essential services such as power and
water. Important as these are, other activities in other sectors such as improving building and
construction, development of resilience measures in our communities and in response to climate
change, and fostering and enabling community sustainability activities are also important. Research
into strategies such as using digital systems to monitor and report on infrastructure performance in
real-time; the development of inbuilt fail-safe backups; “gold-plating”; using network stability theory
to create resilience to multiple simultaneous failures; and ensuring infrastructure is designed with
inbuilt flexibility for multiple potential uses can also have important positive influences on increasing
sustainability measures while maintaining a high liveability index. Finally, many sustainability
measures succeed or fail on the behaviour of the community. Research on community attitudes and
acceptance is vital to ensure the success of all implemented sustainability programs.
Providing a means for local governments and the community to have input into, and take up of
research outcomes involving broad ranging, interlinked activities is certainly a challenge. The Noosa
Council already has made considerable investment and partnership into a number of research
initiatives including investment into the Peregian Digital Hub, the Noosa Biosphere Reserve
Foundation and a range of community and university research activities. Noosa has an opportunity
to take a leadership role in one or more aspects of global sustainability research and development
through the establishment of a Sustainability Institute.




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