12 December
Already two million hectares of farms, catchment and bushland habitat have burned in Australia this bushfire season. There has been tragic loss of life, extensive property damage, air pollution and widespread disquiet that this could become the new normal.
The Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) appreciates the work of our members helping communities to plan, prepare and recover from bushfire across Australia.
The Country Fire Association (Victoria) tells us: “The most effective way to strengthen community resilience to bushfire is to direct growth to settlements and locations with a lower bushfire risk.”
Planners are key to ensuring this occurs.
Every state and territory government is incorporating the lessons from recent fires. PIA has advocated for strategic planning to be at the centre of bushfire protection frameworks.
Planning for the safety of human life, not just protecting individual properties, is becoming the key criterion for whether development should occur.
This involves taking a more strategic look at how communities would behave and evacuate in an emergency, especially whether there is capacity across the road network should an entire community be displaced at once.
Planners do not have the luxury to "plan and forget". We need to help communities continue to have conversations on how they adjust to a worsening fire outlook and create adaptive management pathways to guide their future decisions.
Planners are uniquely skilled to bring together a wide range of stakeholders including farmers, residents, developers, Aboriginal communities, infrastructure providers, natural resource managers and emergency services personnel.
PIA’s contribution includes our development of the National Landuse Planning Guidelines for Disaster Resilient Communities and our input to its latest revision.
Members of PIA have played key roles in implementing the recommendations of the Black Saturday Bushfires Royal Commission in Victoria and the development of policy throughout Australia, including the revision of the NSW guideline: Planning for Bushfire Protection Guidelines.
Building resilience means creating conditions in which we can adapt and thrive in a changing environment.
However, we are now planning in circumstances in which “the current dry bushfire conditions are already overlaid upon a one degree increase in temperature linked to the accumulation of greenhouses gases” (Professor John Bowman, 2019).
Our capacity to adapt is weakened as climate change accelerates. PIA’s policy Planning in a Changing Climate recognises the need for urgent and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and complementary mitigation and adaptation strategies for reducing and managing the risks presented by climate change.
PIA is working to build capacity across our industry to achieve a target of zero net carbon by 2050 and has released a communique on our climate change mitigation action.
The loss of life and property in bushfire is tragic. PIA and our members are passionate about helping communities avoid and rebound from bushfires and other hazards.
ENDS