When I wrote my Master's dissertation in 2022, I never thought that we would be seeing the impacts of climate change induced flooding on our built environment at such a mass scale.
As Australia heads into another winter season I am again reminded of the learnings from my research - Perth needs to rapidly adapt its rainfall and flooding capacities to prevent extensive damage to the built environment (take the NSW and Queensland floods in 2022 or the Dubai floods in 2024 for example).
With that in mind, I'm sharing my research findings in the hope that those shaping our future cities will incorporate flood responsive design throughout urban areas.
The findings
With 90% of Australian's living in urban areas, our cities play an enormous role in protecting people from the physical impacts of climate change.
Urban planning has historically fallen short when addressing social equity and justice which has deprived people and ecosystems of adequate infrastructure to cater to their needs and protect them from harm (Chu and Cannon, 2021).
Current planning practices continue to limit the capacity of urban spaces to adapt to extreme weather which increases the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to less hospitable climatic conditions.
Western Australia's State Planning Strategy and urban planning bodies hold significant control over the built environment outcomes of the State, however their policies and strategies incorporate piecemeal responses to climate change impacts at best. Where climate change is considered, the projections and responses are based on significantly outdated data.
Local governments who participated in the study felt disempowered to adapt to localised impacts of flooding due to governance and resourcing constraints, outdated data and information, inconsistency in approaches between LGAs, and a lack of leadership. One interviewee commented that “as years go by and the impact of climate change [becomes clearer] and more acutely felt, people are going to be looking to the State government to say ‘how did you allow land to be developed here?’”.
The research echos the IPCC’s commentary regarding the limitation of progress towards climate change adaptation in urban environments due to insufficiencies in adaptive capacity which has led to poor performance in planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation (IPCC, 2021).
The research interviews confirmed the IPCC’s theory that these limitations in adaptive capacity are occurring as a result of a lack of vision and consistency in policy design, competing priorities and values, misinformation and propaganda, and limited engagement and resources.
The findings also confirmed the hypothesis that the Perth Metropolitan Region’s urban form and governance system is grossly underprepared to respond to the impacts of climate change induced flooding, inundation, and sea level rise.
What do we need to do now
Transitioning the Perth Metropolitan Region into an adaptable and resilient city will require a long-term strategy to improve the maturity of Western Australia’s urban planning response to climate change.
In order to close the current gaps in the urban planning system and improve adaptive capacity there will need to be a staged response which supports the State and local governments, urban planners, and engineers to effectively respond to the infrastructure challenges of future climate impacts.
Socialisation of findings
There is not necessarily a lack of education surrounding adaptation to flooding and sea level rise impacts in urban planning – the information and modelling exists in many forms. However, there is a severe lack of socialization of this information and it lacks integration with systemic and legislative urban planning processes.
It is recommended that community and government engagement programs are conducted to provide an executive summary of the findings of this research and connect them to existing resources, mapping, and toolkits which will highlight their level of exposure and inform localised adaptation measures.
Utilising the modelling and risk profiles will help local governments to identify risks where flood or sea level rise planning hasn’t been addressed in structure plans or has been misrepresented by out-of-date modelling techniques. This will help identify the most vulnerable people, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
Governance
Governance systems will need refinement to address the gaps and misalignment of policies, strategies, and legislation. Solutions will need to be scalable and flexible to allow for local governments to implement changes that suit their local circumstances.
Improved modelling, accurate and current climate change projections, and stronger leadership will support improvements to strategies, policies and legislative frameworks.
Flooding and sea level rise projections will need to feature more heavily in strategy and policy to address the exposure risks based on current climate change projections.
Governance systems will need to respond to issues where precedents have been set in the eastern states (such as insurance).
Built form & adaptation
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. The State and local governments will need to develop strategic, behavioural, and technical solutions to best cope with local circumstances and regional constraints. There is an opportunity to learn from international examples and incorporate and adapt them where appropriate.
One of the key challenges will be the allocation of responsibility for implementation funding and ongoing maintenance of infrastructure. Funding and non-financial resource constraints, assets, and liabilities will need to be addressed to support local governments to adequately implement adaptive capacity measures.
The lag time on the physical implementation of climate change adaptation across the built environment is already becoming an issue. The nature of Western Australia’s bureaucracy is arguably conservative and slow to react meaning that it may be some time before infrastructure can be adapted. West Australians will feel the impacts of flooding, inundation, and sea level rise well before the infrastructure solutions are implemented.
It is essential that immediate action is taken to prevent future limitations of the effectiveness of technical and infrastructure solutions.
View the full research paper below.
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