2020-11-27
We know the federal government, along with most state jurisdictions, are dragging their feet on climate action. But local governments have significant opportunities and power to invest in services and infrastructure to combat the climate emergency – and here’s what you can do to help.
By Dale Martin
This month the Local Government Climate Emergency Toolkit was released. The document was developed in the penultimate year of my four year term as councillor in the City of Moreland, Victoria, and after successful efforts advocating and campaigning on a range of issues, including co-founding and campaigning on the ‘Plastic Bag Free Victoria’ campaign with community groups right across the state from 2015 onwards.
It follows a successful four years in implementing a suite of climate-focused policy changes in the City of Moreland, championed by five Greens Councillors (Dale Martin, Natalie Abboud, Mark Riley and Jess Dorney [elected on countback following the election of Samantha Ratnam to the state parliament]) and built on over a decade of work by former Greens councillors. Many of the learnings from this term of Council and excellent work of Council officers have been included into this document. While it is written based on the Victorian experience, many of the concepts and tools within this document should be applicable in other jurisdictions also.
What is the toolkit?
The concept was inspired by the initial success and cut-through of my ‘best practice toolkit for waste conscious communities’ released back in 2017, in gathering support from local governments to advocate to the state government on banning plastic bags at the checkout. Campaigning for the introduction of a container deposit scheme, as well as implementation of many local policies including plastic wise communities, setting waste targets and bin colour standardisation, was also the inspiration behind this initiative.
The toolkit includes many of these measures but is much broader and seeks to address the gap in how to take tangible action to address the climate emergency at a local government level following a declaration.
The actions can also be moved independently of one another and are often complementary to achieving other community benefits such as greater transparency in governance, employment generation and financial savings.
The role of local government
Local governments have significant opportunities and the power to invest in services and infrastructure to combat the climate emergency. In Victoria, local governments manage over $90 billion of community assets and infrastructure and spend over $8 billion on services each year. Nationwide, these numbers would extend into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Local governments play a critical role to:
• communicate the current and future impacts of our climate emergency
• demonstrate climate adaptation and mitigation strategies
• pilot and promote new technologies
• lobby other levels of government and neighbouring local councils to act
• work with residents and businesses to lower greenhouse gas emissions, save money and improve the community’s health.
The toolkit seeks to highlight this by first providing an understanding of why local governments should act, the decision makers and key documents that can influence change, and then provides specific and measurable recommendations, with suggested timeframes to address the climate emergency.
It focuses on eight areas across Council where local government can effectively contribute to climate emergency action, including:
• energy
• transport
• communication
• advocacy
• procurement and waste
• industry and built environment
• agriculture and open space
• transparency and accountability.
Recommended actions are designed to be easily implemented with information on who can implement them, how they can be implemented and by what method. Each section also provides an example of how an elected councillor may go about implementing any one of these actions.
What you can do
The toolkit compliments many existing Greens values and policies, and is designed to encourage those that may not be familiar with local government to take the time to investigate and understand the opportunities that might be available.
I would encourage everyone to take the time to read the toolkit and utilise it however you find it most useful. Whether it be in discussing the impact of local government in mitigating the climate emergency, to make submissions to your local representatives, or to importantly shape key documents via community submissions to your council plan or annual budget process. You may even find that your council has already implemented some of these measures but has not made the connection with their impact on the environment.
If you find it useful, please share the document with those that may also be interested in utilising it.
With the recent success in the 2020 Victorian council elections in securing over thirty local government Greens councillors and a number of progressive independents, I am hopeful the toolkit will be utilised in establishing a baseline that is built upon for many years to come.
Download the toolkit for free here.
Dale Martin is a former Greens councillor for Moreland City Council’s North-West Ward.