Events Calendar for NSW

About the Seminar:

In September, the NSW SIA ran a well attended seminar "Adapt, Mitigate or Perish" - the Effects of Climate Change on Stormwater Management. Thankyou to Peter Davies from the NSW Committee for doing the organising, it was a great event.

The day started with an international guest speaker - Prof Klaus Keller from the Department of Geosciences at Penn State University in the US. He started by addressing how we currently understand climate change projections, and then how we should use this information to improve climate change strategies. He introduced the idea of a "Fat Tail" which was commonly being overlooked, because whilst it at catastrophic impacts, the probability of it occurring was very low. He encouraged more robust decision making, being somewhat conservative, and being wary of "optimal yet brittle" strategies. Climate change is happening, and to address it we need to be have designs and strategies that address the expected impacts, but also have enough flexibility to address outcomes we may not be expecting at present. Then Justice Peter Biscoe from the NSW Land and Environment Court covered the expected impacts of: decreasing rainfall, increasing temperatures, sea level rise, and increasing storm intensity. He then mentioned that WSUD can help to ameliorate some impacts, by reducing flow volumes and putting water back into the water cycle. The principle of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) has been around long enough to be included within most NSW statutes as well as the EP&A Act 1979 and POEA Act 1997. ESD includes the precautionary principle and intergenerational equity. Under both of these, potential climate change impacts must be considered in designs and approvals. The most authoritative study on these is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007). Adaption and mitigation are the strategies to adopt. In October 2007, DECC published the "Floodplain RIsk Management Guideline: Practical consideration of Climate Change", which also recommends taking climate change into consideration in decision making. There are limited court cases involving climate change, but one to note was that the courts decided "the decision maker must consider the impacts of climate change on proposed development in vulnerable coastal areas".

Next, Mark Conlon from DECCW discussed the regional impacts for NSW and the State Government responses, with a final report due later this year. The IPCC and CSIRO suggest sea levels could rise 40cm by 2050, and 90cm by 2100. Planning guidance will be developed after the policy statement is finished, so Councils should keep vigilant to make sure their policies align with State Government recommendations and advice. Climate change impacts could include 20% more runoff in summer, 25% less runoff in winter, more bushfires, more flooding, the intensity and frequency of heatwaves to increase, more storms with hail. The State is to focus on mitigation, while everyone should be building smarter, greener cities and planning for adaption to the changed regime. Attendees were also advised to keep an eye out for the next version of AR&R that should be 2-5yrs away, as this will be another good source of advice.

After morning tea Ron Barnes from Echelon provided a view as insurers see it, regarding responsibility and liability. Some of his points were: to have adaption plans, legislative protection, "good faith" defences from section 733 of the Local Government Act, and to try to develop uniformity and consistency across local authorities.

The final presenter was Peter Davies from Ku-ring-gai Council who related the "more publicised impact of bushfires" to the challenges we face with stormwater. Essentially the policies, strategies and actions that have been taken to mitigate the effects of bushfires, need to be transferred next to stormwater. The costs of climate change are likely to disproportionately fall on local government, industries, communities and workers. We need to have both practical on ground actions, as well as institutional strategies and political solutions.

Key points from the day were that there is no quick fix, and no simple answer as to what to do. We should beware the "Fat Tail" (catastrophic impact of infrequent events), we should allow for sea level rise, different rainfall patterns, assume more flooding and plan for it, ensure our Councils can demonstrate that climate change was taken into account in the approval process, implement more WSUD, keep up to date with State Government leadership in this area, and get the new AR&R manual when it comes out.