Community come together to create action plan

We are excited to announce that almost 30 members in our local community have come together to form the Community GHG Emissions Reduction Community Strategic Group. The Group includes people with a wide range of skills in areas such as engineering, architecture, and education, as well as people with a lived experience of taking action on climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Group has already met three times in 2023, and they are now developing a Community Emissions Reduction Action Plan for our City. We expect the draft Action Plan to be available for community comment around September 2023.

New resources now available

A Community Summary Report titled “Community Emissions Reduction Project Community Summary Report”, and a series of fact sheets have just been released. Prepared by dsquared consulting, the report summarises the current community emissions profile, potential emission reduction actions, and emission projections to 2030.

The Community Summary Report and fact sheets will assist our Community Strategic Group to identify emission reduction initiatives and targets over the next few months as they draft an Action Plan. To view these resources, go to the Document Library for this project.

What is this project about?

We are working with our community to set a whole of City GHG Emissions Reduction Target and develop a Community GHG Emissions Reduction Action Plan by the end of 2023. Our community is leading this project to take action on climate change.

In 2022 we held community conversations at our libraries and community centres, conducted a community survey and held a community workshop.

View highlights from our community survey.

View the summary of our community workshop.

In early 2023 we formed a Community Strategic Group who will develop a Community Emission Reduction Action Plan for our City during 2023. Once the action plan is drafted we will invite community feedback.

Read more about the Community Strategic Group.

Both Council-led and Community-led initiatives are needed

Council has been working on climate adaptation and mitigation strategies and implementing these into our everyday at the City of Charles Sturt. This Community GHG Emissions Reduction Project aligns with our strategic plans and pledges:

• Climate Emergency Declaration
• Community Plan 2020 - 2027
• Cities Power Partnership Pledges

Following our Climate Emergency declaration in 2019, we joined Cities Power Partnership and developed Net Zero: Our Map to Net Zero Corporate Emissions 2020-2025. Net Zero is our plan to achieve zero corporate emissions by 2025 and we’re proud to say, we’re well on our way to achieving it.

Through our Community Plan we are committed to supporting our residents, businesses, community groups and others reduce emissions. There are many services, strategies and projects that our community participate in and access that enable greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced.

Both Council-led and community-led initiatives are necessary to make a difference. Below is a summary of the differences between Council and community-led initiatives.

Community views

Through our 2021 Community Survey, over 77% of our community told us that “Taking action on climate change is important to me personally”. We also know from our recent Business Survey, that our business community are looking for "ways to become more environmentally friendly".

These findings were reinforced during the months of July to September 2022 when Zoe Smith, Council's Environmental Management Officer - Climate Change Response, visited our libraries and community centres and discussed the idea of creating a community-led action plan to reduce emissions with members of our community.

Also, in July and August 2022, we surveyed our community to see what action residents are taking and what they would like to take more action on. View highlights from the survey.

All the feedback gathered will inform the drafting of our community GHG emissions reduction target and action plan.