What should be in your Climate Emergency Plan
Existing plans must be rewritten or started again from scratch with a Climate Emergency response in mind.
In this section you will find:
Existing plans must be rewritten or started again from scratch with a Climate Emergency response in mind.
In this section you will find:
- your old plan
- your strategic plan
- goals and targets
- emergency mobilisation vs non mobilisation
- detail
- inwards, upwards, sideways and downwards action
- what is not in a climate emergency response
- example of other climate emergency plans
Your old plan
Traditional council global warming / climate strategies and plans are too limited in scope and ambition to count as Climate Emergency plans. In particular these:
Emergency Mode vs non Emergency Mode
You will need to decide if your council is wishing to enter full emergency mode / emergency mobilisation mode OR not. If wishing to enter full emergency mobilisation mode please review the material on our "Entering Emergency Mode" page and incorporate the various steps and actions into your plan.
Your Strategic Plan
Once you have a new Climate Emergency Plan you will need to be able implement the plan. In Australia this usually means your climate emergency response will need to be listed in you strategic plan / council plan or equivalent.
If wanting to enter a full climate emergency mode your climate emergency response will need to be the made the number one priority of the plan.
If you are not intending to go into full emergency mode it will still need to be mention in order to ensure council staff and management can have action on the climate emergency incorporated into their position descriptions, KPIs and work plans, including that of the CEO.
Unless you are currently reviewing your strategic plan, councils should immediately call in their strategic plans and include a reference to the climate emergency, preferably as the overarching priority.
Your Goal and Targets
Your goal should be to achieve maximum protection for human and non-human life through your climate emergency response through:
Detail
Depending on the culture of your council and the commitment of your staff to an emergency response your new plan may require some level of detail around dates, scope and implementation to avoid misinterpretation by staff attempting to implement it. However, good foundation work around staff education and motivation should alleviate this to some degree by allowing staff to understand the importance of what they are attempting to achieve.
Inwards Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
Upwards Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
*Many of these research questions would eventually be answered by state, federal and international teams or bodies as higher levels of government begin to adopt a climate emergency response. However, until this occurs, local governments can develop research projects and even collaborate with other councils. For example, Climate Emergency Darebin advisory committee prior to it being shut down by Council administration, had by mid 2018 commenced work on many of these research areas through its Research and Strategy working group commencing.
Sideways Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
Downwards Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
See also our Post Declaration page for more discussion of ideas for your Climate Emergency Plan
Traditional council global warming / climate strategies and plans are too limited in scope and ambition to count as Climate Emergency plans. In particular these:
- are unlikely to acknowledge we are in an emergency
- will have a limited scope and exclude key areas such as animal agriculture or forestry / land clearing, consumption, or drawdown.
- will have included time frames that are too slow
- will have included goals that are not climate emergency goals
- will be unlikely to have a direct goal of encouraging state and federal governments to adopt a climate emergency response
- will most likely have missed other key elements of a climate emergency response such as reviewing other relevant plans, internal cultural change, staff education, and building process to work directly with the community to build a rapid large-scale response.
- will not include strong enough focuses on responding to future climate related events or emergencies
- will not have strong enough focus on building community resilience
Emergency Mode vs non Emergency Mode
You will need to decide if your council is wishing to enter full emergency mode / emergency mobilisation mode OR not. If wishing to enter full emergency mobilisation mode please review the material on our "Entering Emergency Mode" page and incorporate the various steps and actions into your plan.
Your Strategic Plan
Once you have a new Climate Emergency Plan you will need to be able implement the plan. In Australia this usually means your climate emergency response will need to be listed in you strategic plan / council plan or equivalent.
If wanting to enter a full climate emergency mode your climate emergency response will need to be the made the number one priority of the plan.
If you are not intending to go into full emergency mode it will still need to be mention in order to ensure council staff and management can have action on the climate emergency incorporated into their position descriptions, KPIs and work plans, including that of the CEO.
Unless you are currently reviewing your strategic plan, councils should immediately call in their strategic plans and include a reference to the climate emergency, preferably as the overarching priority.
Your Goal and Targets
Your goal should be to achieve maximum protection for human and non-human life through your climate emergency response through:
- achieving net negative emissions for your municipality as soon as possible
- encouraging a similar response outside of your council area at all levels of government and internationally as soon as possible
- Net negative emissions as soon as possible
- Net negative or net zero by 2025
- Net negative or net zero 2030
Detail
Depending on the culture of your council and the commitment of your staff to an emergency response your new plan may require some level of detail around dates, scope and implementation to avoid misinterpretation by staff attempting to implement it. However, good foundation work around staff education and motivation should alleviate this to some degree by allowing staff to understand the importance of what they are attempting to achieve.
Inwards Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
- provide internal education and ensures this takes place before staff attempt to implement climate emergency projects or undertake broader policy reviews.
- CACE can provide speakers and material to support this process. Or make use of the resources here http://www.climatecodered.org/p/publications.html
- develop cultural change processes which speed up and maximise you council's response to climate emergency. The prioritisation of the climate emergency should be council wide and in all areas of council operations including HR.
- for example if as part of the climate emergency response new staff may need to be hired. HR should prioritise the work needed to support the new climate emergency hire above their normal work and above other requests that had come in previously and were still being processed.
- undertake a of review of all council policies to explore opportunities for climate emergency action
- for example:
- what actions can already constitute emergency action
- allow staff to brainstorm and identify ways council business can be conducted to improve climate emergency outcomes in their specific area of work.
- this would include opportunities for emissions reduction, drawdown, resilience building and community education and mobilisation, as well as advocating up to state and federal governments.
- look at divesting funds from financial institutions supporting or investing in unsustainable or global warming activities
- looks at your procurement processes. Are they supporting products that add to global warming such as buying reflex paper, high emission food such as beef. lamb and dairy, coal or gas based electricity, This could include refusing to work with companies who are contracting to large fossil fuel companies such as Adani.
- for example:
Upwards Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
- lobby state and federal governments and politicians to implement a climate emergency response and under take full emergency mobilisation
- build a mandate within the community for climate emergency action by higher levels of government
- help fund a staff position at your state council association to work on the climate emergency by supporting other councils to advocate to higher levels of government or advocating directly on their behalf
- fill gaps in supporting material and research* needed for a climate emergency response by higher levels of government such as:
- bringing together the science on current and future impacts
- developing plans for the post-emergency economy
- developing plans for carbon drawdown and global cooling
- planning how to push the climate emergency mobilisation campaign internationally
- planning how we go about scaling up the climate emergency campaign
*Many of these research questions would eventually be answered by state, federal and international teams or bodies as higher levels of government begin to adopt a climate emergency response. However, until this occurs, local governments can develop research projects and even collaborate with other councils. For example, Climate Emergency Darebin advisory committee prior to it being shut down by Council administration, had by mid 2018 commenced work on many of these research areas through its Research and Strategy working group commencing.
Sideways Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
- encourage other local governments to adopt a climate emergency response and acknowledge we are in a climate emergency
- joining or creating a climate emergency council association
- funding a staff position at your state council association to work on climate emergency supporting other councils to act
Downwards Action
Your plan will need to include measures to:
- educate all sections of the community including supporting local groups / organisations to promote the climate emergency and support the council entering a full emergency mobilisation to their particular cultural, religious, interest or language groups.
- develop a detailed plan to reduce emissions by council and the community in all key areas
- energy
- transport
- diet
- consumption
- waste
- land clearing
- buildings
- support people of low income to act to reduce their emissions while simultaneously improving their quality of life
- support efforts to drawdown past emissions
- mitigate the local effects of current and future global warming-related impacts such as increasingly frequent and severe storms, floods, heatwaves, coastal inundation / erosion, wild fires and food scarcity
- build resilience within the community to withstand and recover from current and future global warming-related impacts such as increasingly frequent and severe storms, floods, heatwaves, coastal inundation / erosion, fires and food scarcity
- for example helping people grow their own food at home or expanding community gardens can help people improve their nutrition, reduce food insecurity, provide a physical activity and can also increase social activity
- seek opportunities for a just transition for affected workers within your community and while supporting sustainable local economic development
- develop mechanisms to work directly with community to expand the capacity of the climate emergency response within your municipality. This could include:
- an expert advisory committee on responding to the climate emergency
- a citizens' assembly
- expert advisory committees on specific elements of the climate emergency response
- temporary staff / volunteer working groups on specific projects or areas of work
- standing staff / volunteer working groups on specific projects or areas of work
- building and resourcing mass community mobilisation
- partnerships with community groups and bodies on specific projects or areas of work
- identifying elements of the climate emergency response which may be outsourced or run by the community
- special bodies or committees established to manage elements of the climate emergency response
- creating volunteer positions to work along side or as part of council staff teams
See also our Post Declaration page for more discussion of ideas for your Climate Emergency Plan
What is not in a Climate Emergency response
Empty rhetoric
Don't make an resolution or motion that acknowledges the climate emergency without proposing significant immediate additional actions to your council's response to global warming including the development of a Climate Emergency plan.
Weak goals, no half measures or transitional investments
Goals that talk about for example "90% renewables" or "low emissions options" should not be in a Climate Emergency plan or motion unless there is a very specific reason to do so. We need to drop transitional measures.
Statements like, “smaller, low emission / hybrid cars are used in the transition away from the internal combustion engine” or "that gas should be used as a lower emissions fuel during the transition to a zero emissions economy", are not part of a Climate Emergency response.
This includes supporting statements on half-measures or transitional options that come from other levels of government.
Suicidal Goals and Long time frames
Timelines that talk about achieving major targets in longer than 10 years are not part of a Climate Emergency response i.e. net zero by 2040, included through a administrative error in many of the recent [mid 2019] Greenpeace council petitions run in Australian, is not a climate emergency response.
Empty rhetoric
Don't make an resolution or motion that acknowledges the climate emergency without proposing significant immediate additional actions to your council's response to global warming including the development of a Climate Emergency plan.
Weak goals, no half measures or transitional investments
Goals that talk about for example "90% renewables" or "low emissions options" should not be in a Climate Emergency plan or motion unless there is a very specific reason to do so. We need to drop transitional measures.
Statements like, “smaller, low emission / hybrid cars are used in the transition away from the internal combustion engine” or "that gas should be used as a lower emissions fuel during the transition to a zero emissions economy", are not part of a Climate Emergency response.
This includes supporting statements on half-measures or transitional options that come from other levels of government.
Suicidal Goals and Long time frames
Timelines that talk about achieving major targets in longer than 10 years are not part of a Climate Emergency response i.e. net zero by 2040, included through a administrative error in many of the recent [mid 2019] Greenpeace council petitions run in Australian, is not a climate emergency response.
Examples of Climate Emergency Plans (under development)
Darebin 2017
The first climate emergency plan in the world was the one written by Darebin Council however this plan represents a bare minimum for a climate emergency plan and has the following issues:
You can find the Darebin Climate Emergency Plan here.
Darebin 2017
The first climate emergency plan in the world was the one written by Darebin Council however this plan represents a bare minimum for a climate emergency plan and has the following issues:
- the context for the goal and the goal itself have an inconsistency and need include stronger messaging on negative emissions in the context
- diet is not one of the key priorities deserves a separate section
- consumption emissions are not a key priority deserves a separate section
- drawdown though mentioned has no detail and deserves a separate section
- the methodology of local carbon emission accounting needs complete revision to include other sources of emissions such as diet and consumption and may include double accounting of renewable energy produced locally
- the divestment focus is too narrow and only relates to fossil fuels.
- the plan is proposing to dump green power
- community engagement is not ambitious enough
- non climate emergency state and federal targets are included in the plan in a way that has the potential to implies they are acceptable
- a new section is required clearly identifying phasing and priorities
- the plan proposes to by hybrids rather than the currently available electric cars or electric cars with range extenders
- actions with a date range have been interpreted as open starting date rather than a project start date and a project end date thus delaying action by council.
You can find the Darebin Climate Emergency Plan here.