We've adopted our second Climate Emergency Plan with scaled up ambition and a focus on supporting communities most at risk from climate impacts.

Yarra’s new Climate Emergency Plan 2024-2030 is our assurance that we’ve heard the calls from our community for greater climate action, and for a more equitable and just society.

We're proud to continue to be a leader on climate action in the local government sector and we are committed to embedding climate action in everything we do.

The new Plan recognises that the scale of ambition must match the scale of the problem to realise our vision of a climate safe, sustainable and just society.

Yarra's Climate Emergency Plan 2024-2030

Visit the Yarra City Council website to read more about our ambitious new Climate Emergency Plan.

Purpose of the consultation

In 2023, Yarra's first Climate Emergency Plan 2020-2024 was ready for a reboot. We began developing the next plan to underpin our response to the climate crisis in the years to come and ramp up our ambition.

The climate crisis is accelerating, and if we want to create a safe and just future where people and nature thrive, all levels of government must do more, and faster, to address it.

We know that addressing the climate crisis is a top priority for the Yarra community and that you want us to do more, and we want our community to be part of the climate solutions we develop, every step of the way.

What did we ask?

Stage 1 community consultation:

In October and November 2023, we identified 8 broad themes to help guide us in our climate emergency response. We shared these themes with you and asked you to share your ideas, stories, comments and suggestions about the future that you wanted to see and what taking strong action looks like to you.

The methods we used in this first stage to gather feedback from the community included:

• Ideas board for people to add their ideas to the key themes using sticky notes online and in person
• Feedback form (online and hard copy)
• In person "Pop up" information sessions
• Workshops with key stakeholders, both experts working in relevant fields and members of our community from targeted demographics (those at the greatest risk of climate impacts).

Stage 2 community consultation:

We reviewed and analysed your feedback from the first stage of engagement and used your contributions to develop a:

• draft Climate Emergency Plan 2024-2030
• draft Climate Emergency Action Plan 2024-2027

Based on the 8 themes, and incorporating your feedback, we identified 7 transformations across society that must happen for us reach our collective vision of a climate-safe, just, sustainable, and caring society.

During the second stage of community engagement in April and May 2024, we asked you to:

• take a look at the draft Climate Emergency Plan 2024-2030 and tell us if you think that the objectives chosen for each of the 7 transformations would help us deliver a bold and ambitious climate response
• let us know if we'd missed anything or if there was anything else we should include in the plan.

Who did we hear from?

Stage 1 community consultation:

• 25,000+ people were reached via email, social media & face-to-face interactions
• 2000+ visits were made to the YSY page
• 203 contributions to the online survey and ideas board
• 138 people who were particularly vulnerable to climate impacts (or working in partnership with people experiencing vulnerability) were consulted.

Stage 2 community consultation:

• 25,000+ people were reached via email, social media & face-to-face interactions
• 1500+ visits were made to the YSY page.
• 63 contributions to the online survey
• We received input from all target groups identified as at risk of severe climate impacts.

What we heard and how it influenced the plan

Stage 1 community consultation:

We heard from the Yarra community that you want us to be bold and ambitious in our response to the climate emergency. This was made clear through your submissions to online feedback form during the first stage of community engagement, and in the range of insightful public comments posted on the ideas board.

Through the consultation we gained a clearer understanding of community priority areas, which led to a reshaping of the 8 key themes into the 7 transformations that appeared in the draft Climate Emergency Plan.

Stage 2 community consultation:

The feedback form contained a set of questions that asked people to indicate their level of agreement with each of the objectives listed under the 7 transformations.

There was support for Council’s objectives as stated in the draft Climate Emergency Plan with the majority of people agreeing or strongly agreeing with each of them.

The final 2 questions (question 8 & 9) were open response. In question 8 we asked the community to tell us if we’d missed anything or if there were any gaps in the draft Climate Emergency Plan. Below are some of the key themes that emerged, as well as our responses:

Theme	What we heard	Our response
EVs	We received several comments expressing disappointment that our plan includes support for EVs (cars), though there was support for e-bikes. Conversely, we also received a few comments around the need for more EV charging infrastructure.	Much of the feedback is in line with the 10-year Transport Strategy, Moving Forward, which was adopted in July 2022. There is an action in Transformation 1 of the CEP around continuing to implement and evaluate the Transport Strategy. We will therefore add text to Transformation 4 of the CEP referring the reader to the relevant section of Transformation 1. We will also make changes to the text in Transformation 4 to make it clear that we are prioritising improving and increasing active transport and public transport over private cars, but that the private cars that do remain should be electric. We will also share the transport-related feedback for the CEP to the Transport team.
Active transport	We heard calls for better bicycle infrastructure: more direct routes to the city, separated bike lanes on major thoroughfares, and shade on these paths.	There is an action in Transformation 1 of the CEP around continuing to implement and evaluate the Transport Strategy. We will therefore add text to Transformation 4 of the CEP referring the reader to the relevant section of Transformation 1. We will also refer the reader to Action 6.3.1 under Transformation 6, which aims to “Ensure cool routes support active transport and walkability of Yarra in a changing climate...” We will also share the transport-related feedback for the CEP to the Transport team.
Housing	We heard agreement for our support for renters and calls for further action in this space including more advocacy and more support for low-income earners in public housing.	We will increase our advocacy for renters and residents of public housing. We will continue providing support for renters to make homes thermally comfortable and climate resilient, and we will add support for residents of public housing.
Access to Biodiverse-rich spaces	This objective that received the highest level of support in the Your Say Yarra survey, with a score of 4.21 56.45% strongly agreed,19.35% agreed, and only 12.9% strongly disagreed (no one disagreed).	Strong community support indicates that we are on the right path with this objective.
Climate denial	A minority of respondents made comments that indicated a level of climate denial Some other comments expressed the stance that Council should focus on rates, roads, and rubbish. Other negative comments were around the CEP being ideological, a waste of time and resources	These negative comments came from a small minority of people who gave feedback to the draft CEP. The comments either go against scientific evidence or are ill-informed. We also received many enthusiastic comments expressive gratitude, pride, and encouragement in the CEP and Yarra City Council.

Find out more

Visit the Climate Emergency plan page for more information about this project.

Together, we can make sure that people and nature in Yarra thrive for generations to come.