Climate change engagement and communications practice review (phase 1)

The 2019-20 fire season in Australia highlighted the impact of climate change. The role that community engagement and communications play in supporting planning, preparedness, response and resilience is an increasingly important management lever in the fire sector’s risk reduction toolkit. It is also important to differentiate between engagement and communications practices given these two methods can be very different and can serve different purposes.

The objectives of this project are therefore to:

• undertake a literature review of the known impacts of climate change on bushfire risk in Victoria, linking impacts to the values that communities care about
• document best-practice approaches to climate change engagement and communication
• identify and document the skills, knowledge and capabilities that are useful in supporting this engagement
• identify and document existing Victorian and/or Federal legislation, strategies, actions and programs that support and drive effective engagement practice.