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- Download Local Greenhouse Action - Local Government Survey
(lga-survey.pdf - 924 KB)
About the survey
The Australian Greenhouse Office, within the Department of the Environment and Heritage, commissioned research among key program stakeholders, local government, to inform development of Local Greenhouse Action. The findings from this research will build on existing work being undertaken by local government through the Cities for Climate Protection™ (CCP™) program and Travel Demand Management initiatives.
Conclusions
Local government appears interested and eager to implement programs and actions in an effort to reduce greenhouse emissions in the local community. There was an excellent response to the survey overall and officers took the time to provide thoughtful and thorough responses to all questions.
Some councils are well on their way to implementing greenhouse reduction programs and initiatives though most are currently focusing their investment internally on council buildings, and plan to continue to do so in the coming years.
Two thirds of councils have already implemented actions in an attempt to reduce greenhouse emissions from households in their local community and just over half have implemented actions for transport. Community programs have largely surrounded education and awareness though a range of other initiatives have also been employed by councils, such as incentives, demonstration projects, new or upgraded infrastructure and behaviour change initiatives.
Few officers feel they are currently prepared to deal with impacts from climate change despite feeling that they have a good or fair level of understanding about the issue. Two thirds of officers feel they will need to implement actions to avoid impacts from climate change in the next five years but very few feel prepared to do so; half feel somewhat prepared to do so and just under half feel they are not prepared to do so.
Officers cited a number of barriers to taking actions to reduce greenhouse emissions in their local community, namely the lack of resources. Interestingly, the results and comments also indicate that many officers do not feel that the education or awareness programs, and personalised information that has already been provided to the community, have been effective in reducing greenhouse emissions. Future actions need to take a different direction.
Almost all officers feel that grants would be beneficial to assist them to reduce greenhouse emissions. They also feel that offering incentives to householders and local businesses, and providing and improving transport infrastructure and services would be effective methods to encourage the local community to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Almost all officers feel that working in partnership with other councils or organisations would be an effective approach and two thirds of local councils had already done so, taking actions such as joint audits and programmes including a group purchase of Green Power, providing the ECO-RETRO home as a shared resource and partnering with other councils to provide the Switched ON Lighting Program.
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