Logan City, Australia

Addressing the urban challenge

Breadth of the issue- How are the problem(s) that are being tackled by your initiative affecting citizens/local businesses or a significant component of the local wildlife?

The City of Logan is one of the largest and fastest growing local governments in Australia. With a population nearing 342,000 and a land area of 959 square kilometres, the Southeast Queensland Regional Plan predicts the city to grow to 568,000 residents by 2041 and will need to accommodate an additional 90,000 dwellings. To support this growth Logan City Council will need to balance lifestyle, social, liveability, economic and environmental outcomes. As a large and complex organisation, Council has $6.5 billion worth of city assets and an annual budget of $940 million. Over 1,700 staff provide more than 85 diverse services to the community.

The impacts on our environment from population growth and development puts incredible pressure on our natural environment and has potentially significant impacts on climate change. This issue has been identified as a major concern for our community through community surveys conducted over the last few years. The Logan Listens community survey canvasses the community and bushland protection, and waterway health are consistently in the top 5 concerns identified for the last several years. 

With that in mind, the LCC Climate Change Resilience Framework, which includes a Climate Change Resilience policy, Climate Change Resilience Strategy, Sustainability policy and framework also supported by a Natural Environment Strategy have been designed to manage organisational and community risks associated with climate change, and to align with international commitments including:

• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
• 2016 Paris Climate Change Agreement
• 2015-2030 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

Depth of the issue – How seriously are the problems being tackled by your initiative impacting the life of the citizens/businesses/wildlife concerned?

Since 2018, the City of Logan has experienced multiple climate related severe weather events which include floods, droughts, heatwaves, and bushfires.  The devastation of these increasingly frequent severe weather events has significant impacts on climate change. The most recent flood event (February 2022) had significant impacts including:

• 548 families/properties impacted;
• 60 City of Logan suburbs have been identified as having some residential properties potentially flood impacted;
• Over 1,500 tonnes of flood damaged household and business related assets being taken to landfill; 
• Regionally these floods resulted in 13 deaths, thousands of homes inundated with contaminated flood waters and billions of dollars’ worth of damage. 

The City of Logan Climate Resilience Framework incorporating our Sustainability Policy the Climate Resilience Policy, Climate Resilience Strategy, will guide, motivate, and ensure our goal of achieving climate resilience.

Our ongoing focus as we deliver the strategy, policy and actions will be to address three key elements of climate change resilience being:

• Mitigation – reducing and avoiding emissions.
• Adaptation – responding to the impacts of a changing climate.
• Resilience building – to have an increased level of adaptive capacity across the organization.

The adopted strategies, plans and policies provide the framework that will ensure that climate change mitigation and adaptation is a core component of planning and is mainstreamed into Council’s functions and activities. Through delivery of the Framework, the City of Logan is well placed to demonstrate the benefits from economic development opportunities that may eventuate due to our proactive climate change resilience commitment.