Page 3901 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
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The heat effect of urban warming is amplified in cities such as Canberra because we have large areas of concrete, roads and other heat-absorbing materials. We have all tried walking across bitumen on a summer’s day, and it is simply not humanly possible. The city heats up during the day and stays hot during the night as the heat absorbed during the day is released. Trees, which create a shady canopy, are one of the best measures we have to respond to this urban heat island effect.
Our living water infrastructure, such as wetlands and permeable surfaces like lawns, is also very important for climate change adaptation. In our dry summer climate, breezes over lakes, ponds and damp vegetation can significantly reduce the urban temperature. More severe storm events will also increase the peak water load that our infrastructure has to handle, and wetlands are an important way of managing this. I am very pleased that we are building wetlands, including a considerable number of new wetlands in my electorate of Murrumbidgee.
Of course, there are other benefits of the ACT’s living infrastructure. On an emotional level, our lakes, wetlands and trees are loved by the community. Certainly, the wetlands that have been installed to date in Canberra have been very much appreciated by neighbours. The better suburbs deliberative democracy process last year ranked lakes, ponds and wetlands first out of 14 priorities, and street and park trees at number two. Canberra’s urban trees also have important biodiversity value, particularly for bird life, as well as for a wide range of insects. Water is also critical in the urban environment for our wildlife, especially during hot summer days.
Why do we need a plan? In my experience everywhere, not just in government, what gets measured and planned for is most likely to be looked after. Other issues tend to fall through the cracks. For action to be taken on living infrastructure, part of the public service needs to be responsible for managing it, and targets are a really great way of ensuring that the public service and government focus on something and keep it on track. Living infrastructure has often fallen through the cracks both here and around the country. This plan, I hope, will be the first step towards fixing that.
I am particularly pleased with action 2 of the living infrastructure plan, which is:
Achieve 30% tree canopy cover (or equivalent) and 30% permeable surfaces in Canberra’s urban footprint by 2045.
This compares to current tree canopy cover, on average, over the ACT’s urban areas of 21 per cent. I should emphasise that this is only for the urban areas. Clearly, Namadgi National Park has a much higher canopy target than 21 per cent. For me, that commitment is the key achievement of the plan, and I wish to see it as a key achievement of the implementation of the plan.
Importantly, these targets are not just for public land, as is the case in some other cities. They are for the whole urban area—except, I believe, we have taken out Lake Burley Griffin, which is fair enough, as there are not many trees growing on Lake Burley Griffin. But it is critical that it is for the whole urban area. To mitigate summer heat and maintain our living infrastructure system, trees and permeability are needed on both our private land and, importantly, our public places.
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