Building Resilience, Reducing Impact: Australian Red Cross Responses to the Challenges of Climate Change
Tracks
Marquis Room | In-Person Only
| Tuesday, July 23, 2024 |
| 10:50 AM - 11:10 AM |
Overview
Marilee Campbell, Australian Red Cross
Speaker
Ms Marilee Campbell
Senior Advocacy Specialist, Emergency Services
Australian Red Cross
Building resilience, reducing impact: Australian Red Cross responses to the challenges of climate change
Abstract
This presentation will explore how resilience building for disasters is supporting communities facing climate change.
Climate change is the biggest humanitarian challenge our society is facing. Beyond the direct costs of increasing disasters, climate change threatens long-term impacts on health and wellbeing, and intensifies many other challenges faced by those already at risk.
Australian Red Cross recognises climate change as a critical issue and every day we respond to the increasing humanitarian impacts of climate change. We respond to the detrimental health, social wellbeing, and psychosocial impacts that climate change has on individuals and the social fabric of our communities. Through our work we integrate actions to strengthen community resilience and build adaptive capacity, with a focus on the needs of people and communities made vulnerable due to climate change. In coming years, as climate change poses ever greater fundamental challenges to individuals and communities, our role in reducing risk and addressing the needs of the most vulnerable will become even more critical.
By building social capital and adaptive capacity through community disaster resilience, Australian Red Cross works to reduce the humanitarian impacts of climate change. Our model for delivering nation-wide community disaster resilience centres on communities and place-based approaches. By building on local strengths the activities we undertake with communities helps reduce the impact future disasters have on individuals, families, workplaces, and communities.
Through this work and through our business-community partnerships we are building stronger and more resilient communities that are better equipped to prepare for and recover from more frequent and intense disasters and crises like drought and heatwaves resulting from climate change.
This presentation will explore how Australian Red Cross addresses the impacts of climate change and how our work with communities is supporting them to adapt to climate change now and into the future.
Climate change is the biggest humanitarian challenge our society is facing. Beyond the direct costs of increasing disasters, climate change threatens long-term impacts on health and wellbeing, and intensifies many other challenges faced by those already at risk.
Australian Red Cross recognises climate change as a critical issue and every day we respond to the increasing humanitarian impacts of climate change. We respond to the detrimental health, social wellbeing, and psychosocial impacts that climate change has on individuals and the social fabric of our communities. Through our work we integrate actions to strengthen community resilience and build adaptive capacity, with a focus on the needs of people and communities made vulnerable due to climate change. In coming years, as climate change poses ever greater fundamental challenges to individuals and communities, our role in reducing risk and addressing the needs of the most vulnerable will become even more critical.
By building social capital and adaptive capacity through community disaster resilience, Australian Red Cross works to reduce the humanitarian impacts of climate change. Our model for delivering nation-wide community disaster resilience centres on communities and place-based approaches. By building on local strengths the activities we undertake with communities helps reduce the impact future disasters have on individuals, families, workplaces, and communities.
Through this work and through our business-community partnerships we are building stronger and more resilient communities that are better equipped to prepare for and recover from more frequent and intense disasters and crises like drought and heatwaves resulting from climate change.
This presentation will explore how Australian Red Cross addresses the impacts of climate change and how our work with communities is supporting them to adapt to climate change now and into the future.
Biography
Marilee has been involved with Red Cross Emergency Services as a volunteer and as a staff-member for the last six years. She previously worked at the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) where she conducted research, wrote and shared climate resources and developed and shared stories of climate adaptation for decision-makers across Australia. Marilee has worked closely with governments, businesses, academia and communities to address complex issues like changing climate, immigration and disasters. She has also worked in federal politics in the Canadian Senate working on the Human Rights and Foreign Affairs/International Trade portfolios.
