Last week, Council held its mini-Conference of the Parties to the Convention (mini-COP) local stocktake contributing to the COP28 in Dubai which started on 1 Dec 2023.
Yarra’s local stocktake brought together locals and experts in a variety of fields to identify potential for local climate action, gaps in need of addressing, and needs from other levels of government. With the discussion emphasising a lens of climate justice and equity.
Yarra’s mini-COP (Yarra Climate Summit) was the only one scheduled for Oceania; but is one of many that took place around the world.
Stocktake participants shared diverse ideas for the future of Yarra:
- A community that is empowered and supported to care for Country and to care for each other.
- A City with fewer cars, less concrete, less asphalt; instead having more permeable surfaces, and more ways of travelling that are enjoyable and that support connections to other people, along green paths under ample shade in summer.
- More conscious efforts to connect with our Indigenous history and culture through flora, indigenous place names, truth-telling, and power shared with First Nations peoples.
- Access to affordable homes that are climate-resilient and powered with energy that is renewable, reliable, and affordable.
- A future in which nature has equal rights with humans.
The outcomes of all of the will feed through to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the COP in Dubai by ICLEI in its capacity as the focal point of the Local Government and Municipal Authority constituency to the UNFCCC. These local perspectives will re-energise global decisions and national plans as part of the first ever Paris Agreement Global Stocktake.
