The virtual climate adaptation summit hosted by The Netherlands this week provided a valuable opportunity for the international community to work together towards a more climate-resilient future. At the summit, Australia reaffirmed our commitment to ambitious and practical action to combat the impacts of climate change at home, in our region and around the world.
Like Malta and many other countries, Australia faces climate challenges. Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent with the oldest living cultures and some of the richest biodiversity. So, we have a real stake in adapting and building resilience to the impacts of climate change as well as developing innovative technology to combat it through reducing emissions locally and globally.
Last year, which came to be dominated by the pandemic, started for Australia with the most devastating bushfires in our history. We were deeply thankful for the generosity and goodwill of people around the world at that time. The bushfires demonstrated the importance of bringing together modern science with traditional indigenous knowledge. For over 65,000 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have preserved and protected Australia’s natural environment through traditional fire management practices such as cool and controlled burns.
Since then, as well as allocating more than AUD2 billion to bushfire recovery, Australia has committed over AUD15 billion to make our environment and water infrastructure more resilient to drought and climate disasters. This includes the important job of regenerating habitats, helping native animals recover and building knowledge for better land management. We recognise that climate change is the biggest long-term threat to the health of coral reefs worldwide, including those in the Great Barrier Reef, one of our national icons. We have committed AUD2.7 billion to the reef’s management and protection.
Australia has pledged at least AUD1.5 billion over the period 2020 to 2025 for global climate finance- Jenny Cartmill
While our adaptation and resilience work starts at home, Australia is also committed to supporting neighbouring and global communities to tackle climate change. Australia has pledged at least AUD1.5 billion over the period 2020 to 2025 for global climate finance. AUD500 million of this funding will directly assist our Pacific neighbours. We’re sharing our expertise, experiences and skills through our development programme and the Australian infrastructure financing facility for the Pacific. We are joining the international call for action on raising ambition for climate adaptation and resilience.
Reducing emissions must go hand in hand with adaptation action. We remain resolutely committed to the Paris Agreement and are on track to meet and beat our 2030 target, having reduced emissions by almost 17 per cent since 2005. We are adopting renewables at record levels.
Like Malta, we have a sunny climate and are investing increasingly in solar energy. Almost one in four Australian homes are now solar-powered and we expect renewables will contribute at least 50 per cent of our electricity by 2030.
Australia is aiming to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible. The need to get to net zero is not in dispute – the focus is on how we achieve it. To do this, Australia has developed a technology investment roadmap – a comprehensive plan to invest in technology to bring emissions down. We’re focussed on accelerating technologies like hydrogen, carbon capture use and storage, soil carbon, energy storage to backup renewables and decarbonise transport and low or zero emissions steel and aluminium.
Widespread global deployment of these technologies will reduce emissions or eliminate them in sectors responsible for 90 per cent of the world’s emissions. Our goal is to get the cost of deploying these new technologies to parity with existing, higher-emitting alternatives. This is a practical pathway to achieve net zero emissions that also presents economic opportunity. It’s an approach that will bring the world with us, including the major developing economies in our region.
As the world recovers from the economic impact of COVID-19, we need investments that can both accelerate emissions reductions and support jobs and communities. Even with the most ambitious global emissions reductions, we will still need to adapt to changes in our climate over the coming decades. Practical actions that help us adapt are critical.
Whether in responding to the pandemic or tackling climate change we need to embrace innovation and strengthen global partnerships to make a difference together.
Jenny Cartmill is Australian High Commissioner.