DELIVERY

Objective  1 – Carbon emission reduction and carbon capture programmes are actively encouraged and supported.

Strategies

1. Support investigation, dissemination and use of regionally-specific information to guide emission reduction opportunities, methods and tools to support decision making.
2. Promote and implement carbon storage programmes such as carbon tree plantings, soil carbon sequestration and coastal blue carbon (mangroves etc.) sequestration.
3. Support programmes to:
   • assist individuals and communities reduce emissions;
   • encourage commercial, industry and aggregated energy and fuel efficiency;
   • avoid or capture coal mine fugitive emissions;
   • capture, or avoid generating, landfill gas, agricultural waste and biogas from wastewater; and
   • promote energy efficiency in town planning, house design and domestic appliances.
4. Collaborate regional partnerships to design and bid for large-scale carbon credit projects.  For example: landscape-scale activities including grazing, planting and savanna burn fire management.
5. Investigate the carbon exchange and capture potential at a farm scale and for differing land use types. For example: soil carbon sequestration options between grazing and cropping land use types.
6. Investigate whole-of-sugar-industry scale opportunities for obtaining credit for practice change.

---

Objective  2 – Renewable electrical energy, fuel resources and consumable products are investigated and promoted to reduce the dependence on finite fossil fuel resources.  

Strategies

1. Support independent research into, and promote the use of, alternative and renewable electrical energy, fuel sources and consumable products that are commercially competitive and offer a wide variety of energy use and supply options. For example: hydro, solar, co-generation and using waste as a resource for making electrical energy, fuel and other consumable products to reduce pressure on finite fossil fuel resources.
2. Support research and development of alternative economies not reliant on coal and oil as the only source of electrical energy and fuels.
3. Support partnerships and networks between major industry sectors, regional planners, enterprise organisations and researchers.

---

Objective  3 – Enhance knowledge and ability to respond to effects of climate change in the region.

Strategies

1. Establish, expand and protect areas of ‘native refugia’ that are identified as being resilient to predicted climate change impacts.
2.  Investigate the impacts of climate change on natural resources, and identify management options for responding to opportunities to increase climate change resilience, such as:
   • innovative and sustainable land and water management practices;
   • including climate change projections in modeling and assessment of natural resource conditions, quantities and allocations;
   • crop diversification and switching; and
   • supporting new enterprises.
3. Investigate pest and biosecurity implications of higher temperatures on the natural environment.
4. Support investigation, dissemination and use of regionally specific information on:
   • major emission sources, rates and trends;
   • regional implications of projections in global emissions profiles; and
   • regional contributions to global climate change as defined for the volume of air above our region (air shed).
5. Promote awareness of climate variability and practical resilience strategies.
6. Promote awareness and apply adaptation strategies in local government decisions and development planning to avoid and reduce unnecessary impacts on the community from increased coastal hazards. For example: The Climate Change (Coastal Hazards) Adaptation Program (CHAP).

 SUCCESS INDICATORS

By or before 2026:

• climate variability and change predictions are incorporated into planning and natural resource management;
• the region’s carbon store has increased and carbon emissions reduced;
• there is increased investment in, and access to, renewable energy electricity, fuel resources and consumable products;
•  communities and individuals involved in NRM have the knowledge and capacity to adapt to climate change impacts; and
• there is increased landscape resilience to impacts of a changing climate.