Building For Climate Resilience: Australia’s 2022 Flood Disaster

Earlier this year, Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales in Australia received more than a year’s worth of rainfall in a week. One town, Gympie had its highest flood in over a century with over 1,000 properties completely submerged in water. 

The Insurance Council has reported that the actual claims costs from 197,000 claims across both states is estimated to have cost $3.35 billion in insured losses.

It is a devastating time for these communities and unfortunately we’re dealing with this natural disaster as we always have.

Little to no government support and like for like building replacements which are costly, unsafe and ineffective for changing weather patterns. 

So what else can we do? 

Well I’m delighted to invite Brett Mckenzie, CEO of Sustainable back to the podcast with a very insightful look into what it takes to build and rebuild for resilience. 

Brett and his team are renowned for building with nature rather than against using a 25-year lifecycle model. Sustainable constructed a property during the 2020 pandemic called the “Hidden Gem” in Fingal Head, whose tailored build survived four floods. It stands as an example of what’s possible but Brett delves a little deeper today into the opportunity for a restructure of local government, incentives for rebuilding for the future and redesigning and moving entire communities from disaster prone areas – it’s certainly possible.  

I hope you find value in today’s episode. 

Brett and I spoke last year on Building Sustainable Communities. You can listen to that episode here.

You can also visit Sustainable’s website or connect with Brett on LinkedIn to learn more about their work.