NATURE FIRST & RESILIENT CITIES: The European summer just smashed the EU economy – and its people.
Whether it’s this summer or next we need to be prepared for extreme climate. And get set for permanent instability.
What’s new is not change, but the scale of change.
There’ll be ways to survive and even areas that will prosper. But to navigate our path to resilience we’ll need the help of the best minds in the land to keep us ahead of that fast moving curve ball.
Suddenly resilience is the word we need top of mind.
But to unlock its power we need to get the story straight first.
The Nature First & Resilient Cities Summit comes in three key steps:
Session 1
Geo political stresses, fragile supply chains, and political ructions can almost all be sheeted back to climate change and shrinking natural resources.
Luke Heilbuth of BWD advises some of the biggest companies globally and locally on how to align their strategic objectives with a world that’s in “the midst of a rupture, not a transition”. And a world that no longer runs on prices, but politics.
Defence knows climate change is among our biggest strategic threats. Cheryl Durrant is one of Australia’s most influential experts in the field, advising scenario development for Australian governments and will share her insights.
Mike Rann is a former premier of South Australia and chair of the UN Climate Group. He understands local and global politics. He’ll be in conversation with Parnell Palme McGuinness, columnist and strategic adviser to discuss the political appetite for climate action in Australia and globally.
Session 2
Geographies and economic sectors will change. Some for the better, others not so much.
What happens when insurers withdraw, and the banks follow?
Karl Mallon at Climate Risk says the potential is for climate ghettos.
This session will dive into the potential for uninsurable homes, which will be followed by “unbankable” property; an RBA that’s worried (more than usual) and so too a federal Productivity Commission that wants action (but where and how?)
Commercial property and businesses face threats of stranded assets and falling revenues, before we get to indirect losses from failing infrastructure and rolling impact of climate catastrophes.
We need new thinking.There are challenging new ways of analysing our problems that test profoundly held theories of economic, social and personal impact from climate change and how we can live through it.
Nathan Robertson-Ball has interviewed more than 140 people through his highly regarded Finding Nature podcast to synthesise some amazing approaches that tug at both heart and mind.
Session 3
You’ll need to learn new rules. Find safe locations. Discover different Earth aligned businesses – or invent them.
Prepping?
Maybe.
Solutions are abundant. What’s missing is the speed and commercial firepower to scale the things that will save us.
Solutions such as the teaching that Indigenous knowledge and creative innovation can give us. Alison Page of UTS says change is stirring and the evidence of early green shoots abound along Sydney’s glorious harbour shoreline.
Local governments are key to resilience. Both in infrastructure and as first respondents. Rory Linehan of Bentley Systems knows the odds are stacked against them financially, but he’s got low cost solutions – some even free – that can pave the way to resilient communities.
Community connections could be the most resilient resource of all. Melinda Dewsnap of the City of Sydney will join Western Sydney Judith Bruinsma of WSROC to reveal an inspiring program of collaboration.
Cool is hot now thanks to the work from Sebastian Pfautsch of Western Sydney University, who’s forged a national path to urban greening and now has a new lab to reveal its connections and interplay with buildings.
Amanda Sturgeon of the Biomimicry Institute will tell us of scientific and entrepreneurial progress, brimming with energy driven by the urgent need.
And to round up the day Jua Cilliers of UTS will invite some of the speakers and panellists to the stage to take part in a hypothetical – It’s 2050; we made a resilient, sustainable place for ourselves, a great city. What choices did we make, what policies did we demand and what are the solutions we heard about in 2026 that made it work?
