Helping nature adapt to a changing climate

An Australia that’s prepared and strong enough to withstand the impacts of a changing climate. This is the future that we’re working towards - and everyone has a role to play. Australia has some of the brightest scientific and innovative minds, and over 60,000 years of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge. Right now, we must learn quickly, adapt and scale solutions to help prepare people and nature for a changing climate. Let’s harness what makes Australians so great - our resourcefulness, commitment to nature and respect for the land - to help improve the long-term resilience of our environment for generations to come.

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Proud partners: Greening Australia and WWF-Australia

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Supported by NAB Foundation

Climate-ready Restoration: A science-led plan

Greening Australia and WWF-Australia are proud to partner to deliver climate-ready restoration nationwide.

Combining the strengths and experience of both organisations, we’ll apply innovation, science and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge to practical, on-ground projects. Together, we’ll work to mainstream effective, nature-based solutions across Australia. By doing so, we can ensure a future where both people and nature thrive.

To combat the devastating impacts of a changing climate, we must urgently find and implement new ways to restore nature so it's strong enough to survive for future generations.

This is what we call climate-ready restoration.

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Supported by NAB Foundation’s Environmental Resilience Fund

NAB Foundation’s Environmental Resilience Fund is supporting Greening Australia and WWF’s Climate-ready Restoration program, which is improving natural disaster resilience within Australia.

The collaboration with the NAB Foundation delivers two key parts of Climate-ready Restoration - developing and testing Green Firebreaks as a nature-based solution to manage bushfire risk, and undertaking a rewilding program to improve landscape resilience and species persistence.

The partnership aims to build and test nature-based solutions and engage in two-way knowledge learning with First Nations peoples to manage bushfire risk.

Find out more about WWF-Australia and Greening Australia’s national partnership and our science-led plan for climate-ready restoration in our prospectus.

Climate-ready Restoration: A National Partnership Prospectus - May 2021

Actions towards a Climate-ready future

To help Australia prepare for and adjust to both the current effects of climate change and the predicted impacts in the future, we will focus on three key areas.

Biodiversity

Helping species and landscapes by ‘renovating’ their habitat so they can survive the impacts of climate change. This includes devising and trialling new climate risk-based approaches to managing nature, ultimately improving biodiversity.

Ecosystem services

Improving the strength of our natural life support systems that are vulnerable to climate change. Our goal is to ensure ecosystem services are safeguarded in priority landscapes, supporting the resilience of communities. This includes prioritising our work in places important to people's well-being, such as water catchments, to make sure they are resilient to a changing climate.

Climate risk reductions

Finding and applying solutions that reduce climate-induced risk to ecosystems. This includes investigating planting designs that measurably reduce climate impacts such as bushfires, drought and extreme temperatures.

Everyone has a role to play

By understanding and planning for the impacts of climate change, we can collectively better assist nature and people to adapt and thrive. We have already taken the first step in approaching the Australian Government, philanthropists and businesses to be the catalyst for real change in this space. However, everyone has a role to play and there is plenty you can do to help combat climate change.

What you can do to help

Australian bushfire, Jervis Bay, January 2019.
© Bryce Harper / WWF-Aus

The impacts of a changing climate

Hotter and drier days. Rises in ocean temperature and sea levels. Shifts in rainfall patterns and more frequent, unpredictable weather events. These are the impacts of a changing climate that we’re experiencing right now in Australia.

This rapid shift in our climate has given people, nature and wildlife little time to prepare and adapt. In 2019-20, our nation experienced one of the most catastrophic bushfire seasons, which caused so much heartbreak and devastating loss.

But together, we can work towards an Australia that is resilient to these climate challenges.

Learn more
UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration © WWF-Australia

Supporting the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Greening Australia and WWF-Australia are both proud members of the Australasian UN Decade Consortium, supporting the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

Our partnership for climate-ready restoration will help to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems in line with the mission of the UN Decade.

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post it notes Innovation and collaboration in office
© Leon on Unsplash

Innovation for Impact - Panda Labs

This is not ‘business as usual’. Many of our proposed approaches are experimental in nature, and we need to learn quickly, adapt and scale solutions rapidly.

Panda Labs is WWF-Australia’s award-winning innovation program, focusing on accelerating and amplifying emerging technologies that deliver positive social and environmental impact.

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Regenerate Australia campaign image

A Regenerate Australia Project

Delivering climate-ready restoration with Greening Australia is part of WWF-Australia’s vision to Regenerate Australia.

It’s the largest and most innovative wildlife and landscape regeneration program in Australia’s history.

Find out more