Adapting to the scorching summers ahead

ANALYSIS

The impacts of climate change are overwhelming.

Every year we are confronted by images of bushfires, floods, droughts and storms.

But although there’s less attention paid to the dangers of extreme heat, it’s a major killer in Australia we should all be thinking about and planning for.

This is the top-line message from a VCOSS event that brought community organisations together with representatives from government, local councils and academics.

Extreme heat also makes people sick, causes financial hardship, and exacerbates violence in families and the community.

People working in the community sector see these impacts on their clients all the time.

And the organisations they work for aren’t immune from the impacts either.

Experts at the event discussed how extreme heat affects vulnerable people, and how communities and organisations can adapt.

Emma Bacon from Sweltering Cities made the point that heat-related vulnerability relates to a range of other issues.

“It’s about structural inequality,” she said. “It’s about where you live, it’s about your income, it’s about your health, it’s about your gender.”

Urban heat islands are a huge problem, particularly in Melbourne’s west and north and around Dandenong.

And Emma shared stories of renters who’d been stopped from making simple heat-safety alterations to their homes, like putting up curtain rails.

“The minimum standard for renters is you need curtains that block light and have privacy, but nothing to do with heat. There’s nothing to do with having a safe cool home in the summer. That’s something we really need to change.”

Heat-related sleeplessness is a huge issue, as is mental health.

“Suicides, mental health presentations, domestic violence and assaults all go up in higher temperatures. There is this really intense mental health impact.”

Air conditioning helps a lot of people keep cool, but it can’t be the whole solution.

“We need to provide funding so people on low incomes can turn it on, or make sure that … it always has renewable energy attached to it so people aren’t worrying about whether they can stay safe during heatwaves.”

Deaths from heatwaves are vastly underestimated because they’re not systematically recorded as heat-related. And Emma pointed out that we have a limited understanding of how bad extreme heat is going to get. In Melbourne we’re projected to have a doubling of heat-related deaths by 2050.

“Every summer heat records will be broken. We’re going to use the word unprecedented a lot.”

One of the problems, she said, is that we treat extreme heat as an individual problem with individual solutions. It’s not enough to tell people how to ‘look after themselves’.

“Feeling hot is not about being uncomfortable for a lot of people; it’s a life-threatening situation… And when you don’t have a lot of money for extra food; when your home is a hotbox that’s unsafe to be in, telling people to turn on a fan and put a wet towel on their neck is really inadequate. People are trying their best.

“Heat waves are environmental disasters where we know when and where they’re going to happen and we can plan for them. And so we need to be doing that now. That’s why we need to be telling decision-makers that they’ve got to act for safer suburbs, for safer homes, for better health outreach, and to make sure our most vulnerable aren’t left struggling to take care of themselves in those situations.”

The impact of extreme heat is also extremely gendered, as Margareta Windisch from RMIT University discussed.

Older women who live alone are at higher risk of heat-related mortality and morbidity, because of factors relating to systemic oppression, discrimination and lack of resources.

Margareta interrogated the concept of vulnerability, and the responsibility it implicitly assumes.

“What we are actually saying is it’s not just there’s something wrong with me – I’m not healthy enough, what am I doing that is creating my vulnerability? – but it is the social environment. It’s the political, the economic environment that actually makes me vulnerable.”

She pointed out that some suburbs have a lot more resources dedicated to their welfare than others, and that life-saving emergency services are under-funded and over-stretched.

“The catastrophic dimensions of heat wave mortality are concentrated amongst particular population groups. They’re higher in particular neighbourhoods… They’re exposing the existence of systemic and spatial inequality.

“What is the role of the state in creating the crisis or responding to the crisis? Why are some neighbourhoods experiencing higher mortality than others?”

Older women also face multiple barriers in accessing cool public places such as libraries and shopping centres. These community safe spaces don’t have adequate funding for transport and don’t consider things like people’s pets and their sense of personal safety.

“We’ve got to listen to what communities need so that older women don’t become the shock absorbers of the climate crisis.”

There are also other intersecting circumstances that make some people more vulnerable to heat-related death and disease.

Kaye Graves from Bendigo Community Health Services talked about risk factors for people from refugee backgrounds.

Language barriers and low literacy in people’s language of origin are major drivers of heat vulnerability.

“We talk about the recognitions of warnings,” she said, “and what that means in a very simple context and knowing when to act.

“I want to reinforce the need for emergency warning systems to be accessible for all local people of refugee background.

“I don’t believe there’s enough research done on how we can embed these messages into orientation to Australia.”

But there is amazing work being done by community organisations to keep people safe.

Mary Farrow from Emerald Community House talked about some of the innovative ways organisations are responding.

“We have free internet, recharging power backup, showers, toilets, generators, laundry, public computers.”

They also run emergency scenarios so community members can plan and prepare ahead for unexpected contingencies.

“When there is an extreme heat event, the power goes out because of the demand on the grid … Design your own scenario. There’s loads of software out there to help you to do this kind of stuff. Work with your group and say, Okay, this is what’s happened. We have a fire or we have a heat event. We’re in a house or we have these people, what are we going to do? Use your imagination.”

Organisations, she said, “have the capacity, the knowledge, the lateral flexibility, the agility to respond to disasters.”

This event was about sharing that capacity and knowledge, learning from those on the front line and from each other, as a matter of survival

As Emma Bacon said, “This is an urgent issue. We should not be waiting until there is a deadly summer and thousands of deaths before we actually start to take this seriously.”