Victorian Landcare Magazine - Winter 2024, Issue 87
A dynamic youth-led initiative, Climate Adaptation Requires Youth Action (CARYA), was launched in 2020 to give young people the opportunity to connect with like-minded peers and gain the skills to tackle social and environmental challenges intensified by climate change.
CARYA was a response to rising concerns about the climate crisis among young people in the Hume City Council region, who wanted to do more after the global School Strikes for Climate, but often did not know where to begin.
Launched by Banksia Gardens Community Services (BGCS) in Broadmeadows – one of Victoria’s most disadvantaged postcodes – CARYA offers an eight-week training program covering topics such as climate adaptation, gender equity, climate justice, circular economy, First Nations knowledge and biodiversity. Graduates of the program take part in local climate adaptation projects, including tackling food waste, promoting community gardening, advancing composting practices, raising climate awareness and enhancing community engagement.
Last year, CARYA was awarded a Victorian Government New Growth Projects grant to establish two Climate Action Youth Initiatives: an environmental audit for BGCS and an educational resource for the community.
The audit of BGCS operations covered seven categories: financial, waste production, water usage, transport, energy usage, biodiversity, and equity. It used AI tools developed by a CARYA participant to assess expenditure data and carry out carbon modelling and benchmarking, and identify affordable, quick measures for reducing emissions. The tool will be made available for other organisations to use.
The educational resource, informally known as CARYA Zine, draws from training materials to educate the public about a range of climate topics and will be distributed across the Hume City Council area in print and online.
As a community-focused initiative, CARYA promotes social cohesion and empowers young people aged 18 to 29 to drive change and the adoption of sustainable practices. Regular post-training meetings enable participants to plan projects and events, such as planting days, citizen science activities, sustainable transportation initiatives and circular economy programs.
Above: Participants discuss biodiversity in the garden at Banksia Gardens Community Services in
Broadmeadows during the 2023 CARYA training program.
Balancing project development with work, school and family responsibilities has been challenging for participants. Nonetheless, empowering individuals to take on lead roles and allowing flexible schedules helps them manage their commitments while contributing to the group’s goals.
Another challenge has been ensuring events are accessible for Broadmeadows’ culturally diverse community. An effective solution has been promoting events directly to organisations such as Arabic Welfare and Brotherhood of St Laurence, as well as placing flyers in residents’ mailboxes.
Other activities include hosting and engaging in a range of climate-related events to promote environmental awareness, and co-designing a Hume Youth Climate Summit.
Banksia Gardens Community Services sustainability and education coordinator Edgar Caballero Aspe said the program had also been successful in helping participants recognise climate anxiety and supporting them to address it by taking meaningful action.
Speaking in a promotional video, Hansani Abedheera Liyan Patabendige said she found the 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires extremely stressful.
“I didn’t even know there was (such a thing as) climate anxiety, till ... they actually talked about it, and I’m like, oh, OK this is a real thing,” she said.
Wesley Grey, who also took part in the first program, said most people’s introduction to climate talk was “the icecaps are melting, the rainforests are being destroyed, everything’s on fire and we’re all going to die. Taking action has 100 per cent helped me with my climate anxiety,” he said.
Heytesbury District Landcare Network (HDLN) has been focused on revegetating farmland since 1995, with almost two million trees planted in the district. The network’s targeted climate action programs focusing on climate mitigation and adaptation on farms began in 2017. The keeping carbon on the farm project provides a suite of activities for dairy farmers and other primary producers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and better prepare for climate change, including revegetation, carbon-sequestering soil amelioration trials, and energy reduction strategies.
Above: A Heytesbury District Landcare Network multispecies field day on activating soil biology near Colac in May 2021.
HDLN has established 30 climate resilient exemplar farms in southwest Victoria, with a focus on increasing the carbon content, moisture levels and biology of agricultural soils as an effective way of building drought resistance. The network is currently producing a Farmers Emissions Reduction Toolkit with practical advice on how to reduce farm carbon footprints, while maintaining productivity and profitability and managing risk. HDLN is a trusted source of climate action advice for local landholders.