On the 17th of November, the Hunter JO received a Highly Commended award in the Climate Champion award category of the 2021 Cities Power Partnership (CPP) Climate Awards. This award is a recognition of the importance of local government working together as a united voice to ensure regional leadership is represented at a decision-making level.
Approaching shared challenges with a collaborative mindset is extremely important in a region where responding to climate change can be quite complex. This is a result of our jobs and livelihoods being deeply tied to the coal and energy sectors.
The Hunter JO received this award as a result of the whole of the Hunter joining the CPP program: the first region nationally to have all councils become members. Our participation in the development of the CPP network saw 11 local Councils join the program and work collaboratively to develop and pursue shared regional opportunities.
The Hunter region has been consistently working to fulfill the objectives of this program and to fulfill the Member Councils pledges since joining in June 2021. This has included working to support Member Councils to embed their CPP commitments into key governing documents.
This can be seen through the development of our Climate Change Integrated Planning and Reporting (IP&R) package which has now been released as a working draft and has received significant attention as a resource for other councils. This package supports Councils’ and their communities’ climate change journey by providing user friendly, practical tools and templates to embed climate change throughout the IP&R process.
In order to deal with the simultaneous challenges of changing global energy markets and climate change impacts, our Member Councils need to be able to support one another and coordinate our efforts across the region. By partnering with Cities Power Partnership our Member Councils and the Hunter JO are ensuring that we take joint action for our region and our communities.
Working collaboratively, we to attract more funding, expertise and resources to support region wide and council specific projects. We are proud that, being the first region nationally to have all Member Councils join, we set an example moving forward for other regions to collaborate through the Cities Power Partnership Program.
To find out more about the Hunter JO’s involvement in the CPP Program read our Climate Awards media release HERE. For more information about CPP head to their website.