One of our members, Elly Hanrahan, was awarded a National Scholarship for her proposal for a Landscape Rehydration Strategy, which saw her head off to Egypt to take part in the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in November last year. What an amazing and exciting experience! Elly says the highlight was the opportunity to have an hour one on one time with the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, who was really interested in the youth perspective on climate change issues. Below Elly sums up her experience in her own words.
Elly writes: Traveling to Egypt made me appreciate Healesville so much – we are so lucky to live in such an incredible landscape and to be surrounded by people and organisations wanting to make a difference – it’s something I’m trying not to take for granted.
While walking through the conference centre and attending events, I came to the realisation that the real solutions to climate action aren’t formulated in sky rise offices – they’re being formulated and carried out on the ground by communities determined to combat government and policy inaction. All over the world, communities lead this movement. It’s exhilarating!
Communities such as Healesville are already experiencing and will continue to experience weather events exacerbated by climate change. We face large disruptions to our everyday lives by events such as storms, flooding and bushfires. Healesville CoRE offers some amazing opportunities for local residents to join together to combat and mitigate the effects of worsening climate change. For example, the Home Efficiency Energy Advisors will visit your home and consider ways you may be able to be more comfortable in your home, reduce your energy costs and reduce your carbon emissions, and the solar, heat pump and reverse cycle air conditioning community opportunities offer a way to minimise our own individual contributions to the problem.
I’m so grateful for this opportunity and so excited to see more community-focussed policies implemented including, hopefully, my proposal for a landscape rehydration scheme.
