Fire to Flourish
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Fire to Flourish is a new five-year transdisciplinary program led by Monash University working at the intersection of disaster resilience and community development. In partnership with four communities across New South Wales and Victoria affected by the 2019/20 Australian bushfire season, the program supports communities to lead their own recovery, co-create foundations for long-term resilience and wellbeing, and disrupt cycles of entrenched disadvantage.
In 2021, the program on building strong foundations and relationships, and co-hosted two public events to learn from the experiences, ideas and wisdom of community members: a webinar on Community Leadership & Disaster Resilience: Research and Implications for Policy, and the Growing Community-led Disaster Resilience Forum. It also undertook a National Survey on Disaster Preparedness and Resilience, and released An Agenda for change: Community-led disaster resilience.
Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub
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The Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub researches and implements best practice approaches to communicating climate change, in partnership with leading science and media organisations. Their impact-focused projects aim to improve public understanding of climate change by delivering climate information to audiences through existing media infrastructure.
These projects include Climate Communicators, which produces simple, long-term climate graphics for Australian TV weather presenters; Changing Climates, which, in partnership with NewsCorp Australia, delivers hyperlocal climate and emissions information to local publications across Australia; and Climate Classrooms, which provides free, easily accessible lesson plans on climate science tailored to meet the needs of teachers teaching Years 7 to 12.
Jupiter Ionics
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A new Monash spin-out, Jupiter Ionics, has secured an exclusive licence to develop a patented technology for green ammonia first invented by the University's School of Chemistry. Ammonia is an essential ingredient in the global food system through its role in fertiliser production, but current technology typically produces around two tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of ammonia produced. The new technology uses an electrochemical process to produce ammonia by reducing nitrogen extracted from the air and combining it with hydrogen extracted from water, with power provided by renewable electricity.
International Universities Climate Alliance
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Monash is a founding member of the International Universities Climate Alliance, a network of leading climate research universities that seeks to support global leaders to meet the challenge of climate change through sharing evidence-based information on climate research. The Climate Alliance provides a central hub for universities to share the latest climate research with the public and enables greater collaboration between leading research teams, supporting global leaders, policy makers and industry in planning for and responding to climate change.
Climate Adaptation Mission
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The Climate Adaptation Mission, led by BehaviourWorks Australia (BWA) and its partners, explores how systemic behavioural public policy experiments could have a substantial impact on reducing projected harms from climate change. In 2021, it completed Phase 1 of the Climate Adaptation Mission: Scoping & Prioritisation, which involved coming to an agreement on the mission scope and choosing priority climate adaptation challenges to address throughout co-design behaviour change trials.
Monash Disaster Resilience Initiative
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The Monash Disaster Resilience Initiative focuses on preparing communities to strengthen their resilience through climate and disaster risk reduction. In 2021, MUDRI was a partner in the development of the Upper Beaconsfield Bushfire & Biodiversity Tool, which provides tailored, local information for residents in the Victorian towns of Upper Beaconsfield, Dewhurst and Guys Hill to make informed decisions about managing bushfire risks while protecting biodiversity on private property.
In addition, they joined up with the new Fire to Flourish program to organise the Forum on Growing Community-led Disaster Resilience and the Gender and Disaster Australia Conference, Gender Justice in Disaster: Inspiring Action.
The Monash/C2Zero Real Carbon Price Index
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The price of carbon emissions is a key driver in the global transition to a cleaner future. However, carbon prices vary widely across different jurisdictions, and global trends have been obfuscated. To bring greater clarity to policy-makers, researchers, investors, and the public at large, an international collaboration of experts in carbon markets and financial indices from Monash, C2Zero and SparkChange came together to develop the Real Carbon Price Index in 2021. The Index allows individuals and organisations to understand the costs around remediating their impact. It allows policymakers, regulators and governments to benchmark their position and progress. And it shows who the leaders and laggards are when it comes to climate change and sets base levels for new entrants and new activities.