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The once resilient Cumberland Plain is now critically vulnerable due to the compounding micro-events, misguided policy, and rapid urbanisation. These influences have destabilised the landscape’s integrity, rendering it incapable of withstanding the cyclical climatic extremes, such as flooding, which define the plains ecological function. By 2100, if these influences continue to amalgamate, the Cumberland Plain will undoubtedly be powerless in sustaining its ecological integrity, leading to the collapse of vital ecologies and natural systems within the Plain.
Despite the significance of the remaining Cumberland Plain landscape and ecologies, policy and planning decisions continue to prioritise urban expansion and resource extraction over long-term environmental resilience. Symptomatically, the short-term trade-offs accelerate the landscape’s decline, compromising both its ecological and human capacity to adapt to climate change. In the increased occurrence of climatic extremes, flood waters do not discriminate, nor conform to local government boundaries, yet the response and management of these events are fragmented as each LGA operates in silos. The lack of flood management exacerbates the dysfunction and jeopardises the landscape and the communities that rely on it.
In response, the establishment of the Hawkesbury-Nepean Flood Resilience District (HNFRD) is a unified governmental jurisdiction designed to supersede local governments and boundaries to address the challenges of the floodplain holistically. The HNFRD entails a landscape-driven policy reform, focusing on establishing a “goldilocks effect”.
Whilst many of the tools and strategies needed to strengthen the landscape and urban resilience are known, they are unimplemented due to fragmented councils, competing political priorities and multiple stakeholders involved. The foundation of this district aims to overcome these obstacles by establishing a governance structure that achieves the necessary trade-offs needed to satisfy all key stakeholders. Through this, the newly balanced district aims to foster a resilient landscape that can adapt to the ongoing anthropogenic pressures whilst supporting sustainable growth and creating a system that levels human needs with ecological resilience.
