Submission to Victoria’s 2026-30 Climate Change Strategy

Summary

The Centre of Excellence: Young People & Disasters (the Centre), a partnership between YACVic and Victoria University’s Youth and Community Research group, have made a submission to the development of Victoria’s 2026-30 Climate Change Strategy (the Strategy). 

The submission includes insights from consultation and survey conducted with young people in Melbourne and in rural and regional Victoria. We also draw on findings from consultations that were conducted throughout 2024/25 by the Centre with various emergency management and non-government organisations, youth and community organisations and universities.

The submission includes young people’s ranking of the key climate concerns as provided by the Victorian Government and ranks the options to manage climate change as provided by the Victorian Government. We also include a range of other issues important to young people that are linked to and impacted by climate change such as mental health, emergency management & disasters, housing, cost of living and more. We highlight how to adopt a social equity approach to climate change and disasters to ensure all young people are included. We emphasise previous calls we have made for long term funding to enable change and champion sustainability. Our submissions accentuates that there is much to learn from young people, including those who experience marginalised, disadvantaged and/or intersecting identities and fist nations communities when it comes to responding to climate change. We believe the Strategy provides not only the opportunity to link climate change planning to disasters, but to ensure social equity, and intersectionality are integral to climate justice for all young Victorians.

Our recommendations are wide ranging and include suggestions for how to actively include all young people across the life of the strategy and strengthen alignment and outcomes with key areas including Education, Employment, Heath/Mental Health and Emergency Management. We have included 12 recommendations from young people we consulted and 14 recommendations from organisational consultations and analysis of specific evidence. 

Read the submission

Recommendations by Young People

• The Strategy include specific mental health outcome adaption and mitigation strategies.
• The Strategy be directly linked to the current Victorian Mental Health Strategy.
• The Strategy include specific outcomes that address young people who face economic hardship and who are in and from low socio-economic areas and backgrounds.
• The Strategy and its adaption strategies should explore ways to take successful innovative ideas to regional and rural areas.
• Fund education initiatives and awareness campaigns around heatwaves that include innovative responses that can be scaled up for broader use.
• The Strategy commit to holding polluters to account with fines and taxes to be used to speed up transition to renewables and increase state owned assets in all aspects of the growing renewable energy sector.
• Commit to supporting local councils to form permanent Youth Advisory Councils/Groups to ensure young people’s voices are embedded in policy making across all areas, but specifically in local emergency management plans and climate change actions.
• Fund qualification opportunities for young people across Victoria in various areas of emergency management, climate action and sustainability and ensure any qualifications added to Free TAFE are accessible in all major regional and rural areas across Victoria.
• Scale up funding for place- and school-based youth workers to provide trauma informed, protected and trusted relationships and support to young people, not limiting services to disaster recovery periods.
• Promote the use of public transport to reduce emissions by providing discounted rates for off-peak travel.
• Dedicate funding for youth mental health services, particularly in rural and regional areas, specifically for disasters and climate change impacts as a key mitigation strategy.
• Dedicate specific funding for youth-led nature based solution projects at a community level.

Recommendations from the Centre

• Young people are included in all planning and developmental phases of the Strategy, including a dedicated working group/advisory group for the Strategy.
• Establish a Victorian Climate Justice and Disaster Resilience Youth Advisory Group as a governance requirement of the Strategy, to oversee the strategies implementation and progress.
• The Strategy needs to draw a direct link between climate change and disasters and dedicate efforts to sector collaboration between the disaster/emergency management sectors and climate justice sectors
• Establish a statewide Community of Practice (CoP) for the Strategy for cross sector collaboration to achieve the Strategy’s aims. Youth and community sectors should be included in this CoP.
• The Strategy, and any further discussion papers or consultations related to the Strategy's development, use and define key words in line with NEMA’s Disaster Risk Reduction Framework.
• the Strategy preface needs to include explicit mention of disasters/hazards/extreme weather events with either ‘human exacerbated’ or ‘climate-change induced’.
• Dedicated efforts to support specific cohorts of vulnerable young people and communities to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change and disasters.
• Commit dedicated funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to lead climate and disaster action planning and elevate their voices as key stakeholders and leaders in climate justice efforts in Victoria.
• Invest in climate change literacy education to support young people to be change agents and increase community buy-in for climate adaptation and resilience actions.
• Subsidise diplomas and certificates focused on climate action, and sustainability across universities and TAFEs.
• Invest in peer-led climate education and advocacy that can be rolled out across various avenues through schools, NGOs, community groups and local councils.
• Embed mental health as a ‘priority focus area’ in the Strategy to address climate change and disaster mental health impacts.
• Commit dedicated funding to prioritise place-based, youth-led projects that are focused on mitigation and adaption to climate change affects in local communities.
• Support and fund education workshops that teach young people about citizen science and the everyday, impactful things they can do to address climate change and build their disaster resilience.