ResilientCo was recently engaged by a retail property group to deliver a Community Resilience Plan that aligns with Green Star accreditation requirements. The Plan was designed to serve as a benchmark to be implemented across all its assets.
The Resilience credits found in the Green Star – Buildings rating tool requires businesses to re-look at the way they operate, as well as how they directly or indirectly influence the surrounding community.
The output of the credits is a Community Resilience Plan that aims to identify the shocks and stresses that impact the ability of the assets to service the community, while also developing responses to manage the impacts.
In helping to shape the Plan, the ResilientCo team considered the socio-economic, environmental, and governance landscape of the business with the lens of Community Strengthening, Climate Adaptation and Resilience, and Emergency Management.
Community Strengthening plays a key role in improving community wellbeing and connectedness, particularly with vulnerable community members.
Climate Adaptation and Resilience focused on identifying climate risk, while designing ways to adapt and mitigate risk and improve environmental outcomes.
Emergency Management ensures that robust plans are in place to react to and response to any emergency and that the community is a priority in the recovery process.
A workshop with the client helped to identify and prioritise the chronic stresses and acute shocks likely to impact and shape the client’s assets, as well as the community supported by those assets.
This provided the basis for the client to develop goals and objectives that were aligned with the business’s community resilience pillars, existing sustainability strategies, and the identified stresses and shocks.
Through the process undertaken, it was determined the community resilience building activities would focus on disengaged youth, increasing employment opportunities, supporting retailers and the local community by protecting and preparing assets for the impacts of climate change, and establishing responsible value chain.
Strengthening community resilience is key to ensuring communities survive, adapt, and thrive in the face of disaster.
It was great to work with a business that was really focussed on reducing its impact on the community and further, better supporting it.
If your business could benefit from a Community Resilience Plan, drop us a line at hello@resilientco.au
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