by Sahar Foladi
Greater Dandenong Council is set to increase its sustainability workforce to address its sluggish environmental reporting.
Since council adopted its 10-year Climate Emergency Strategy Action Plan in August 2020, it has failed to provide annual progress reports and to outline its key achievements .
Council has five sustainability staff members and is currently advertising for a sixth.
“We will be further increasing our sustainability/environment staffing numbers in the new financial year, with additional positions in the 2025/26 budget,” acting chief executive officer Sanjay Manivasagasivam said.
“There are also many other positions within the organisation that directly support our sustainability, climate change and environmental agenda.
“As well as addressing the challenges that climate change brings to Council, we are also actively engaging the community to support them in making changes to address climate change.”
He says the action plan is being reviewed and an update will be provided in coming months.
The community-based Greater Dandenong Environment Group suspects the lack of staff is the reason why there’s no reports submitted.
“This is one of the reasons why we’ve been advocating for council to put more resources into climate and sustainability because they don’t have the manpower to get to the reporting,” environment group president Isabelle Nash said.
“They’re not acting like it’s a priority. They have declared a climate emergency, now act on it.
“We are hearing of other Councils that have between 10 to 20 staff in their climate and sustainability teams now.
“We know the new council are looking to address the numbers of the team but it really needs to be quite large.
“Other councils have really grown those areas and City of Greater Dandenong is still behind.”
In 2020-’21 the council received $84,000 to help fund a full-time sustainability planning officer for three years to help implement its climate strategy. The role was made permanent after three years.
Nash says the group is optimistic that there will be improvements. But it’s a matter for council to “aim high” on staff numbers especially when “greater support” is needed due to its culturally diverse community.
She acknowledges other pressing issues in the community such as homelessness, cost of living crisis and rising bills. Those vulnerable people are on the “frontline” to deal with climate change impacts through the storms, heatwaves and flooding, she says.
“We want to see the resources for climate and sustainability to grow without detriment to other important issues.”
The group refer to the neighbouring City of Casey whom they believe has accelerated ahead in the past four years in this field.
According to Greater Dandenog council, it has made progress over the last five years such as reducing council’s emissions by 82 per cent, utilising only renewable electricity, installing over 600 kilowatts of solar panels on multiple council sites, transitioning nearly 30 fleet vehicles to low emissions vehicles, and replacing a number of small gas assets with electric units.
It has also planted 2000 trees each year since 2012, which has resulted in the municipal wide canopy coverage increasing from 9.9 per cent in 2016 to 14.1 per cent in 2023.
