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Building Climate Resilience in Australia Through Nature-Based Solutions

The impacts of climate change, such as droughts, storms, heatwaves, bushfires, and flooding, continue to be felt across Australia. From the devastating bushfires of 2019-2020, to the intense flooding in Queensland and New South Wales in 2022, climate-induced weather effects and impacts are increasingly commonplace. This makes us acutely aware of the need to accelerate climate mitigation and adaptation measures and to urgently build resilience to climate change.

One of the ways to build resilience is through nature-based solutions. These are activities geared towards protecting, sustainably using, and restoring nature and biodiversity as a means to sequester carbon and thereby mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Conservation Volunteers Australia is working to build climate resilience through various community-powered initiatives aimed at scaling nature-based solutions. We also work with a growing number of partners who are committed to helping us implement these climate-resilient solutions.

This includes our Nature Blocks initiative, Urban Shade Forests initiative, Glossy Black-Cockatoo project, efforts to save the Eastern Barred Bandicoot from extinction, and Revive Our Wetlands – which together protect and restore terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and threatened species.

Find out more below about these initiatives and how you can get involved.

What is Climate Resilience?

Climate resilience is about making communities, cities, countries, ecosystems and economies capable of coping with disruptive events and disturbances like bushfires or storms, typically through a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures.

There are several ways we can build climate resilience. This includes, for example, using climate-smart infrastructure to make the built environment more resilient, or social and economic strategies geared towards protecting people and communities from the impacts of climate change. Nature-based solutions to climate change are another way of enhancing resilience, while also providing a multitude of other benefits.

An example of a nature-based solution to climate change is restoring wetlands. Wetlands are able to store vast amounts of carbon if they are healthy and functioning. By restoring these ecosystems to full health, we can reap the benefits of the ecosystem services that wetlands provide.

In Australia, the National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy aims to help provide a national framework to predict, manage, and adapt to climate change. There are many institutions, levels of government, corporations, nonprofits, and citizens involved in collaboratively building climate resilience in Australia.

CVA is proud to be at the forefront of citizen-powered, nature-based climate adaptation initiatives that are also supporting climate resilience.

How CVA is Contributing to Australia’s Climate Resilience

At Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA), we’re working to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to benefit both people and nature.

Our conservation initiatives build back biodiversity, while at the same time helping ecosystems and communities adapt to climate change and collectively strengthen climate resilience.

Find out more below about how our Nature Blocks initiative, ecosystem and wildlife restoration projects, and Urban Shade Forests initiative are providing innovative and nature-based solutions to climate change.

1. Nature Blocks

Nature Blocks is a CVA initiative, which empowers people across Australia to create small spaces for nature at home or in communities. Whether you have a flower pot on your windowsill, plant a frog bog in your garden, or you install a bee hotel outside, there are lots of fun and nature-positive ways to get involved in our Nature Blocks initiative.

When you plant a Nature Block, you’re helping to build back native biodiversity. Not only does this provide space for animals to live, but there are also many positive health benefits of connecting with nature.

In addition, growing Nature Blocks helps tackle climate change as plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen as part of the process of photosynthesis.

With so many reasons to create a Nature Block, we’re delighted that thousands of Australians have already engaged with this initiative. We hope that this momentum will help to build climate resilience, healthier cities, and protect and enhance the biodiversity of our ecosystems.

🌸 Start your own Nature Block today: download the CVA App to access free resources to help you get started.

2. Ecosystem Restoration and Wildlife Conservation

Many of our projects and initiatives aim to restore ecosystems and protect threatened and endangered wildlife.

CVA’s Glossy Black-Cockatoo project aims to restore habitat by working collaboratively with partners across Australia. This includes planting over 3,000 native trees and trialling the establishment of artificial breeding hollows to boost population numbers. Through these conservation efforts, our aim is to enhance the resilience of Glossies’ woodland and forest habitats to fires which are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of climate change.

CVA is also helping other species to survive. We’re working with partners to save the Eastern Barred Bandicoot. Until recently, the Eastern Barred Bandicoot was considered extinct in the wild. Thanks to collaborative conservation efforts and the creation of predator-free sanctuaries where bandicoot populations have been able to recover – we’ve made conservation history! Over the past decade, our conservation efforts have resulted in this species recovering from being ‘extinct in the wild’ to being an ‘endangered’ species.

In addition, our Revive Our Wetlands Initiative is helping to restore blue carbon ecosystems like wetlands, which are known for their ability to sequester and store carbon very effectively, making them a conservation priority.

CVA is working to restore various wetland ecosystems across the country, including at Forrestdale Lake and Bibra Lake Nature Reserve in WA, at Derwent estuary in Tasmania, and at Melaleuca Wetlands, Coochiemudlo Island, and Oxbow Wetlands at Moreton Bay, Queensland.

Help us restore wetlands by volunteering at an upcoming wetland restoration event near you. You can find out more on where and when these will be taking place by downloading the CVA App.

3. Urban Shade Forests

CVA’s Urban Shade Forests initiative aims to plant native trees in cities to create urban forests that keep cities cool and help mitigate the urban heat island effect. At the same time, these urban shade forests support urban biodiversity and help cities adapt to climate change.

This innovative urban greening initiative has achieved notable milestones since launching in 2022. We’ve planted over 20,000 native trees and we’re excited to have continued support from founding partners Chevron Australia and its premium fuel brand, Caltex Australia, to expand our Urban Shade Forests in select Australian cities between 2025 to 2027.

Get involved in our Urban Shade Forests! Book your spot to attend one of upcoming volunteering events via our website or by downloading the CVA App.

Get Involved in Building Climate Resilience in 2025

If you’re interested in helping to conserve nature, then tackling climate change is one of the most powerful ways to make an impact.

You can get involved with CVA’s initiatives to create nature-based climate solutions, which help to enhance the resilience of nature, our cities, and economies to withstand the impacts of climate change.

Among the best ways to get started is to download our CVA App, sign up for one of our upcoming conservation volunteering events, and to learn more about climate action and nature-positive solutions on our blog.