Article
James Balzer
Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Fellow, Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Sydney, Australia is experiencing more frequent and intense extreme heat instances. Climate change is exacerbating climate patterns that result in prolonged hot and dry conditions, such as El Nino, and increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves. There is a lack of literature identifying and analysing the governance pathologies of extreme heat in Sydney and the barriers to overcome such pathologies. This article uses futures methodologies, namely Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) incasting and the Futures Triangle, to identify and analyse the status of extreme heat governance in Sydney, and to map a preferred future for heat governance. Additionally, it explores the barriers to achieve this preferred future.
Keywords
Climate change, Extreme Heat, Governance, Causal Layered Analysis, Futures Triangle
Introduction
Extreme heat is a growing challenge; with the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events increasing due to climate change. Extreme heat’s impacts are highly intersectional – existing at the intersection of social, economic and environmental impacts (Hatvani-Kovacs et al., 2018). While technical solutions are well understood, including urban greening, blue-green infrastructure and community cooling centres, there is a dearth of literature exploring the governance dimensions of extreme heat management. Climate change induced extreme heat possesses characteristics typical of transboundary crises, with its impacts having cross-sectoral consequences, yet no one actor or organisation ‘owns’ the crisis cause or crisis management (Corburn, 2009; Boin, 2009).
Sydney, Australia has experienced notable increases in extreme heat instances and average temperatures over the last 20 years (CSIRO, 2022). The 2019-2020 bushfires were largely a result of record breaking temperatures in an El Nino weather pattern, with this weather pattern set to return in 2024 (CSIRO, 2022). In the context of extreme heat – low socio-economic status, elderly, ethnic and disabled communities are consistently the most vulnerable, and under-resourced, overstrained local governments struggle to govern this complex policy issue (Corburn, 2009).
The existing literature assessing Sydney’s extreme heat governance identifies the lacklustre policy capacity in local governments in Sydney – affecting their ability to coordinate and plan for extreme heat events (City of Sydney, 2018). Across the 33 local government areas, there is inconsistency and disparity in the resourcing of local councils, council demographics, levels of social services and overall capacity for local government preparation and response to extreme heat (Zografos, 2016). Additionally, climate change has been a politicised and neglected issue in Australia for a long period of time, albeit this is starting to change.
Regardless, the historical disregard for climate change has affected the institutionalisation of climate change policymaking in Sydney’s local governments (Bolitho & Miller, 2017). This includes a lack of investment in urban cooling initiatives and a poor consideration of climate adaptation in Local Environment Plans (LEPs) and State Environmental Planning Policies (SEPPs) (Bolitho & Miller, 2017).
This article explores the current state of extreme heat governance practices across local governments in Sydney, using the antifragile and agile principles developed by Spitz & Zuin (2021) as an analytical framework (Table 1). Then, using academic literature and semi-structured interviews, the article explores alternative extreme heat governance futures for Sydney through the lens of antifragile and agile principles. Through using CLA incasting, it explores how antifragile and agile governance characteristics are determinants of the effectiveness of extreme heat governance scenarios.
By doing so, the article uses CLA incasting to map alternative heat governance futures and the systemic factors characteristic of each future scenario (Inayatullah, 1999). Subsequently, it uses the Futures Triangle (Inayatullah, 2008) to map the push of the present, pull of the future and weights of history that motivate yet undermine antifragile and agile extreme heat governance in Sydney. This gleans what futures are possible and necessary for strong local government extreme heat governance in Sydney.
Methods
This paper is split into 2 components:
- Understanding Antifragile and Agile Governance for Extreme Heat in Sydney
- Mapping Alternative Futures of Extreme Heat Governance in Sydney Through the Lens of Antifragile and Agile Governance
Both sections are based on systematic literature reviews of grey and peer-reviewed literature. These includes a number of ‘resilience’ strategies in Sydney, including:
- The Whole of Sydney Resilience Plan (City of Sydney, 2018)
- Ryde Resilience Plan 2030 (City of Ryde, 2020)
- The Penrith City Council Resilient Action Plan (Penrith City Council, 2021)
- The Northern Beaches Resilience Strategy (Northern Beaches Council, 2022)
Complementing the literature reviews, semi-structured interviews were conducted with extreme heat and urban resilience experts. The questions comprising the semi-structured interviews are based on the ‘Extreme Heat Governance Framework’ in Table 1, and the questions are presented in Appendix Items 1 and 2.
In section 2, CLA is used to map 3 alternative heat governance futures for Sydney, based on the litany, systemic, worldview and metaphors underpinning these different scenarios. Afterwards, the Futures Triangle is used to map the push of the present, pull of the future and weight of history motivating yet preventing proper extreme heat governance for Sydney (see Inayatullah, 1998; Inayatullah, 2008; Inayatullah, 2013).
Understanding Antifragile and Agile Governance for Extreme Heat in Sydney
Principles of antifragile and agile governance are presented by Spitz & Zuin (2021). Spitz (2020) argues that antifragile and agile principles are a necessity for the future of strategic decision making in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. This has important implications for what might be considered ‘emerging practice’ (Snowden & Boone, 2007) in extreme heat governance, and is also used to assess the status quo of extreme heat governance in Sydney.
Antifragile governance
According to Spitz & Zuin (2021), antifragility is a phenomenon where the recovery from a shock or a stress enables an entity or society to be stronger than before (also see Taleb, 2014). In the context of extreme heat governance, this depends on local governments possessing strong ‘organisational policy capacity’ (Wu et al. 2015; Peters, 2005), in which they have the resources and competencies to prepare for and respond to extreme heat. Spitz (2020) implores organisations to be more anticipatory and manage complex societal systems in order to be more antifragile.
To support antifragility, it is important local governments institutionalise extreme heat governance across a variety of its functions, using their position as a ‘top-down’ actor to conduct the coordination and coherence often not possible by civil society actors alone (Mees et al., 2014; Boin, 2014). This necessitates a mixed governance arrangement between private, civil society and public sector actors, often coined “network governance” (Kjaer, 2004, p.13; Bolitho & Miller, 2017; Bevir, 2009). Importantly, in the context of antifragility, local governments should seek to “orchestrate” and “activate” various policy actors across civil society and the private sector – using their top-down authority to develop antifragility within their jurisdiction (Salamon, 2002, p.6; Boin, 2014). Additionally, a clear alignment of accountability, responsibility and implementation is necessary, particularly considering the cross-functional and fluid nature of extreme heat (Keith et al., 2021; Maller, 2011).
Moser & Boykoff (2013) regard multi-level governance as a way to manage the complexity and multidimensional nature of climate change impacts, particularly bolstering the antifragility of actors not easily connected to community or government services (Bolitho & Miller, 2017). This is especially because extreme heat impacts are disparate and unequal, namely along socio-economic, ethnic and housing quality gradients – demonstrating the intersection of social, economic and environmental phenomena (Reckien et al., 2017). As Spitz (2020) posits, antifragility requires an appreciation of such complex interdependencies between different actors and casualties, particularly among a VUCA phenomenon such as extreme heat.
However, in the context of Sydney, there are currently large lapses in antifragile governance, largely due to lacklustre engagement with community actors, and a lacking ability to “activate” and “orchestrate” community actors (Salamon, 2002, p.6). In large part, this is due to a lack of organisational policy capacity amongst local governments – lacking resources and competencies necessary for bridging community and government actors (City of Sydney, 2018). Additionally, many local governments lack cohesive, systems-based planning and coordination for their large local government areas, especially in highly populated areas like Western Sydney. As Dr Awais Piracha, Associate Professor in Geography, Tourism and Planning at Western Sydney University remarked: “in Western Sydney, we have very large councils, such as 400,000 or more, and more affluent areas like Hunters Hill have 14,000… but they still have the same amount of councillors. At the state and federal level electorates are based on population, but not at the local government level” (Piracha, A. 2023, August 19, personal interview).
As Keith et al. (2019, p.5) also argue, “extreme heat planning must compete for limited time and resources with numerous other urgent urban issues, some of which are usually seen as higher priority”. Such short-termism is endemic in political-administrative leadership during crises, especially as such planning does not necessarily generate political support from constituents, and policymakers cannot frame the impact and consequences of slow onset events (Feduzi et al., 2022; Boin, 2009). For example, land use planning and other technical solutions to extreme heat take greater priority, often as they are more visible and politically palatable. The remarks of Keith et al. (2019) are seen in Sydney, with under-resourced local councils struggling to manage more immediate term problems that are less complex and time-intensive, therefore lacking the ability to use their organisational policy capacities to build antifragility within their jurisdiction.
Organisational policy capacity is best enacted through centralised and politically salient positions with the public sector. As Ron Harris, Lead of Knowledge and Engagement at the Resilient Cities Network, remarked, policymakers need to understand: “what’s going to be the central authority for communicating what extreme heat even is…you don’t want to just keep it in public works, or resilience and sustainability” (Harris, R. 2023, August 26, personal interview).
As Kurt Shickman, former Director of Extreme Heat Initiatives at the Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, remarks: “this really gets to the attractiveness of a Chief Heat Officer type position within the city government…someone who has access to the mayor or the municipal leader, and is able to convene across the different platforms that they’re in”. (Shickman, K. 2023, August 26, personal interview).
This lack of antifragility is compounded by a lack of coordination between different levels of government and between local governments. City of Sydney (2018, p.106) makes reference to this, citing: “Disjointed governance makes integrated decision making difficult…it also makes it difficult to obtain a clear picture of the metropolitan scale of risks facing our city, or where the responsibility for managing different risks rests between agencies, government or business”.
Additionally, a lack of systems thinking can be endemic within local governments, particularly as they are dealing with numerous and competing pressures. As Kathy Baughman McLeod, former Senior Vice President and Director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, remarked, local governments are dealing with “elections, the campaign finance, the pressures of local government…the point of the spear is local government…so they’re in react mode left and right”. In this context, she believes “it would be very challenging for a group of people that come together under the auspices of local service to achieve systems thinking” (Baughman-McLeod, K. 2023, September 7, personal interview).
These governance challenges also undermine the capacity of Sydney’s local governments to manage the complex, intersectional nature of extreme heat risk. This is important to manage the intersectional, cross-cutting nature of extreme heat, and requires strong institutionalisation within and across local governments.
Agile governance
Agile governance is the ability to make rapid, consequential governance decisions with rapid information feedback loops from multiple sources. As explored by Spitz & Zuin (2021), organisations must reconcile decision-making systems and processes for both short and long term objectives. This requires bridging knowledge gaps between multiple stakeholders and data sources, and the ability to make quick decisions in complex environments (Boulton, 2010).
Agile thinking requires debiasing our assumptions and knowledge, and uncertainty can be addressed by experimentation, trial and error and the ability to receive information from numerous sources in quick patterns. The conditions necessary for sensemaking depend on multiple stakeholders in “self-organised local relationships” (Spitz & Zuin, 2021, p.287; Rancati & Snowden, 2021), that can cohere disparate, incoherent and weak signals into coherent and practical information for local governments. Spitz (2020) highlights the path dependence and inertia evident in the management practices of numerous contemporary organisations; limiting their ability to understand complex, emergent and rapidly evolving phenomena.
In the context of extreme heat governance, this involves a strong sense of “network governance” (Kjaer, 2004, p.13; Bevir, 2009; Osborne, 2006) – based on the organising relationships of community and civil society actors within local government jurisdictions. In this context, local governments can embrace the ‘bottom-up’ self-organising capacities of community actors (Osborne, 2006; Ostrom, 2010), sometimes termed ‘New Public Governance’ (Watson, 2000). This can be perceived as a strong demonstration of ‘systemic’ policy capacity – that is, the ability for community systems to develop cohesion and capacity to respond to extreme heat (Wu et al. 2015; Parsons, 2004). Compared to principles of antifragility, in the context of agile governance, local governments must respond to and cater for the ‘bottom-up’ community actors’ desires and activities (Boin, 2014). Therefore, agile governance has a stronger focus on ‘bottom-up’ policy actors enacting systemic policy capacity.
In the context of extreme heat, Howlett & Ramesh (2016, p.304) believe multistakeholder, agile governance can combine the best of “managerial, analytical and political competencies at the individual, organisational and systemic level”. Consequently, Kim et al. (2021, p.226) argues that “adaptation pathways can be articulated through feedback loops”, especially through multi-stakeholder methods. It is also important for local governments to “democratise leadership”, hence promoting more information while reducing time to make decisions. This is especially as top-down and more centralised institutions experience a risk of bias, formulaic governance methods, blind spots and a lack of systems thinking. To overcome these flawed assumptions, it is important to debias and “identify underlying assumptions” and “critically assess assumptions” and “imagine alternative ways of doing things” (Spitz & Zuin, p.194).
In Sydney, there are major disparities in the systemic policy capacities for extreme heat governance. Various communities, across differing socio-economic and socio-cultural characteristics, possess different capacities to self-organise and develop their own community resilience (City of Sydney, 2018; Zografos, 2016). This is especially consequential in the context of systems breaking down in extreme heat. As City of Sydney (2018) remarks: “Our community have expressed concerns about declining social cohesion. They have asked for action to ensure the diversity of our people and the strength of local connections is valued to maintain a cohesive, inclusive and prosperous metropolitan city”. Additionally, the Penrith City Council (2021) remark how “our community would be better able to cope if they had: Clear information through multiple channels on how to prepare and respond to shocks, easy to understand expert advice, easy to find accessible services”.
As Awais Piracha remarked: “I think what’s missing is a full realisation of the full impact of extreme heat on people…I’m not sure if the community is fully aware of the harm extreme heat might have on individuals…or how hot it can get…I think that awareness is lacking” (Piracha, A. 2023, August 19, personal interview).
Likewise, as Ron Harris remarked: “if the public is bought in, it’s a lot easier for the internal mechanisms to stay accountable and responsible and aligned because at minimum they can point to the outside and say ‘hey, there’s a mandate here, there’s an expectation, or the public is part of this process, or there’s a bit of a co-ownership” (Harris, R. 2023, August 26, personal interview).
Looking at policy capacity through the lens of the antifragile and agile governance, it is possible to develop an appraisal framework for extreme heat in Sydney, through which alternative futures can be understood and analysed.
This is demonstrated in Table 1.
Table 1: Antifragile and Agile Extreme Heat Governance Assessment Framework
Pillars | Policy Capacity | Manifestations | Diagnostic Questions |
Antifragile | Organisational Policy Capacity | Coherent and coordinated local government ‘Top-Down’ Governance to ensure a return to a state stronger than before a crisis (Taleb, 2014).
Local government ‘activating’ and ‘enabling’ networks via top-down means to enable their jurisdiction’s cohesion and growth in a pre and post recovery setting (Salamon, 2002; Taleb, 2014) |
1.1 How can extreme heat management be best institutionalised in a horizontal, non-siloed fashion across a variety of local government functions to ensure an alignment of responsibility, accountability and implementation of evaluation activities post extreme heat instances?
1.2 How can parochial and short-term, understandings of extreme heat impacts and recovery be overcome to capacitate longer-term, post-recovery focus; centred on improving the status quo and learning from the impacts of extreme heat instances? |
Agile | Systemic Policy Capacity | Bottom-up, Networked Governance from community and civil society stakeholders (Kjaer 2004; Osborne 2006; Bevir, 2009) | 2.1 How can community actors, especially across the private and civil society sectors, rapidly coordinate together to understand and respond to both the immediate and oncoming threat of extreme heat; self-organising to complement each actors’ strengths and compensate for each actors’ weaknesses?
2.2 How can society-at-large adequately and rapidly communicate with local government functions for managing extreme heat; bridging knowledge-action gaps between various stakeholders through building feedback loops? |
This framework guided the appraisal of Sydney’s extreme heat governance characteristics, as explored the next section of this article.
Importantly, it also informed the questions asked in the semi-structured interviews that informed the research for this article. These questions are presented in Appendix Item 1 and Appendix Item 2.
Mapping Alternative Futures for Extreme Heat Governance in Sydney
CLA incasting
A combination of literature review and semi-structured interviews were the methods to glean the status quo of Sydney’s heat governance, as discussed in Section 1, in addition to the three alternative heat governance futures (see Figure 1 and Table 2). Both the status quo and the three alternative futures are mapped using CLA incasting (see Figure 1 and Table 2).
While CLA by itself facilitates a systemic, multi-layered understanding of a phenomenon or trend, based on the litany, systemic, worldview and metaphor, CLA incasting does so through the lens of futures scenarios (Inayatullah, 2008; Inayatullah, 1998). In other words, it combines the systemic appraisal of CLA with double variate scenario mapping, as demonstrated in Figure 1 and Table 2 (see Inayatullah, 2013). For this article, this provides an in-depth exploration of the systemic (in)adequacies of extreme heat governance, in addition to the overarching variables that determine the effectiveness of extreme heat governance.
Fig. 1: Causal Layered Analysis (CLA): Incasting for Extreme Heat Governance Futures
Table 2: Causal Layered Analysis (CLA): Incasting Descriptions for Sydney’s Extreme Heat Governance Futures
Status Quo | The Chasm | ‘Big Society’ | Turning Down
The Heat |
|
Litany | Siloed government, focused on administrative business-as-usual functions with limited connection between systemic and organisational policy capacity | Strong local public services and a reduction in administrative siloes in local government, but a disconnect with local community needs, including civil society, hence minimising opportunities for agile bottom-up governance | Community and civil society actors develop a robust ‘bottom-up’, decentralised and distributed response to extreme heat governance, using network governance to its maximum, regardless of local public services | Local governments and civil society join forces to enable top-down and bottom-up implementation of extreme heat governance, breaking down administrative siloes and empowering each others’ strengths in a collaborative, agile fashion. |
Systemic | Local governments must maintain the business-as-usual to avoid risk and upset within the organisations.
Political motivations and electoral cycles decide policy priorities, creating reactive as opposed to proactive policymaking. |
Local governments and bureaucracies are primary actors in extreme heat governance, seeing themselves as top-down, coordinating actors.
However, a systemic authorising environment has not been established among society-at-large, including civil society and community stakeholders. |
Society understands, and even condemns, the lacklustre will, capacity and resources of local governments to coordinate extreme heat. There is a disconnect and even mistrust of government, but this motivates the social connections and civil society actors to conduct extreme heat governance. | Mutual trust, understanding and collaboration between local governments and their constituents, and joint objectives are understood and appreciated. |
Worldview | Between a rock and a hard place | Government knows best | Personal responsibility | All in this together. |
Metaphor | Titanic avoiding the iceberg | Puppet strings | Frontier town | Matching puzzle pieces |
The chasm
‘The Chasm’ is a result of lacklustre systemic policy capacity (agile governance), despite strong organisational policy capacity within local governments (antifragile governance). This results from a disconnect, or ‘chasm’, between local governments’ capacity (top-down) and that of civil society and community policy actors (bottom-up) (see Opsina & Foldy, 2010). Roberts (2000, p.4) emphasises the need to “get the whole system in the room” for ideating and understanding wicked problems such as extreme heat. However, in ‘The Chasm’ scenario, the lack of systemic policy capacity and lack of connection between local governments and their civil society actors prevents “getting the whole system in the room” (Roberts, 2000, p.4).
In this future, local governments develop their own organisational capacity to prepare for and respond to extreme heat, yet lack the ability to use their top-down authority to “activate” or “orchestrate” with community actors (Salamon 2002, p.6; Boin, 2014). In turn, local government organisational policy capacity does not complement or support the systemic policy capacities of community members, hence creating a ‘chasm’ between community actors and the government itself.
The ‘puppet strings’ metaphor indicates an awkward, uncollaborative control between governments and the systemic communal systems they could otherwise activate or orchestrate. This is especially in the scenario where top-down government is insisted upon, and the path dependency of “clinging to the plan” is instilled in political-administrative culture (Boin, 2014, p.214; McConnel & t’Hart, 2019).
In the context of Sydney, Zografos et al. (2016) assesses how inconsistent information and awareness about climate impacts, as well as social isolation and exclusion, exaggerates vulnerability to extreme heat. These lapses in systemic policy capacity reduce agile, stakeholder-driven governance, especially as it leaves lower socio-economic status, elderly and disabled individuals more vulnerable and disconnected.
This is currently a major issue in Sydney more generally, with Sam Kernaghan, Director of the Resilience Program the Committee for Sydney, remarking community actors’ resilience in extreme heat is “partly on their [local governments’]ability to consult with the communities representing the 150 or so different languages that are spoken in a local government area like Blacktown or Campbelltown” (Kernaghan, S. 2023, 14 August, personal interview).
Furthermore, in ‘The Chasm’ scenario it is possible there could be a major lapse in political policy capacity, as politicians and the political authorising environment might not prioritise a focus on extreme heat response or climate change policymaking. As Awais Piracha remarked: “I think politicians are scared to discuss this…in general politicians like to give good news…they hate to talk about difficult issues”. (Piracha, A. 2023, August 19, personal interview). Dr Sebastian Pfautsch, Associate Professor in Urban Studies at Western Sydney University, echoed this, stating, with regard to political inertia and inaction: “politicians want to not be seen as the ones that increase taxes, and write more rules into our rule books, they want to be seen as the ones that liberate us, and support us in our development…they’re not really responding to the boundary conditions that we now have to deal with” (Pfautsch, S. 2023, 1 September, personal interview).
City of Sydney (2018) is aware of these issues; referencing the need for community engagement, highlighting how the “the community have asked for a greater say in the strategic decisions that shape metropolitan Sydney, and their lives. This will require commitment and effort on the part of multiple organisations within our city, both, to engage communities and in metropolitan-scale decisions”. Penrith City Council (2022) also identifies issues with community engagement, imploring the need to bolster “reliable and equal access to services and information” and the “capacity to deal with unexpected emergencies through engaging with community members, service providers and key stakeholders” (Penrith City Council, 2022).
As Sebastian Pfautsch remarks: “there’s just a knowledge gap, and it’s not just the protection, ‘how do I protect myself at a 45 degree day’…but all these other bits of information that need to be communicated as well: How do we work against extreme heat? What materials should you use to build a home? How can you contribute to community cooling? Should you open your pool to the community?… Do you know where the old lady down the road is, whose husband died, and probably dehyrdates very quickly?” (Pfautsch, S. 2023, 1 September, personal interview).
Big Society
The ‘Big Society’ scenario results from a recognition that community actors need to use their networks to manage their own unique extreme heat risks (agile governance), resulting from lacklustre organisational capacity at the local government level (i.e. poor antifragile governance).
In this future, community networks work together in lieu of local government organisational capacities. This requires a strong sense of ‘systemic policy capacities’ (Wu et al., 2015; Parsons, 2004). Such a future embodies concepts of ‘governance’ – that is, governing beyond government, and through community networks (Kjaer, 2004; Bevir, 2009; Watson, 2000). In this future, there is a dependence on ‘bottom-up’, decentralised and multi-stakeholder collaboration for preparing for and responding to extreme heat (Osborne, 2006; Ostrom, 2010). Kjaer (2004) and Osborne (2006) emphasise the power of community cohesion and networks, and is perhaps even a necessity in contexts of poor governmental organisational policy capacity and therefore, poor antifragile government. Therefore, the worldview in this scenario is a matter of ‘personal responsibility’, and a metaphor being the existence of a ‘frontier town’ on the frontline (or ‘frontier’) of climate change impacts.
Sebastian Pfautsch emphasised the notion of: “true community resilience. Not one that is put onto a community from the outside, but one that grows from the inside. We’ve seen that this type of community knowledge is the number one help factor after the bushfires. That’s where the real help comes from” (Pfautsch, S. 2023, 1 September, personal interview).
Complementing this idea, Zografos et al. (2016) glean that institutional and community elements are crucial for shaping Sydneysiders’ ability to respond and adapt to increasing occurrences of these events, hence conceptualising those elements as drivers of adaptive capacity. In the context of a poor and inconsistent state response to heatwave risks and exposure, low-income residents in multicultural communities need to find informal resources and pragmatic mechanisms to cope with extreme heatwaves (Friend et al., 2014; Gee & Gissing, 2021).
For example, in according to Northern Beaches Council (2022, p.49), states that “social cohesion and connectedness is critical for a community’s vitality and wellbeing. COVID-19 has emphasised the absolute importance of social connections in dealing with crisis events and provides a platform for individual and collective adaptive resilience”. Northern Beaches Council (2022, p.18) emphasises “the concepts of community wellbeing and resilience are intrinsically linked” and that “community resilience [is a]process of anticipating change and responding in a way that maintains or enhances community wellbeing. It’s an ever-evolving process and characterised as an act of doing”.
This sentiment is reflected by Penrith City Council (2021, p.16), stating that “a strong connection to family and friends was identified as a strength of the community. There is a high dependency on family and friends as a key source of information, assistance and support, particularly for youth and people from CALD backgrounds, rather than seeking out and approaching professional or expert services. This recognises that people in the community without family or a close support system may be disadvantaged and more vulnerable in responding and coping with shocks and stresses”.
Therefore, there is an identified need for community members to enact agile governance via their own communal networks in the ‘Big Society’ future.
Turning down the heat
The ‘Turning Down the Heat’ scenario derives from a matching organisational and systemic policy capacities, therefore blending the best of antifragile and agile governance. It involves a blend of bottom-up, network and community governance and top-down, coordinated and coherent extreme heat governance from local governments themselves (Ansell et al., 2020; Opsina & Foldy, 2010). This allows for a blend of antifragile and agile extreme heat governance in Sydney – indicative of strong crisis management governance that allows for the fluidity of bottom-up governance and the rigidity and resourcing of top-down governance (Boin, 2009; Boin, 2014).
In this future, the systemic layer of the CLA breaks down the complex governance silos within local governments and between different levels of government and their jurisdictions’ community, ‘bottom-up’ actors. Therefore, this is a worldview of ‘all in this together’, with there being a metaphor of ‘matching puzzle pieces’ between bottom-up and top-down government and community actors (see Opsina, 2017). In turn, this is a blend of antifragile and agile governance. This is an adjunct to multi-stakeholderism, based on “agility to connect, then bridge the vision with constantly updating and evolving complex environments” (Spitz and Zuin 2021, p.312).
As Krista Milne, Co-Chief Heat Officer at the City of Melbourne, remarked: “in any climate function, you need both coordination and decentralisation…with no one at the front thinking about what’s next, then you lose momentum. So you need both the whole organisation to take responsibility as well as having a core central coordination function, and leadership function” (Milne, K. 2023, August 18, personal interview).
This is also embodied by the remarks of Kurt Shickman, stating: “we really are starting to see the linkage of extreme heat and impacts in cities or in communities in ways that wasn’t really talked about before…so not just talking about heat deaths, but looking at the impact on the energy system, the impact on the health system…that’s really been critical to bring emergency departments and emergency planners to the table in a new way. Because they’re not just seeing this as a short term event”. (Shickman, K. 2023, August 26, personal interview).
These sentiments are also echoed in the ‘Turn Down the Heat’ Action Plan (WSROC, 2018), which emphasises the need to ‘take action, together’ and ‘build a community that is healthy and prepared’. As Kim et al. (2021, p.226) remarks, “adaptation pathways can be articulated through feedback loops”, particularly when antifragile and agile governance acts in accordance with each other. City of Sydney (2018) highlights Direction 1 for Sydney’s resilience being a ‘People Centred City’, Direction 3 being ‘Connect for Strength’ and Direction 5 being ‘One City’. These 3 directions alone indicate the need for coherent top-down antifragile governance, combined with community connection and cohesion amongst their own communities (Friend et al. 2014).
Likewise, City of Ryde (2020, p.70) emphasise the need for “social inclusion, cohesion and cross-cultural engagement”, including allowing people to “feel informed, connected and contribute to society socially, culturally, economically and politically”. This emphasises the importance of social understanding of shocks and stresses, including extreme heat events. To achieve this, the plan emphasises multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral collaboration between civil society, public sector and private sector stakeholders. In this way, City of Ryde (2020, p.70) argues the need to embed resilience in “every level of government, the community sector, businesses and all individuals. This includes the role of volunteers assisting with the “cooperation and support to deal with ongoing day-to-day stresses and pressure, and can establish strong social infrastructure” for stronger climate resilience, such as extreme heat.
Northern Beaches Council (2022, p.53) also draws attention to this, remarking: “adaptive services, assets and infrastructure are lynchpins in our society” and as the “‘glue that holds us together”. This thinking recognises the important interlinkages between government service provision, derived from organisational policy capacity, and society-at-large resilience, derived from systemic policy capacities.
As Sam Kernaghan remarked: “How will this extreme shock play out, in terms of city systems, and their ability to cope. But it’s the intersection between those, and whose it is going to impact on. And it’s not just about vulnerable people and how they will cope, but actually the services that we rely on, that work of understanding what this actually looks like, and what that looks like from each sector…I think that’s the game…in Sydney, we don’t have an organisation…to actually think about what’s the coordinating body” (Kernaghan, S. 2023, 14 August, personal interview).
Futures Triangle
Taking the findings from the CLA incasting and analysis of antifragile and agile extreme heat governance in Sydney, it is possible to apply the futures triangle in exploring extreme heat governance futures in Sydney.
Push of the present
The push of the present for stronger extreme heat governance derives from an increasing understanding of the social, economic and environmental consequences of extreme heat by local governments (WSROC, 2018; City of Sydney, 2018). There is a growing desire and imperative to govern extreme heat in an equitable and robust fashion (Zografos et al. 2016). Local governments recognise the threat of climate change, and that extreme heat is a major component of that. There is also a clear understanding of the socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions of extreme heat vulnerability, including amongst low socio-economic status, CALD and elderly communities (City of Ryde, 2020; WSROC, 2018). In turn, this highlights how there is an awareness of the need for stronger antifragile and agile extreme heat governance.
The desire to build ‘antifragile’ governance, and the coherent systemic and organisational policy capacity for extreme heat management provides a clear vision for local governments to work towards (Mees et al., 2014). The prospect of blending the networked, multi stakeholder nature of ‘governance’ with strong organisational policy capacities provides impetus for the creation of an efficient and equitable implementation of extreme heat governance in Sydney.
Organisations such as the Committee for Sydney and Resilient Sydney already offer a manifestation of what this looks like. As Sam Kernaghan remarked: “The answer is in what Resilient Sydney has been trying to do – that is, build a local government platform and mandate to demand action of themselves and demand action of others” (Kernaghan, S. 2023, 14 August, personal interview).
Pull of the future
The pull of the future is the vision of what’s required to achieve the ‘Turn Down the Heat” scenario in Figure 1 and Table 2.
There is especially a desire for local councils to have more coherent governance and direction on matters of extreme heat. The advent of Resilient Sydney has given local governments hope and understanding about what the future of extreme heat governance could look like in Sydney. This in of itself provides some level of hope and prospects for stronger extreme heat governance. As Sam Kernaghan remarked: “You have 33 local governments, all have their own experience, and try to find what the shared spatial, or shared sectoral, or shared issue agenda is across all of those things, and say, ‘what is it that we can do ourselves to solve this with the capacities and funding that we have, within our limitations, and what is it we can seek help from regarding financial help, or governance help, from others?’ I think that’s one of the things that Resilient Sydney has done very well is show the value of what it is doing in creating that platform” (Kernaghan, S. 2023, 14 August, personal interview).
This is especially important in the context of constrained organisational policy capacity as it currently stands, with many councils being disjointed within and between each other, and are often under-resourced. This makes decision making ambiguous, as no one organisation ‘owns’ the management of extreme heat (Boin, 2009; Roberts, 2000). City of Sydney (2018), as well as Northern Beaches Council (2022), Penrith City Council (2021) and City of Ryde (2020), note the desire and impetus for local councils to prepare for the consequences of extreme heat.
For example, City of Ryde (2020, p.7) states “we have recently seen and experienced the impact of an unprecedented combination of ongoing drought, heatwaves, severe and widespread bushfires and hazardous air pollution. These events have been exacerbated and become more intense by accelerating climate change caused by increasing carbon emissions from human activities and global warming”. In this context, public leaders can frame and understand the risks and consequences of extreme heat, providing a “common operational picture” of its consequences (Boin, 2009, p.372). As Kathy Baughman McLeod remarks: “I think [extreme heat]governance starts with knowledge, and understanding and the scoping of what you’re facing…that itself is not true governance, but I don’t think you can get to true governance without doing that” (Baughman-McLeod, K. 2023, September 7, personal interview).
Weight of history
However, there are major weights of history preventing antifragile and agile extreme heat governance. Additionally, for local governments, it is not just a matter of understanding the threat of extreme heat, but having the organisational and systemic policy capacities to enable antifragile and agile governance. This indicates “reluctant inaction” among policymakers, driven by resource constraints and poor operational policy capacity (McConnell & t’Hart, 2019, p.652). Arguably, COVID-19 addressed endemic ‘reluctant inaction’ in governance, as governments of all scales demonstrated their ability to mobilise resources and pivot focus in times of crises (Dickinson et al. 2024).
While many local governments have an awareness of the multidimensional threats of extreme heat, enacting governance changes to manage extreme heat is more difficult, largely because of resourcing constraints and the need to meet more immediate public concerns. As Sam Kernaghan remarked: “These things [climate and environment]which are important…have they been mainstreamed and embedded into all the decisions that local government is making? No. Are they aware at a political and senior level of that extreme heat risk – yes, absolutely” (Kernaghan, S. 2023, 14 August, personal interview).
Sebastian Pfautsch also shared this sentiment, remarking: “there’s a great risk that we get stuck in the discussions about who needs to do what…a heatwave strikes, and we have a massive power grid failure…just pointing at one agency as the head organisation that should now lead the response to this emergency is not good enough…you will need to have everyone working in the same direction, including the provider of power and the ones who operate the networks” (Pfautsch, S. 2023, 1 September, personal interview).
In particular, extreme heat and climate resilience functions need to be institutionalised at a local level, rather than dictated by the state government of New South Wales. As Sam Kernaghan remarked: “Local government might be highly aware of these issues. But are they responsible for the building code that have allowed buildings that don’t have thermo performance allowing people to survive in extreme heat? No. They have absolutely no control over that. Equally, do they have the money to provide extreme heat refuges that meet the scale of need that would be revealed in an extreme heat event? No, they don’t” (Kernaghan, S. 2023, 14 August, personal interview).
Furthermore, according to Gee & Gissing (2021), there lacks a specific organisation in NSW accountable for the prevention and preparedness towards heatwaves, unlike other natural disasters, such as bushfires, floods and storms. This creates confusion regarding which government agencies, and which levels of government, should be responsible for heatwave emergency planning. Of particular note, Gee & Gissing (2021) do not believe the nuanced, disparate and unequal impacts of heatwaves are understood, which leads to institutional siloing and ‘policy turfs’ in regard to the governance of the various extreme heat impacts (Peters, 2018). Complementing this sentiment, Dr Awais Piracha remarked “their capacity is constrained by their lack of empowerment…they [local governments]are completely at the mercy of the state” (Piracha, A. 2023, August 19, personal interview).
Regarding such matters, Kylie McMahon, Executive Officer for City Resilience at City of Ryde Council, mentioned: “I don’t think it’s intentional that there’s silos…because it [extreme heat]is a stressor that’s largely intangible… You’re dealing with multiple agencies…you’ve got your overarching state [NSW], who set a planning precedent based upon needs or imperative…some of those decisions sometimes can result in poor outcomes…because they haven’t run through things like considerations for material use, placement, quality, and that has flow effects…into community health” (McMahon, K. 2023, September 7, personal interview).
This sentiment is also shared by Sebastian Pfautsch, who stated: “it’s about taking responsibility really, for community safety, and that must come from federal and state, and that must trickle down to local [government]…but when you get the marching order from state government that ‘this is the new suburb you need to build, and therefore our state rules apply’…then what do you do with your local planning package? It gets overruled” (Pfautsch, S. 2023, 1 September, personal interview).
As previously stated, there are also issues in communicating with and campaigning for the impacts of extreme heat among community members. As Sebastian Pfautsch claims, there are major knowledge gaps in society that prevent extreme heat preparation, which implore: “really serious media campaigns that go across, not just the SBS and ABC, that reach the intellectual people who probably already have this kind of knowledge that is necessary to protect yourself during summer, but really go through the media that inform the non-intellectual, let’s call it that part of the population” (Pfautsch, S. 2023, 1 September, personal interview).
In Western Sydney, some attempts have been made for a higher, more coherent peak body, including the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSROC) to address resourcing and governance constraints (WSROC, 2018). As Awais Piracha remarked: “Some councils have been working with WSROC, and WSROC has been very keenly interested in developing heat mitigation strategies. Some of the western councils have worked with them, and they’ve tried to include clauses in their LEPs. Changes in LEPs take a long time…so there is realisation, and they are doing that, but they also do other things like information for the community” (Piracha, A. 2023, August 19, personal interview).
Novel Contribution of These Methods To Futures Literacy
The use of CLA incasting and the Futures Triangle in the context of extreme heat governance demonstrates a novel contribution to futures literacy, as there is minimal literature exploring extreme heat governance through the lens of futures methodologies, and even less literature combining CLA incasting and the Futures Triangle to assess extreme heat governance futures. Therefore, writing an article exploring governance futures for extreme heat is novel and unique, and helps establish a precedent within academic futures discourse, particularly in climate change and sustainability futures
The use of CLA incasting helps concretise scenarios which are otherwise not very tangible. CLA incasting allows for a deeper reflection on the mindset and drivers behind each scenario, which helps detail the psychology and ideology underpinning (in)effective governance practices. Extrapolating this provides unique insights into the litany, systemic, worldview and metaphorical dimensions of different governance practices. Based on my literature review, there is a lack of literature, even in futures literacy, exploring these dimensions of governance practice. This makes the use of CLA incasting a novel contribution to futures and policy literature.
Furthermore, the use of the Futures Triangle initiates a discussion about how to achieve the preferred future (‘Turn Down the Heat’) and what factors prevent the attainment of this preferred future. In practical terms, this illuminates the policy and political pathologies in public administration that prevent stronger extreme heat governance. As stated, there is minimal futures literature exploring the motivations and barriers to (in)effective governance, making this a unique and impactful contribution to futures literacy.
Using these methods, further research can be conducted about the practical avenues to achieve the preferred governance future, and which political-administrative barriers must be overcome to do so.
Conclusion
Extreme heat has become a pressing and damaging threat in the contemporary world. The anthropocene has presented significant climate change impacts, presenting multifaceted impacts across social, economic and environmental domains. In Sydney, this has presented problems for many local governments, especially their ability to enact antifragile and agile governance, underpinned by proper policy capacities.
In particular, lapses in organisational and systemic policy capacity undermine the ability for Sydney’s local governments to anticipate and manage the immediate and future impacts of extreme heat. In particular, the lack of resourcing and coordination between and within local councils adversely affects their ability to enact antifragile and agile extreme heat governance. Furthermore, circumstances where local governments struggled to coordinate and collaborate with civil society and community actors can affect their governance capabilities, demonstrating a lack of organisational policy capacity alongside agile, antifragile governance.
In the context of the futures triangle, numerous ‘weights of the past’ prevent the progress of antifragile and agile governance, in addition tothe underlying policy capacities for extreme heat governance. These include a lack of cohesion and coordination between themselves and other actors, and a lack of power at the local council level. This translates to CLA incasting, looking at axes of organisational and systemic policy capacity, and how these variables determine the governance capabilities of Sydney’s local governments.
To pursue the desired future for Sydney’s extreme heat governance, there must be a cohesion between organisational and systemic policy capacity. This enables the best of both top-down organisational capacities and bottom-up, networked and mutlistakeholder governance in extreme heat.
Appendices
Appendix 1 – Causal Layered Analysis (CLA): Incasting Descriptions for Sydney’s Extreme Heat Governance Futures
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Appendix 2 – semi-structured Interview Questions for Sydney Extreme Heat and Resilience Practitioners (Section 2)
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