Indigenous housing in regional and remote communities in Australia will suffer the impacts of climate change earlier and more disproportionately than most urban Australian settings, new research reveals.
If the sustainability of housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is not prioritised urgently, they will soon become uninhabitable, with climate migration forcing families away from their traditional lands.
These findings from research released on Thursday by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute have stressed the need for a national policy to address the need to improve standards across the country.
“Neither standard nor improved housing designs adequately cater for current and anticipated hygrothermal [heat and moisture] pressures under climate change,” the report stated.
The research in explored 336 simulations across arid, tropical and hot-warm climate conditions where the majority of Indigenous populations are based in the country.
Using a projection of 1.5C increase in these areas, the findings conclude that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will not be able to live comfortably - even with short-term solutions such as air-conditioning - due to overcrowding.
“Increasing heat stress and water insecurity not only impacts health but strains local infrastructures, generating concerns about the ability of Indigenous individuals and communities to stay on country,” the report continued.
“Indigenous housing policies lack greater emphasis on systematic and planned repair and maintenance regimes to ensure the fitness of health hardware now, to ensure householders can access the key amenities for managing infectious diseases and preventing ill health.”
Tess Lea, who is a professor at the University of Sydney and led the research, said the results have been “disappointing”.
“Our particular neck of the world isn’t going to get cooler. We need our houses to do the heavy lifting in terms of providing shelter so people can live close to where they want to be in not just 2030 but 2050,” she told SBS News.
“Indigenous people, on so many occasions, have been on the front lines of things. They’re the impacts on the front line of climate changes too.”
But the issue extends for more than just Indigenous housing, and multi-faceted design planning could place Australia on a platform to become a global leader in housing resilience, Professor Lea said.
“Solving the problem for regional and remote Australia … if we can come up with resilience design solutions that cope with climate changes, then we have transportable ideas that will benefit many.”
Professor Lea said the “million-dollar question” is how resilient planning can be implemented in the long term, but it’s a question that can be answered with more federal government funding.
“Can we please have a national research team that starts to invest into this, in urgent questions that will benefit Indigenous people for sure, but is not an issue just for them?” she asked.
