Roadmap to resilience – disaster support for remote communities
Remote Aboriginal communities in South Australia will benefit from a new disaster resilience program led by the Alinytjara Wiluṟara Landscape Board with a grant of $2.45M from the Australian Government’s Disaster Ready Fund.
The Roots of Resilience: Safe Country, Strong Future program will create a supported space for communities to design their own roadmap to resilience in the face of natural disasters. The program has grown from a concept plan developed by AWLB in partnership with Indigenous Energy Australia. The two organisations will continue to work together on a pilot program to ensure business continuity planning for landholding authorities in the face of potential disasters such as flash floods, heatwaves and fire.
AWLB is the only all-Aboriginal board of its kind in Australia, working with communities to keep Country healthy across 250,000km2 of desert Country in northern and western South Australia.
In 2026, the board will invite landholding authorities to collaborate on the development of disaster resilience plans that address the threats faced by their communities.
“As climate change accelerates across Australia, the absence of tailored disaster-ready planning in remote Aboriginal communities poses a serious concern towards safeguarding the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people and culture,” say AWLB Chair Brenz Saunders. “Aṉangu communities across the Alinytjara Wiluṟara Landscape Board region deserve the same protections and preparedness to respond to climate change as every other Australian community. The board is thankful to have received important financial support from the Australian Government to create disaster-ready plans for the communities across the region. This investment represents a positive step toward equity, accountability and a more coordinated national approach to safeguarding some of the most isolated regions in the country.”
Each community will develop bespoke plans for their own continuity when disaster strikes, such as bushfires fuelled by invasive buffel grass, heatwaves driving people away from communities, feral animals and weeds damaging infrastructure and traditional food sources, and flash floods damaging roads and cutting off communities from one another.
Each disaster resilience plan will be built around the concept of ‘healthy people, healthy Country’ and consider the human, social, economic, infrastructure and environmental aspects of resilience, with AWLB following up with on-ground support for the environmental aspects. The impacts of climate change are a significant issue for the board and will be a focus area in its next regional landscape plan, which is currently being developed.
Building disaster resilience plans will involve updating climate strategies, engaging communities to assess disaster risk, and identify their priorities, with local leaders supported to drive resilience efforts. The program will focus on building sustainable capabilities rooted in cultural knowledge and systems of care for Country, ensuring long-term, community-driven impact.
“The more disaster-ready plans that exist in the Alinytjara Wiluṟara region, the better positioned the Aṉangu will be to ride out the impacts of climate change and natural disasters,” says AWLB General Manager Kim Krebs. “This program will fill a major gap in the nation’s disaster preparedness and support some of the country’s most isolated communities when they need it most.”
