Cape York and Torres Strait Regional Resilience Strategy

The Queensland Government has partnered with 14 councils to deliver the Cape York and Torres Strait Regional Resilience Strategy which harnesses local expertise to champion a holistic approach to disaster resilience for the region.

It outlines the shared vision for resilience for the councils of the Cape York and Torres Strait region, their resilience challenges, opportunities, exposure, risks, pathways to resilience and implementation.

Project background

By 2022, every region across Queensland will be part of a locally-led and regionally-coordinated blueprint to strengthen disaster resilience. Regional resilience strategies and local resilience action plans will help to keep Queenslanders safe by providing a coordinated approach to identify and prioritise disaster resilience actions.

Multi-hazard approach

The Cape York and Torres Strait Regional Resilience Strategy  uses a locally led, regionally coordinated and state facilitated approach with multi-sector stakeholder participation to address the following hazards:

  • cyclone (severe storm and wind) 
  • bushfire 
  • flood 
  • heatwave
  • pandemic and other hazards
  • earthquake.

The Strategy is drawn from on-country engagement with Councils and community members, and focus on the key regional resilience priorities of: 

  • critical infrastructure – its importance and flow on effects if not functioning;
  • disruption, isolation – climate and man made 
  • cultural connection– informed by traditional knowledge, connection to family, landscape and across communities; 
  • leadership – enabling change and trade-offs; and
  • biosecurity and food security - threats to what we value and our quality of life.

Steering committee

The Project Steering Committee is comprised of the Torres Cape Indigenous Council Alliance (TCICA) and Torres Strait Islands Regional Council (TSIRC).

Region

The geographic extent of the Cape York and Torres Strait Regional Resilience Strategy is the boundaries of the 13 member councils of the TCICA and the TSIRC.

Council partners

  • Aurukun Shire Council
  • Cook Shire Council
  • Hope Vale Aboriginal Shire Council
  • Kowanyama Aboriginal Shire Council
  • Lockhart River Aboriginal Shire Council
  • Mapoon Aboriginal Shire Council
  • Mornington Shire Council
  • Napranum Aboriginal Shire Council
  • Northern Peninsula Area Regional Council
  • Pormpuraaw Aboriginal Shire Council
  • Torres Shire Council
  • Torres Strait Island Regional Council
  • Weipa Town Authority
  • Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire Council

Resilience Action Plans

QRA has worked with the councils of the Cape York and Torres Strait region to develop and deliver Local Resilience Action Plans that will help keep communities safe by providing a coordinated approach to identifying and prioritising disaster resilience actions, and embedding resilience and risk reduction into decision making and investment.

Every council in Queensland now has a Resilience Action Plan - a clear forward plan for how we can make lasting change into the future through sustained investment in resilience and mitigation activities.

These Resilience Action Plans aim to support councils to be as proactive as possible to describe their local resilience needs, and to build a forward program of effort that can be matched to funding opportunities over time as they emerge. The benefit of this is that local communities needs will be well known at all levels of government, and we can progressively deliver on these needs over time. 

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