Overview
On 24 June 2026, the Federal Government officially released the Local Government Climate Risk Management Guide, a nationally standardised framework designed to help Australia’s councils and shires identify, assess, and manage both the physical and transition risks associated with climate change. The guide was developed under the Federal Government’s Climate Risk and Opportunity Management Program (CROMP) in partnership with the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) and the Victorian Climate Resilient Councils (VCRC). Its release represents one of the most substantive federal interventions in local government climate planning to date, moving the sector away from ad hoc approaches toward a consistent, defensible methodology that will directly influence planning decisions across every Australian jurisdiction.
For environmental consultants, infrastructure advisers, ESG specialists, and municipal planners, this guide is more than a policy document. It is a practical blueprint that establishes the methodological benchmark against which council climate risk assessments will now be measured. The guide is supported by a free online Climate Risk Digital Tool, which is already being used by over 120 councils nationwide to conduct step-by-step physical and transition risk assessments. This level of uptake, at a stage when the tool is still in an 18-month usability trial, signals how urgently local governments have been waiting for structured federal guidance in this space.
The timing is also significant because it sits alongside other federal initiatives including the National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) and the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which together are building a layered architecture of climate risk governance in Australia. While those instruments address national and sector-level risks, the Local Government Climate Risk Management Guide fills the gap at the municipal level, ensuring that the institutions most directly responsible for land use planning, local infrastructure, and community resilience have a credible and repeatable assessment framework at their disposal.
Key details of the Local Government Climate Risk Management Guide and CROMP Digital Tool
The guide was developed under CROMP and delivers three core components: structured climate risk management benchmarks, learning and development modules for council staff, and access to the Climate Risk Digital Tool. The benchmarks are designed to be scalable across councils of varying size and resource capacity, from small regional shires to large metropolitan authorities. The learning modules address capability gaps that have historically prevented many councils from conducting rigorous climate risk assessments internally, without reliance on external consultants.
The Climate Risk Digital Tool is currently in an 18-month usability trial across 16 pilot councils. Those councils span a deliberately diverse cross-section of Australian local government: Alpine Shire, Bass Coast Shire, Hume City Council, Kingston City Council, and Pyrenees Shire are among the named participants, representing alpine, coastal, peri-urban, metropolitan, and rural contexts respectively. This diversity is intentional. The tool needs to perform reliably across significantly different risk profiles, from coastal inundation and erosion in Bass Coast to extreme heat and bushfire in alpine and rural settings. The fact that over 120 councils are already using the tool outside the formal pilot group confirms that demand for a standardised digital assessment method has outpaced the trial timeline.
The guide mandates a dual-risk assessment approach, requiring councils to evaluate physical risks and transition risks separately but within an integrated framework. Physical risks include flooding, bushfire, coastal erosion, sea level rise, and extreme heat events. Transition risks address the socio-economic consequences of the shift away from carbon-intensive industries, including impacts on local employment, rate base sustainability, and the economic viability of communities dependent on fossil fuel extraction, agriculture, or manufacturing that faces decarbonisation pressure. This dual framing is consistent with the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework that has informed mandatory corporate climate disclosures globally, and it signals an expectation that councils will apply comparable rigour to their own asset and liability assessments.
The guide also complements the National Climate Scenario Guidance, which standardises physical risk assessment methodology for the corporate sector. By aligning public-sector adaptation planning with private-sector disclosure expectations, the Federal Government is effectively closing a consistency gap that has allowed divergent risk assessments of the same geographic area to coexist across different reporting frameworks. Environmental professionals who have worked across both corporate due diligence and council planning contexts will recognise how disruptive that inconsistency has been in practice, particularly on large mixed-use developments where infrastructure contributions and planning overlays are negotiated simultaneously with private ESG assessments.
Australian context: how the guide fits within state and federal planning and environmental frameworks
Australia’s local governments sit at the intersection of federal climate policy and state-level planning legislation. While environmental assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) operates at a national level, the day-to-day decisions that shape land use, drainage infrastructure, and building setbacks are made under state planning acts and administered by councils. This creates a structural challenge: federal climate risk guidance must translate into council decision-making that is governed by state legislation, local planning schemes, and council-specific risk appetites that vary considerably across jurisdictions.
References and related sources
- Primary source: www.miragenews.com
- https://minister.dcceew.gov.au/wilson/media-releases/new-guide-help-councils-man
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This is an iEnvi Machete news summary. Prepared by iEnvi to summarise the source article for contaminated land, groundwater, remediation, approvals and site risk professionals.
Published: 27 Jun 2026
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