City of Melbourne was the first city in Australia to develop a climate adaptation strategy in 2007. Since then, the city has invested $50 million in ecosystem-based adaptation with a key focus on doubling urban forest canopy cover to cool the city’s summertime temperatures by 4°C.

Maintaining Melbourne’s livability and supporting community health and wellbeing has underpinned the development of this ambitious goal and this large-scale investment. Healthy ecosystems play an important role in delivering services that create liveable cities and help communities adapt to climate change, but preserving and enhancing urban ecosystems is often not a priority for cities.

This presentation will reflect on how the City of Melbourne initiated the development of this ambitious goal to cool the city and discuss the challenges encountered in driving action over the past three years to realise successful on-ground implementation and transformation.