Resources for communities

Setting up your community group

• Transition Towns Tasmania is a community response to our high reliance on finite fossil fuels and climate change, and is part of the global Transition Network. Learn more about groups in your local community and how to start a local group yourself. Further information is available on the Transition Towns Tasmania Facebook page.
• Landcare Australia provides resources wanting to start a Landcare, Junior Landcare, Coastcare, Bushcare, Dunecare, Friends of Beachcare, Rivercare, or any volunteer group working on local environmental projects in your community.
• Our Community Group website provides advice, training and resources for people working to build stronger communities.

Films and presentations

Films and presentations can help bring your local community together, start conversations and encourage action.

Films

• 2040 Documentary 2019
  2040 is a hybrid feature documentary that takes director Damon Gameau on a journey to identify solutions to help is improve the health of our planet and the societies that operate within it. Digital screenings can be arranged for schools, communities and workplaces. Viewers are encouraged to prepare their own climate action plan.
• Towards 2040 - A Conversation Series
  This webinar conversation series complements the 2040 movie and explores topics such as making food fair, democratising the energy system, and making change stick.
• An Inconvenient Truth 2006
  This is an Academy Award-winning documentary film about former USA Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate, he has presented more than a thousand times.  In 2017 An Inconvenient Sequel:  Truth to Power was released.
• Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, delivered in Australia in partnership with the Australian Conservation Foundation, has a great selection of videos that explain climate change and the actions people are taking.
• Chasing Ice 2014 is an Emmy-Award winning documentary about environmental photographer James Balog, who used time-lapse cameras to capture changes to the world’s glaciers over a period of years.

Presentations

You can invite a Climate Leader from the Climate Reality Project to lead your group in a discussion about the science, impacts, and solutions to climate change.

Grants

There are a range of grants that community groups may be able to access from Government and other sources, a few of which are listed below.

Finding grants

• To keep up to date with grants available for communities in Tasmania, subscribe to Grants Alert. This service is managed by the Department of Communities Tasmania and has some great resources to help community groups plan their projects and write better grant applications.
• The Australian Government and other organisations provide a variety of grants to support community organisations. You can browse available opportunities on websites like Community GrantGuru or Funding Centre.

Tasmanian grants

• Natural Resources Management (NRM) South offers grants to community groups for environmental projects:
• Check with your local council, as some offer grants and funding for community activities that benefit the environment.

National grants

• 20 Million Trees aims to re-establish green corridors and urban forests, in line with Australian Government working with the community to plant 20 million trees by 2020. The program is part of the National Landcare Program, with $50 million funding for competitive grants through to 2018-19.

Key scientific data

• Tasmania’s greenhouse gas emissions provides information Tasmania’s emissions, where they come from and how they have changed over time.
• Climate Futures for Tasmania Project is the Tasmanian Government’s most important source of climate change projections on local scale. Climate information from 1961 to 2100 was generated by downscaling six global climate models and using two emission scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The project generated more than 70 terabytes of climate simulations data, covering 140 variables, at more than 700 grid points across Tasmania.
• Climate Change Projections for Australia released by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO show how the climate is expected to change over the coming decades. The key messages for Tasmania are:
  • average temperatures will continue to rise
  • less rainfall in winter and spring
  • more hot days and fewer frosts
  • more extreme rainfall events
  • harsher bushfire weather
  • mean sea level will continue to rise.
• Information about observed climate change in Australia and the national and regional reports can be downloaded from the Climate Change in Australia website.

More information for your community is available on our Tips for communities page.