Volunteers are a crucial part of Australia’s Environmental and Climate Change action and response. Every year hundreds of thousands of volunteers work directly in the environmental and climate change space from conservation, rehabilitation, and adaption to tree planting, threatened species protection, land management, clean-up, wildlife rescue, recycling, education and citizen science to name a few.
Volunteers are also the backbone of Australia’s disaster response networks, particularly in climate generated disasters due to extreme weather events such as fires, floods, droughts and heat waves. They play a vital role in community resilience and recovery from these increasingly common events.
Volunteering Australia is raising the profile of environmental and climate change volunteers and advocating for their representation and consideration in key policies that affect them and their communities, with the aim of strengthening environmental causes and participation.
Status of environmental volunteering
The opportunity to better align and grow this segment of Australian volunteering is significant. There are more than six million formal volunteers in Australia and further work is needed to better understand the motivations, needs and barriers to environmental and climate change volunteering.
As the world grapples with the challenges of climate change, volunteers can and will play a leading role in this effort. The 2022 ANU poll found that 7.0 per cent of volunteers (around 475,000 people) are engaged in ‘Environment’ organisations in Australia. However, interest in volunteering for environmental organisations was very high among non-volunteers, with 23.0 per cent of those who did not volunteer indicating that they would be interested in doing so for such organisations in the future.
The gap between action and interest presents a timely opportunity to engage and support not only current environmental volunteers, but to galvanise those with intent or interest in participating.
How is Volunteering Australia engaging on and progressing this work?
Policy Position
Our Pre-Budget Submission 2024-25 seeks to establish a foundation program that builds environmental and climate change volunteering capacity. This national program would amplify and accelerate participation in environmental volunteering specifically, with the aim of directly benefiting the environment and contributing to efforts to mitigate the global environmental threat of climate change.
COP31 Collaboration Group – turning our collective concern into action
Volunteering Australia is a member of the COP31 Collaboration Group, which believes COP31 can be a catalyst for communities, businesses, social groups, individuals and families to participate in and realise climate action. The group includes leaders from key environmental and community focused Not-For-Profit and Non-Government Organisations.
The COP31 Collaboration Group, supports the Australia-Pacific bid to co-host the 31st Council of the Parties (COP, UNFCCC) in 2026. Co-hosting these global climate negotiations offers us all a chance to work together in a broad inclusive way – business, community groups and all levels of government – towards a climate resilient, zero emissions future.
The group recognises the need to raise the voice of all Australian communities, NFPs and NGOs on the issues of climate change mitigation, adaption, resilience and transition, turning our collective concern into action.
Volunteering Australia attended and faciliated a session at the COP31 Basecamp in Sydney in 2023. The basecamp invited hundreds of delegates from diverse sectors to contribute their ideas and expertise towards a much wider, more accessible and effective COP. The report of the first basecamp is available on the COP31 Basecamp webpage.
The COP31 Collaboration Group also met on the sidelines of the Impact X Climate and Nature Summit in Sydney in April 2024, where discussions were held with Australia’s Ambassador for Climate Change.
Wider collaboration and involvement
Volunteering Australia took part in the Impact-X Climate and Nature Summit in Sydney in April 2024, forging relationships with key environmental groups.
We also recently signed on to and contributed to ACOSS’s Fair, Fast and Inclusive Climate Change Action Blueprint, ensuring that volunteers and their roles are visible and are acknowledged as key to mitigation and response. The blueprint highlights that vulnerable and disadvantaged communities are affected first and the most by climate change and that it disproportionately affects low-income, vulnerable and minority groups and regional and remote communities, including First Nations’ communities.
Volunteering Australia will continue to raise the profile of environmental and climate change volunteers and advocate for their representation and consideration in key policies, with the aim of strengthening environmental causes and participation.
