Canberra has the intellectual capital on tap to become Australia's most innovative city in meeting the local and global challenges of climate change, the head of a new research institute says.
The chief executive of the Australian National University's new cross-disciplinary Climate Change Institute, Professor Will Steffen, has an inspired, exhilarating vision of the Canberra region becoming ''one big laboratory'' leading a climate change revolution.
''We can be the city that takes a bold lead in innovation. We can be a focus for experimenting with new energy sources, better infrastructure and greener public transport.
''It's exciting. We can devise a way of using our own city, and the Canberra region as one big laboratory to test new ideas,'' Professor Steffen said.
The new ''virtual institute'', to be launched today by ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb at the National Press Club, will be the first of its kind in Australia.
As well as environmental research, it will incorporate climate law and ethics, renewable energy systems, emerging health issues, the economics of mitigation, necessary changes to state and federal governance and the politics of global climate change negotiations.
Professor Steffen's climate change ''laboratory'', with its ferment of ideas, will extend beyond the ANU campus in Acton, to the fisheries and tourism economies of the South Coast and the drought-affected farms around Goulburn.
It will encompass the skills of Aboriginal researchers working with Australia's biggest fire ecology program at Jervis Bay, and extend into the Snowy Mountains, where climate change threatens the survival of some of Australia's rarest plants and animals.
''It will be pretty comprehensive. We'll be looking at the big political issues as well as the ecological implications. The ANU has the biggest concentration of China experts in the English-speaking world, so we'll be harnessing that expertise to work in partnership with China on a huge range of climate-change-related issues.''
Professor Steffen also envisages Canberra becoming a city where greener urban planning can be developed, with smarter public transport systems, better use of recycled water and fewer energy-hungry buildings. ''We want to organise public forums to canvass ways to reduce the city's carbon footprint, so that it can grow but without the problems that inevitably go with unsustainable growth. Instead of sprawling growth, we can look at ways to connect the various city centres with a light-rail system that will connect people with the services they use.''
Before moving to Australia in 2004, Professor Steffen was executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, based in Stockholm. He was responsible for co-ordinating research programs conducted by more than 500 scientists across the world, and hopes his ''Swedish experience'' will help guide some of his plans for giving Canberra a greener hue.
''The Swedes have a lot of public discussions before they embark on any changes that affect the way a community operates. They don't just have one meeting, and that's it. They expect lots and lots of discussions, and I think the recent election results show people want a little more of that Swedish spirit of consultation here in Canberra.''
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