Climate Adaptation is a Relationship, Not a Project
- Gregory Andrews
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
How First Nations wisdom and leadership can guide Australia through the climate crisis.
Just after dawn this morning, I sat in Newtown with my Aboriginal brother Lee beneath the “I Have A Dream” and Aboriginal Flag mural on King Street. The sun was low, the air was warming, and we were just two fellas sitting in the shadow of a truth we both know: Australia will not get through climate change without First Nations wisdom and leadership.
The Climate Crisis Isn’t Coming. It’s Here.
Every community I ride through knows it. Heatwaves are longer. Floods are more violent. Droughts come harsher. Insurance companies are pulling out of whole regions. And communities that have always been vulnerable - remote, regional, low-income, and especially First Nations - are being hit hardest.
But Australia seems to be trying to “adapt” like it’s an engineering project. Put up a seawall here. Move a school there. Throw a resilience fund grant at someone and call it a day.
Yet here in Australia, we have an intapped superpower. The oldest living cultures on Earth have adapted to Country here for over 65,000 years. Our ancestors survived ice ages, megafauna, rising and falling seas, and climate swings - because adaptation wasn’t a project. It was a relationship.
This is What We’ve Forgotten
From an Aboriginal perspective, Country isn’t a resource. It's family. Land, water, air, plants, animals, spirits, and people are all one. We’re together as kin. When one of us suffers, we all do.
Climate change isn't just a science or infrastructure issue. It is cultural disconnection.
What Happens When First Nations Leadership is Centred
When First Nations people are included and can lead climate adaptation:
• Land management gets smarter and more sustainable.
• Fire regimes become safer and more regenerative.
• Biodiversity strengthens because caring for Country restores balance.
• Communities adapt faster because decisions are made locally, not in ministerial offices.
• Young people gain purpose, dignity, and work grounded in identity and belonging
And perhaps most importantly, the healing goes both ways - Country and people, together.
But Right Now, the System is Blocking Us
The default setting of Australian planning and climate policy is still colonial. It consults after decisions are made. It hires First Nations expertise but doesn’t shift power. It funds short-term projects instead of long-term cultural governance. It invites Aboriginal leaders to speak at conferences, but not to co-author strategies.
We can’t keep doing this, if Australia really wants climate safety. We need to move from consulting First Nations people to walking together. That means:
• First Nations communities empowered to make adaptation decisions.
• Funding that goes directly to Country-based organisations.
• Cultural governance embedded into planning, not added as a footnote.
• Respecting cultural knowledge as science, not “storytelling”.
This is Why I’m Riding to AlterCOP 30
I’m riding to Brisbane to say something simple and true: Australia wont not survive climate change without First Nations inclusion and leadership. Not morally, culturally, ecologically, or economically.
As Lee and I sat under that mural, and the shadows shifted over the black, red and yellow, it felt like a reminder - and a responsibility. The dream is not something we chase. It’s something we walk - and in my case, ride - into being.
I'm riding for Climate, Country, and Hope.
See you on the road.
Since I was a kid, I have observed dramatic changes in my environment. From animals, fewer kind supportive neighbours, clean "sweet water" and bush, backyards that grew their own veggies to pop-up suburbs, mega highways with inadequate sized side roads, with crammed housing 'boxes' where neighbours don't even speak to each other; huge mega malls and hectares of cement parking areas, un-nutritious foods and fast food outlets followed by an ever obese and unwell population. I have noticed my children and grandchildren think the current world is how it always was; they have no idea how much goes missing with each passing generation. I still am grateful and thankful I can be independent of most supermarket offerings, water and power…
Next time i will join you. Keep it up, Awesome challenge for the cause and at a personal level.
Caring for our natural environment is also deeply and intrinsically embedded in the dna of many of us. It is not ‘just’ the indigenous community that have a close affinity and relationship with the land. It is not only indigenous people that call our special natural places ‘sacred’. Working together we can all embrace and preserve the ‘country’ that we should all be respecting and caring for.