MELBOURNE
DRIVING SYSTEMS CHANGE IN AUSTRALIA
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ACHIEVING LONG-TERM SUSTAINABILITY GOALS AT RESILIENT MELBOURNE AND THE FUTURE BUSINESS COUNCIL WRITTEN BY
SEAN GALEA-PACE PRODUCED BY
RYAN HALL
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RESILIENT MELBOURNE
TOBY KENT, MELBOURNE’S CHIEF RESILIENCE OFFICER AND CHAIR OF FUTURE BUSINESS COUNCIL, DISCUSSES THE IMPORTANCE OF DRIVING CHANGE AND REALISING SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH COLLABORATION
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arbouring an ambition to achieve long-term sustainability, Toby Kent, Chief Resilience Officer of Resilient Melbourne, is committed
to driving change. In addition to his role at Resilient Melbourne, Kent is also Chair of the Future Business Council, a membership organisation that 04
exists to advance the interests of future looking sustainability-oriented businesses. He stresses that in both roles, his position is fundamentally about supporting teams to make connections and helping to break down traditional barriers as well as fostering new, deeper forms of collaboration. Resilient Melbourne was initially instigated by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation under its 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) initiative. 100RC helps cities worldwide to meet the physical, social and economic challenges that are influencing the 21st century. Melbourne was selected from 372 applicant cities worldwide to become one of the first 32 cities to join the 100 resilient cities network. With metropolitan Melbourne consisting of 32 local government authorities comprised of more than 10,000 sq km in the area around Port Phillip
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Toby Kent, Chief Resilience Officer, Resilient Melbourne
S TAT S
• Resilient Melbourne is made up of approximately 30 councils, with additional support from the Victorian Government and many public and private organisations. • Future Business Council represents over 150 businesses, from start-ups to major corporations, across Australia.
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RESILIENT MELBOURNE
“ RESILIENT MELBOURNE HAS FOUR INTERDEPENDENT, LONG-TERM OBJECTIVES, WHICH AT THEIR HIGHEST LEVEL SEE OUR METROPOLITAN COMMUNITIES AIMING TO BE STRONGER TOGETHER, HAVE SHARED PLACES, A DYNAMIC ECONOMY AND A HEALTHIER ENVIRONMENT” 06
— Toby Kent, Chief Resilience Officer, Resilient Melbourne Chair, Future Business Council
Bay, Kent and the Resilient Melbourne team led the creation of the city’s first ever resilience strategy. This involved working in partnership with over 1,000 representatives from more than 230 organisations and agencies. The strategy provides an alternative way to address chronic stresses that impact the city, such as rapid growth and congestion and to be better prepared to deal with acute shocks, such as extreme heat, fire and floods. “Resilient Melbourne has four interdependent, long-term objectives, which at their highest level see our metropolitan communities aiming to be stronger together, have shared places, a dynamic economy and a healthier environment,” explains Kent. Resilient Melbourne has most recently released Living Melbourne: our metropolitan urban forest, which aims to improve liveability and enhance the health of the city. There are many advantages to the urban forest, according to Kent. Importantly, he says, it is a way to tackle unpleasant impacts of climate change and other stresses, presented in a way that excites people, rather than scaring them, which halts action. “Substantively, the urban forest helps to cool
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘RESILIENT MELBOURNE’ 07 the city, particularly in times of extreme
access to green space they are more
heat. It uses vegetation to slow water
inclined to take active exercise.
run-off, as well as reducing flooding
Kent’s work with the Future Business
through absorption.” Working with
Council shifts a focus from a single
partners; The Nature Conservancy,
city to a broader Australian context.
Digital Globe and Trimble, Resilient
FBC works with businesses and their
Melbourne has mapped Melbourne’s
partners across Australia to identify
vegetation. “There is a clear correlation
and support organisations that are
between affluence and access to
forward-looking and have sustainability
green, vegetated spaces,” Kent says.
built into the way they do business.
“There are important social equity
Through its ‘2018 Next Boom’ report,
aspects to this work.” Greening the
FBC highlights that key opportunities
city has further positives, including
for the Australian economy include:
that seeing nature has proven mental
positioning ‘brand Australia’ to be
health benefits, and when people have
a progressive, innovative, clean and w w w.re si l i e nt me l bo urne . com . a u
RESILIENT MELBOURNE
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Deputy CRO, Maree Grenfell, launches Living Melbourne
green economy; expediting the transition to a low-carbon Australia, incorporating infrastructure and the uptake of electric vehicles; as well as promoting innovation more broadly across a range of goods and services Australia does well, particularly around agriculture and finance. With a drive to ensure Melbourne becomes ever-more resilient and that Australia seizes the opportunity of ‘the next boom’, Kent believes technology is a critical component to cities’ and
“ THE URBAN FOREST HELPS TO COOL THE CITY, PARTICULARLY IN TIMES OF EXTREME HEAT, IT USES VEGETATION TO SLOW WATER RUN-OFF, AS WELL AS REDUCING FLOODING THROUGH ABSORPTION” — Toby Kent, Chief Resilience Officer, Resilient Melbourne Chair, Future Business Council
businesses’ strategies. “In Melbourne,
start at a human level.” With that in
the overall plan is to make our city
mind, Kent reflects on how he marries
more resilient through innovation
both his city work and his FBC lives
around systems, and continuously
together. “Companies of all sizes talk
questioning how we do things,” he
about the need to understand their
explains. “I believe technology can
customers, and the necessity of being
be an enabler of that. However, the
customer-centric. One of the things
starting point has to be people; they
I love about my urban work is that as part
are at the heart of all cities, which is
of their communities, local governments
why it’s so critical that your solutions
profoundly understand their customers.”
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Toby Kent Toby Kent is the Chief Resilience Officer for Melbourne. Separately, he is Chair of the Future Business Council. Kent has created and implemented resilience and sustainability strategies across a range of sectors. Since the late 1990s he has worked with governments, communities, industry sectors, and many other stakeholders on five continents Various achievements include: supporting the growth of Corporate Citizenship, one of the UK’s preeminent specialist Sustainability consultancies; leading PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Sustainability work with retail and consumer goods companies in the UK; and running PwC’s Sustainability & Climate Change team in Hong KongPrior to leading Resilient Melbourne, Kent worked with leading Melbourne businesses, including MMG mining corporation and ANZ bank, where he was Head of Sustainable Development.
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FUTURE BUSINESS COUNCIL
We want everyone to thrive in a digital world. In an increasingly inter-connected world, digital technology is helping society respond to issues in a more agile and scalable way. Download our Bigger Picture Sustainability Report here
International CROs explore the role of biodiversity in building urban resilience 11 On the importance of implementing
about asking the right questions and
the right technology and not simply
being open to not knowing the answers.
embracing new innovations for the
At Resilient Melbourne, we worked
sake of it, Kent highlights how his
with a firm Citymart to ask the market
organisations welcome change
and citizens more broadly: ‘How can
without fear of failure. “Part of the way
Melbourne address the twin stresses
we innovate is to be unafraid to trial
of increasing transport congestion
new things, and being willing to fail
and decreasing social connection?’”
fast,” he says. “While we always need
Kent and his team created a panel
to do our due diligence, we’re seeing
of innovation experts, transport and
even the biggest companies becoming
infrastructure professionals, rand city
increasingly comfortable with generating
government. “By asking people how to
the minimum viable product and iterating
solve the challenge rather than telling
off the back of real user experiences.”
them the solution, we identified some
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RESILIENT MELBOURNE
this allowed some start-ups that would otherwise have struggled to get past traditional procurement approaches to out-compete some major multinational corporations. It served us well.” Collaboration is critical to addressing existing and future challenges. The world is too complex and fast-paced for single entities to deliver all the solutions. “We have a way to go, but we’re getting better at working across government, business and academia here in Australia,” he explains. Kent points to the relationship between 12
Monash Business School and FBC and believes that collaboration has been important. “Our respective networks help us to draw out profound insights. Perhaps the greatest indicator of the depth of the relationship is that FBC recently appointed last year’s Monash-FBC MBA scholar, Suzanne Paynter, as its new interim CEO.” Similarly, Resilient Melbourne works with many universities, but its relationship with the University of Melbourne’s, City of Melbourne Chair in Resilient Cities, a co-funded position, has delivered particular value to Melbourne’s work on resilience. Beyond that, Kent highlights impressive
work between RMIT, Swinburne Centre for Social Impact and Telstra. “Over the last four years, these partners have produced the Australian Digital Inclusion Index and it’s encouraging because they’re enabling a profound level of understanding of societal vulnerability and needs in a very fastmoving space. We’re becoming more digitally inclusive, and it’s fundamental that we do, because the gap between those most included and benefiting from digital technologies and those who aren’t is growing significantly, in addition to the consequences as an increasing number of services go online.”
Suzanne Paynter, interim CEO Future Business Council
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RESILIENT MELBOURNE
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“ PART OF THE WAY WE INNOVATE IS TO BE UNAFRAID TO TRIAL NEW THINGS, AND BEING WILLING TO FAIL FAST” — Toby Kent, Chief Resilience Officer, Resilient Melbourne Chair, Future Business Council
Considering the future, Kent highlights the importance of focus and growth for both Resilient Melbourne and FBC over the next few years. “Resilient Melbourne must continue demonstrating its value at a state, council and grassroots level in order to show that we’re helping to reduce the chronic stresses that could potentially pick away at the fabric of society and may become the shocks of the future,” affirms Kent. “We must be able to show how we’ve played a role in decreasing
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the impact of those shocks and helping
Foundation, Australian Ethical and
people to not just bounce back from
early supporters, such as Bank
the horrors of what they might have
Australia with its clean money
experienced, but to move forward.”
campaign, have to quickly move to
“In terms of the FBC, it’s essential
underpinning our economy. It’s not
that we show our members that
too much of a stretch to say that our
they have a stronger voice together.
future depends on it.”
With so many of our members currently occupying niche positions in our economy, we must ensure they become mainstays — the backbones. Business models like those of FBC members the Australian Energy w w w.re si l i e nt me l bo urne . com . a u
MELBOURNE
www.resilientmelbourne.com.au