Coalition’s axing of funding to climate change adaptation body condemned

The Coalition’s decision to axe funding to a climate change adaptation research body in 2017 has left Australia “not well-positioned” to deal with fires, the “silent killer” of drought and other global heating impacts, its director has said.

PM Scott Morrison - NCCARF was
 axed while he was treasurer.

Jean Palutikof, the director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), told Guardian Australia the decision to discontinue funding in 2017 – when Scott Morrison was treasurer – had hollowed out the research community and “the capacity to take action on climate change is smaller than it was decade ago”.

Palutikof made the comments as Scott Morrison and the science minister, Karen Andrews, attempt to shift debate from the link between climate change and bushfires to strategies for “adaptation and resilience”.

The research facility at Griffith University was established in 2008 under the Rudd government and continued under the Abbott government with $9m over three years in the 2014 budget.

Read the story from The Guardian by Paul Karp - “Coalition’s axing of funding to climate change adaptation body condemned.”