Fire Shield: how will we be fighting bushfires in 2025?

As the climate crisis continues, communities around the world are increasingly threatened by bushfires, flooding, and other disasters. In Australia, the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020, which burned an estimated 30 million hectares of land and destroyed more than 2,000 homes, and devastating flooding events in the first months of 2022, have kept these threats at the forefront of our minds. Experts suggest it’s only going to get worse.

And more and more voices are joining the chorus that our current approaches to coping with these threats are no longer up to scratch. So what can we do to better predict, prepare for, and bounce back from disaster?

Adrian Turner, CEO of the Minderoo Foundation’s Fire and Flood Resilience Initiative, speaks to Professor Alan Duffy from Swinburne University of Technology about how this ambitious initiative is pushing the boundaries of blue-sky thinking in disaster preparedness and resilience.  

Read more in Cosmos Weekly: Why Australia’s climate shock needs a ‘Moon shot’