The Albanese Government will soon deliver Australia’s first domestically-oriented National Climate Risk Assessment, which was due in December 2024.

Will it describe the full spectrum of climate risks Australians will face in the future, or be marred by a poor approach to risk analysis, bureaucratic incompetence and a limited vision?

In mid-2022, shortly after assuming office, the Albanese Government ordered a climate and security risk assessment, in line with a pre-election commitment. The analysis was undertaken by the Office of National Intelligence and delivered to the government in late 2022. It focused on the region and did not specifically cover domestic risks. Since then, the government has barely said a word about the ONI findings or about climate-security risks, has not released the analysis in any declassified form and has indicated it does not intend to do so.

So what will the NCRA cover? Climate risk is a function of the probability of a given climate hazard (stressors or shocks), and how that hazard translates into impact via exposure (how, what, where is exposed) and vulnerabilities (coping mechanisms, or their absence) in a number of ways. A risk assessment is the process of identifying the hazards and events and how they might negatively impact on people, property and the environment. It may also consider actions which can mitigate these effects.

The starting point in any comprehensive risk assessment is to establish a big-picture understanding of the existential, systemic climate risks at a global scale, that is, risks inherent to a system as a whole, rather than to individual components. Elements of the climate system may exhibit positive (change-reinforcing) feedbacks; tipping points or thresholds in which a small change causes a larger, more critical change to be initiated; and non-linear or abrupt change.

One cannot analyse risks in Australia — whether it be food insecurity, rising sea levels, unbearable heat in the north or unexpected demands for Australian disaster relief resources — without a comprehensive framework. Systemically, one or more direct impacts caused by climate change can cascade through the physical climate and Earth systems, and/or create second-order cascading effects at the economic, social, political and cultural levels. An example is the epochal drought in Syria the consequences of which became one of the drivers of the civil war, with a cascade of socio-political consequences including the displacement of half the Syrian population, a politically-charged refugee crisis in Europe and as a driver of Brexit.

But the NCRA will not do this. The government said:

“The National Climate Risk Assessment is part of the $28m budget measure and will be delivered over two years from 2023 to 2024. The Risk Assessment will i_dentify and prioritise things that Australians value the most_ that are of national significance and are at risk of climate change. These may include things that relate to Australia’s environment, biodiversity, health, infrastructure, agriculture, and the economy. This investment will give us robust and scientifically sound evidence. It will help governments, businesses and communities understand how climate risks will impact Australia’s assets” (emphasis added).

Note the language here. The process is to ask some Australians (through a set of selected stakeholder engagements) to identify the risks relevant to them.

An interim NCRA report (known as the ”first pass” assessment) was released in late 2023. As P&I reported on 7 August 2023, the first-pass NCRA “ is poorly conceived, won’t do the job and should not proceed in its present form”. Its assumptions were too conservative, and the method narrow. Rather than starting with big-picture systemic risks, it opted for the “bottom-up” approach in which stakeholders were asked to identify the most important risks to them. This almost inevitably leads to a partial picture that lacks coherence, instead providing a series of snapshots of particular risks, but with many black spots.

This approach almost inevitably means treating risk in “silos” and not joining the dots, a problem that the post-9/11 inquiry in the US identified as plaguing their intelligence and contributing to them not synthesising the evidence. The same thing happened with the Global Financial Crisis. During a visit to the London School of Economics in November 2008, Queen Elizabeth asked: “Why did no one foresee the timing, extent and severity of the Global Financial Crisis?” Economists responded in July 2009 in a public letter to the Queen which said that “a psychology of denial” gripped the financial and corporate world, and “the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole”.

And this is precisely what is likely to happen with the NCRA: failing to analyse the risks to the system as a whole. And the NCRA goals were limited by the government to adaptation and resilience responses; that is, no discussion of the need for and purpose of stronger emission-reduction policies (mitigation) in reducing the risks.

The focus of the first-pass report was very much on Australia, with very limited integration of global and regional climate impacts, and second-order effects. It appeared the NCRA was relying on climate models with no clear methodology for considering the “bigger picture” dynamics of the climate system, including tipping points, non-linear change, cascading risks and “Hothouse Earth” dynamics.

In 2023, Senate estimates heard that the NCRA was looking at a scenario of 1.5-2°C by 2050, which was way out-of-date. In fact, on current trends, warming will be in the 2-2.5°C range by 2050 because the rate of warming has accelerated from about 0.2°C to 0.3°C per decade and it is likely to stay at that elevated level. Since then, the NCRA has changed emphasis to look at impacts at 1.5, 2 and 3 degrees Celsius without a specific timeline, instead emphasising uncertainty about when these will occur. Yes, there is always uncertainty, but it should not be a cover for scientific reticence or avoiding the evidence that global warming has, for all practical purposes, already reached 1.5°C.

The signs for the final report are not good. It was delayed until after the election, and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water is lacking in experience and depth in climate science. It is one of the departments most reliant on outside consultants, which is rarely a good sign. And it has never before managed a climate risk assessment.

Another major problem was identified in the 2024 Australian Academy of Science report, _A decadal plan for Australian Earth system science 2024–2033__,_ which recommended the urgent establishment of an Australian Institute for Earth System Science, tasked with developing, co-ordinating and implementing the national science required to deliver answers to nationally significant questions. The report noted that “an unintended vacuum has emerged where no unifying agency or long-term funding initiative is addressing the fundamental understanding of climate to provide the foundations for climate intelligence needs in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time. We are, in effect, building climate action and climate policy on foundations developed 10 to 20 years ago".

It is no wonder the NCRA is in trouble! How can we assess the value of the NCRA when it is released?

An efficacious assessment would not be managed by DCCEEW, but handled by a scientifically competent body of experts, whose skills would include risk assessment methodologies. Is the assessment grounded in physical reality? Does the NCRA recognise we have already reached 1.5°C for all practical purposes? Are the systemic nature of the risks recognised and analysed? Is there a focus on the “fat-tail” risks and the plausible worst-case scenarios? Does the NCRA recognise that impacts are occurring faster than forecast? Has the assessment of Australian domestic risks been integrated into an assessment of the global (systemic) risks?

We are likely to be disappointed. The government has a record of underplaying and trying to avoid talking about the real climate risks we face. The government’s 2025-26 budget overview document has an entire section on disaster recovery and rebuilding, but the whole 64-page document does not mention the word climate once.

If the final report is not systemic in its method, but instead sketches a series of risks analysed in silos, tells happy stories about how communities are responding, and views adapting to devastating impacts as an economic good news story, then it will have failed as a competent assessment of climate risk.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.