What You Need to Know About the Northern Rivers Floods & Climate Change

Our beloved communities in the Northern Rivers have been hit hard by recent floods causing incomprehensible damage. So many towns, homes and businesses were destroyed. In the Northern Rivers alone, more than 2000 homes and businesses have been declared unlivable. [1]

People were stranded for days, cut off from their communities, without phones, clean water, sanitation, wifi and power - making communication impossible. On top of it all, there’s been food, fuel, water and supply shortages.

Amongst all this tragedy, the community spirit has shone brighter than we ever could have imagined. Immense bravery and kindness has been shown by so many, rescuing, sheltering, providing.

Whilst the cleanup efforts have begun, the sheer scale of what is required is enormous and it will take years for these communities to rebuild.

As a team, we span across the entire Northern Rivers area, each of us impacted in some way, like everyone single person who lives here, by these devastating floods.

We've donated our care products to community centres to distribute to those who need them most. We're also continuing to donate more care products and lunch containers to schools and communities in need. For example, we donated our On The Go Containers to The Country Women’s Association and Radical Hope Club to help serve up 125 meals and cakes for a crew in Lismore. Such an amazing effort!

We're all getting stuck in individually to help in our local communities too. From doing fuel, water and supply runs to organisation donations, doing cook ups and clean ups.

As the situation is constantly changing, we are focusing our efforts on areas that need it each week (and day!). Follow us on @seedandsproutco for up to date information.

If you're a local, keep an eye out for what's needed in your town and do what you can. Whether it's volunteering with clean ups, cooking or washing for families - there's a lot to be done and every little bit helps. Follow Floods Recovery and Resilient Lismore for up to date information and where help is needed.

We know floods in this region are common. But we also know that they’re getting worse. 1:100 year floods are happening more often. And not just in Australia, but all over the world. You can see here the devastation caused from a flood in Germany in 2021 as just another example.

So how does climate change make floods worse? We were wondering the same thing, and while there isn’t one simple answer to this there are a couple of ways climate change makes floods more severe.

Firstly, we need to look at climate change and what that actually means. Simply put, the earth is warming, the average temperature of our planet has risen by 1.1°C since the pre-industrial period - it may not seem like a lot, but this increase is already causing extreme impacts in our weather, having flow on effects to our communities, economy and health. We can’t afford to see that temperature rise any higher. [2]

This increase in temperature is increasing the heat of the atmosphere which means it can hold more moisture. This in turn means more rainfall, in shorter and more intense downpours.

Did you know that a 1°C warmer atmosphere can hold around 7% more moisture?

In Australia, we’ve recently experienced an extremely wet La Nina climate. November 2021, was the wettest in Australia, ever on record! Areas were already saturated before the floods, and as soil acts like a sponge, the water had nowhere to go but over the surface. [3]