Local councils will present state and federal governments with their plan to combat climate change and worsening bushfires following a national summit on the issues.
More than 65 local and state government representatives, academics and community groups from across Australia met in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains on Tuesday to discuss how climate change is impacting communities and worsening bushfires and how local governments can better plan for natural disasters.
The majority of councils who attended the forum, hosted by the Climate Council's Cities Power Partnership, were from NSW including Blue Mountains City Council which was devastated by bushfires in the spring of 2013.
Labor mayor Mark Greenhill said the meeting's outcome was to work towards determining what strategies and practical measures are required for communities to combat climate change and bushfires.
This will then be presented to state and federal governments.
"We will say, given the challenges we're confronting with climate change and bushfires these are the things we need to have across the three levels of government in order to cope," Mr Greenhill told AAP on Tuesday.
These could include access to community services in times of recovery, access to good planning data to prepare for hazard reduction and access to information to inform city planning, he said.
As the leader of a community which lost 200 homes in bushfires, "all levels of government need to have climate change at the absolute heart of their thinking," he said.
The nation's leaders are about 20 years behind the game on the issue, he said.
Ecologist Lesley Hughes has warned local governments the bushfire season will only get longer and more dangerous because of "intensifying" climate change.
"It's imperative that all levels of government commit to swift and meaningful action to drive down Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the climate impacts that put our community at risk of more frequent and intense bushfires," Ms Hughes said in a statement on Tuesday.
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