PM Chris Hipkins says communities may have to make some 'tough calls about managed retreat' following the destruction from Cyclone Gabrielle. Video / NZ Herald
A trio of severe weather events, likely to cost billions of dollars, has brought the vexed and complex issue of climate change adaptation into sharper focus. Where shouldn’t we be building? Is managed retreat now a reality? And how poorly prepared are we to meet what our warmer, wilder world is now throwing at us? And what are the risks of getting today’s decisions wrong? Science reporter Jamie Morton put key questions to three of New Zealand’s leading experts in the area: Climate Change Commissioner and Victoria University adjunct professor Judy Lawrence; Victoria University’s Economics of Disasters and Climate Change chair Professor Ilan Noy; and Waikato University sustainable planning expert Professor Iain White.
Across New Zealand, what does our level of risk look like right now? What do we know about the extent of public and private property at risk from flooding, storm surge and sea level rise – and how is that risk likely to worsen over coming decades?
Judy Lawrence: New Zealand is prone to too much water from rainfall - or lack of it – as well as sea level rise and storm surges.
We know that there will be more extreme events and that the seas will continue to rise: these become risks where people meet hazards.
We know where many of the hazards are, but we keep ignoring this knowledge and place ourselves at risk, often for short-term gain for housing and for economic gain for products from the land.
Climate change makes all this much worse and it will keep getting worse until we and our global partners reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and we stop building in exposed places.
Iain White: One of the issues that the scientific community is currently addressing is that it’s hard to get a clear picture of our current national level of risk, as there are different methodologies for how to collate information, which may differ between geographical areas or various hazards.
So hopefully, we should be able to answer this question with more confidence in the next few years as we move towards a more consistent approach.
For flooding there is good data, particularly in better resourced cities, but there are still uncertainties.
For example, one of the biggest is that, while we have projections of what an event may look like under different future climate scenarios, we have less confidence on what our 2050 urban form may look like.
University of Waikato professor of environmental planning Iain White.
So, it’s hard to predict future exposure and risk.
It’s also hard to get a clear picture of risk as, in practice, hazards intersect – so you have precipitation, causing landslips, causing disruption of roads or water supplies.
You could be affected by the disruption, even if your home is safe. For example, scientists are working on understanding more about how our level of risk extends beyond the “floodplain”.
Ilan Noy: My view is we don’t really know the answer to this question.
There is clearly significant risk from pluvial – such as in Auckland - and fluvial – such as in Esk Valley - flooding.
However, most of the previous attempts at quantifying this risk focused on coastal and sea-level rise risk.
It will definitely worsen, the science is crystal clear about this, but we cannot at this point quantify by how much.
How unprepared is New Zealand, presently, to face these risks and why? And how are we worsening these risks right now through poor planning, maladaptation and building in places that we shouldn’t?
Judy Lawrence: New Zealand is unprepared for these big intense events because of where we live and our legacy of having cleared the native bush.
While we have gained productive activities that help the economy, it is at a cost that is not internalised.
We have a gigantic “pass-the-parcel”, or risk transfer, going on between central and local government, between party political players, between developers and households.
What we need is collective action to stop building in exposed places and address the legacies we have created.
The hazards are created by humans and humans have to fix them.
We do have a housing crisis and need to build more, but we also need to ensure we don’t pass on the costs of dealing with risks to future generations, as we are dealing with those passed on to us now.
Doing some office work, tidying up files while waiting for water in the orchard to subside, and I stumbled across this 'gem' from 1994. An internal Auckland City Council memo. pic.twitter.com/DR4DkxJEmx
This goes beyond building in the wrong places, it’s a broader recognition that water requires space – whether in pipes below ground or in safe areas above ground.
It’s also an acknowledgement that water needs a managerial strategy that should be enacted at multiple scales for the greatest effect, so from property to neighbourhood, up to catchment.
I think we urgently need a national strategy on “making space for water” which would provide direction to councils and allow planners and urban designers to enact the city-wide adaptation solutions which are common overseas.
It’s very hard to lessen risk with ad-hoc, fragmented approaches at the site or property scale.
Ilan Noy: As long as we don’t change our resource management practices, and Act, we are likely to be continuing building the wrong places, thus exacerbating a problem caused by past poor planning.
What are some of the biggest changes - and toughest decisions – that we’re likely to see over coming years and decades? For instance, how can we generally expect policymakers, councils, insurers and banks to respond?
Judy Lawrence: The big challenges are around resettling people form harm and all of us paying for that.
Insurance will play a part but for those in greatest need. We cannot condone choices made in the face of knowledge about risk. Banks will have to stop lending for activities in risky places.
A flooded Waiamuku, Auckland, on February 16. Photo / Michael Craig
Councils will have to develop plans that are unequivocal about the risks with little wriggle room for legal challenge or practice wobble.
There will have to be prohibited areas for development, for example, building on wetlands and in floodways where households bear the brunt when it rains.
We’ll have to redefine our love affair for the sea and where we live in relation to it.
We will design a funding instrument that is simple and clear to address these issues across New Zealand.
Iain White: The costs of upgrading infrastructure will be a growing issue, particularly if the Government does not enact a making space for water strategy to take the pressure off the existing infrastructure.
It’s now common to hear talk of “retreat” in areas subject to catastrophic or frequent events, but there is still a lot of work to be done to shift that from a theoretical option to a practical one.
It’s also worth noting that retreat can apply to other things too – so it’s not just a physical relocation.
For example, you may get a more insidious retreat of private sector investment from particular areas as capital moves to where it is safer.
Overseas, we have also seen changes in insurance cover where particular perils, like floods, may be subject to new policy terms that protect the insurer more in the face of an uncertain climate: so, an increase in excess, for example.
The Eastern Bay of Plenty town of Matata, where 16 homes were bought by council at the expense of $17m in a near-two decade process, may prove the first of many instances of managed coastal retreat in New Zealand. Photo / NZME
In the UK, insurers also got together and lobbied government to increase infrastructure spending, so they can play a key role in forcing the Government to be strategic too.
Ilan Noy: We will definitely see insurance and banking retreat from some locations, and also some managed retreat.
Which happens first, depends on how proactive our managed retreat system is going to be - if one is implemented - and how fast insurers and banks transition to more granular decision making.
We will also see increasing calls from affected households for government to step in and bail them out.
As the short-term political imperatives to do so are powerful, we frequently see governments elsewhere intervening in ways that are actually increasing the long-term risks.
What are the risks of getting these decisions wrong? Is there a danger that we adapt poorly - or shift too much of the cost of adaptation onto the general public, or future generations?
Ilan Noy: Of course.
We have seen that happen elsewhere, for example in the UK, with their implementation a decade ago of a practically public insurance programme for flooding (FloodRE).
That programme shifted the risk to the general public, and kicked the can down the road on many of the more difficult long-term decisions.
We need to proactively try to make sure this does not happen in Aotearoa.
Judy Lawrence: If we take knee-jerk reactions from the past, we will get it very wrong.
We cannot tame nature for what is coming and is here now.
We need a fresh start, with avoidance and precaution at its heart, which works with people to reduce the risk both through changing our relationship with nature, and being climate aware.
We have the knowledge about where the risks are highest and the tools and measures to do this, but it must be planned with the communities most affected while having an eye on future generations as well.
Iain White: There are many risks from not acting at the pace and scale required.
For example, the most vulnerable populations will be paying a disproportionate cost.
A flooded Wairoa, pictured of February 18. Photo / RNZ, Kate Green
Decades of risk management research has shown us how adaptation can occur on the individual scale, and that many who can protect themselves – whether via insurance or moving elsewhere – will do so.
But not everyone can, which is why we need effective national policy on flood risk management. Research also emphasises that it tends to be a rising cost for us now, as well as for future generations.
It’s common in the wake of events like these to hear a dollar value for damage, but this is only a part of it.
The costs go beyond insurance to disruption more generally. For instance, how many are affected by the recent spate of significant road closures?
Or what about the wider emotional aftermath and health costs of dealing with the floods and the protracted clean-ups for affected communities?
We do have a lot of knowledge in this country, and much of what we need to do is well known in the scientific and policy communities.
The challenge is bringing this together and translating science to policy with the requisite resources and support to deliver on it.
At a state level, we’ve recently seen the launch of our first National Adaptation Plan, and we await the introduction of the Climate Adaptation Act to help address some of these big issues. Still, are we doing enough as a country? And, at local and regional levels, what could councils themselves be doing to reduce their risks and make their communities more resilient?
Judy Lawrence: No, we’re not yet doing enough, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Review Australasia Chapter, which includes New Zealand.
We are making a lot of it up as we go, but we need to learn from that experience.
Yes, councils have planning measures that can make a difference in reducing risk, such as regional rules in plans that district councils have to follow, or “prohibited” uses which some councils, like Tasman, Whakatane and Northland, have used.
There are subdivision laws that enable consents to be refused if there are hazards.
But, as consenting brings pressures to develop, and Government gives priority to housing, climate change impacts have too high a bar to jump as a qualifying matter.
Hazards and climate change are too far down the decision hierarchy.
Our behaviour is to treat it as an afterthought, or something we can mitigate.
History shows mitigation will fail, and those in the way will be damaged and lose everything.
Political leadership at councils and by Government has to get this right, otherwise we will have more devastation and loss.
Iain White: As ever with these things, we have made progress but we could do more.
There is no doubt that new recent policies are very welcome, but there are still ongoing issues with translating national objectives into on-the-ground changes.
Estimates put the value of New Zealand's flood-exposed property at $145b. Photo / Brett Phibbs
The reality for climate adaptation is that many of the activities that increase or decrease risk are done at the local levels and are associated with current development and urban form.
But it’s very hard to change urban form.
We have property rights; existing land uses; constrained local government budgets; strong political messages to reduce “red tape” for developers; a sense that urban planning is a cost to be minimised, rather than something we need more of, to plan cities better; and a policy environment that is not geared to adaptation at scale.
Ilan Noy: The National Adaptation Plan is only a high-level document, and doesn’t really provide the tools for individuals, communities, and local government to be able to adapt.
We need a Climate Change Adaptation Act, and as long as we don’t really know how that act will look like, we can’t really determine whether we are “doing enough”.
Do you suspect this cyclone event has already shifted the dial here? Might this disaster be a catalyst for action, sooner? Or are you concerned that many of its lessons for adaptation will go unheeded?
In the past, we’ve had many climate disasters, and we go back to “build back better”. But it’s not better, it’s the status quo, and here we are.
Seeing the devastation of landscapes may be a catalyst, but there are those still asking, what is the scale of climate change impacts? Well, look out the window - or to Bangladesh, Louisiana, Germany and South Africa.
Climate change will affect us all, so all of us must make sure we demand change in how we plan for it.
Iain White: I live in hope, but am currently unconvinced that it has led to a significant policy shift.
Although, we are seeing some very good discussions about risk management that could be a precursor to the acceptance for a more strategic approach.
The clean-up in East Coast communities hit hard by Cyclone Gabrielle is expected to be massive, with many businesses and communities predicting months of work to recover. Photo / RNZ
It is common overseas to launch an independent inquiry or similar after significant events like these, and I now think this is what is needed to ensure we reflect, learn, and create the evidence for policy change regardless of who is in power.
If we are going to suffer disasters like these, at the very least we can show a stronger commitment to learn from them – so adaptation needs to occur within Government, as well as in our settlements.
Ilan Noy: Yes, a former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, once said that we “should not let a serious disaster go to waste”.
It sounds cynical, but after a disaster, there’s a short window of time when people understand and accept that we need to engage in a paradigm shift and that business-as-usual is no longer a legitimate choice.
That window is already starting to slowly shut down.
It will not remain open for very long, but I hope we do “use this opportunity” to really get our adaptation act together.
