Dr Jacqueline Rowarth: Managed retreat - where does the primary sector fit in?

Flooding and cyclone damage in the Esk Valley after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Neil Reid

Opinion:

It’s important for cyclone recovery ministers to think about farms as well as houses because New Zealand’s economic recovery depends on it, Dr Jacqueline Rowarth writes.

Managed retreat sounds planned. It gives the impression that we are in control and implies a sense of order.

It accepts that humans can’t control nature (as King Canute showed his courtiers with respect to the tide coming in) but that we can control how we react and plan for events.

New Zealand’s Ministry for the Environment explains the concept clearly:

“Managed retreat identifies areas considered of intolerable risk and reduces or eliminates exposure to extreme weather events. It enables people to relocate their houses, activities, and sites of cultural significance away from at-risk areas within a planned period”.

Because time and tide wait for no man (a proverb where “man” refers to humans, not gender, and the meaning is that if you don’t make use of a favourable opportunity, you might never get the same chance again) the Government is trying to make decisions and create a supported and managed retreat where it can.

Cyclone Gabrielle has given the impetus and also enabled some frightening economic calculations to be made. Managed retreat will take billions of dollars. Category three (unsuitable for living) buyouts for residences alone will cost over a billion dollars.

Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson has already expressed doubts about how the retreat can be affordable and who will be expected to pay – taxpayer, ratepayer or homeowner?

Similar confusion is rife in Hawke’s Bay, where 235 landowners have been told that their properties are deemed to be in category three – “future severe weather event risk cannot be sufficiently mitigated, and the property may face an unacceptable risk of future flooding”.

Some of the properties appear to include activities – campgrounds and orchards, for instance. But farms have not yet been mentioned. Farms, with horticultural enterprises, have received some of the primary sector cyclone recovery support of $78 million, but they are a long way from returning to business as usual.

Dr Jacqueline Rowarth. Photo / Supplied

What is clear is that New Zealand needs a fully functioning primary sector for economic stability and growth. Minister for Agriculture Hon Damien O’Connor made that apparent when he announced the funding boost in April: “We understand farmers, growers and other rural businesses are critical to the local economies, providing jobs as well as export revenue for us all”.

To farmers and growers (and other rural businesses) it sometimes seems that the role they have in supporting the New Zealand lifestyle is forgotten in the muddle of suggestions from citizens and regulations from authorities.

King’s Birthday Weekend provided an opportunity for many people to leave the cities and visit areas that had been damaged by the cyclones. The motorways, which did not run freely on Thursday afternoon (Auckland schools declared a teachers’ only day for Friday), were clogged by early Friday afternoon.

And though MfE estimates that the annual emissions from one cow are similar to a domestic car doing 8543 km a year, it is likely that the cost of fuel was more prevalent in people’s minds than their vehicle’s emissions.

Adding to the justification of escape-to-the-country was that the cyclone-hit areas of the country wanted visitors to boost the local economy and create a feeling of normality.

This is perfectly understandable, but a managed retreat is about dealing with the abnormal becoming normal – it is developing a new “business as usual”.

The Esk Valley has been flooded before. In 1938, silt was as high in some areas as it was with the cyclone. Flood banks had been built to contain rivers, but in the torrent of Gabrielle, they proved insufficient to hold back the tide of water rushing down from the hills.

This is the real concern for the future: what sort of planning and investment is really required to cope with what might be to come?

The government has estimated that “10,000 homes will require investment in flood mitigation around them so they are protected when the next severe weather event hits”.

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This is on top of the approximately 700 properties, 400 of which are in Auckland, now considered unliveable. It is these 700 that are the subject of the voluntary buyout through a funding arrangement between the Government and councils.

How will the government and councils (and homeowners) afford what is required, and where does the primary sector fit in?

Exports facilitate international trade and stimulate domestic economic activity by creating employment, production, and revenues.

Exports allow New Zealanders to pay for imports, including cars and fuel. Minister O’Connor has recognised the importance of the primary sector exports with support.

The next step is to ensure that the cyclone recovery ministers are thinking about farms as well as houses.

There is no doubt that managed retreat will take time. It will also be expensive. Taxes and rate increases are unlikely to be popular, so just as in Covid, it will be the primary sector to the rescue.

A focus for all government thinking must be enabling the Primary Sector to be innovative in managing the issues, not just in cyclone territory, but everywhere, to allow the sector to keep supporting the export economy. New Zealand’s economic recovery depends upon it.

- Dr J.S. Rowarth, Adjunct Professor, Lincoln University, has a PhD in soil science from Massey University and is on the board of directors of DairyNZ, Ravensdown, Deer IndustryNZ and NZ Animal Evaluation Ltd. The thoughts and analysis presented here are her own. jsrowarth@gmail.com