You can blame it on climate change. You can blame it on inadequate infrastructure for the likes of wastewater. You can blame it on New Zealanders building homes, businesses and roads in the wrong places or farming in the wrong places. You can blame it on bad luck. Or you can blame it on a combination of all of the above.
Whatever you choose the reality is storms, flooding, sea surges, landslips, strong winds and fallen trees have become all too familiar to most of us in the upper North Island this summer. By my count we've had four significant storms, or adverse weather events, so far in 2023. Meanwhile looking on from the north, it appears that much of the South Island has basked in a largely hot and dry summer.
In Auckland we've experienced flooding the like of which has never been seen before. Northland and the Coromandel have taken a pounding. Tairāwhiti has copped it. Bay of Plenty and Waikato have also been hit. And on Tuesday morning we've woken up to news of significant flooding in the Hawke's Bay.
Working from home with our kids' schools shut, it feels like a Covid-19 lockdown again. But for those of us who have been fortunate in escaping the worst of the weather damage, so far at least, the lockdown déjà vu is insignificant compared to those hard hit.
When new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins took the reins last month he promised a focus on "bread and butter issues." Notably this includes cost of living issues with inflation in New Zealand, and many other countries, the highest it has been in decades. High prices for food, fuel and housing have certainly been felt by many New Zealanders against the backdrop of rising interest rates. With an election looming in October it's no surprise that Hipkins and his colleagues have zeroed in on "bread and butter issues."
I hope though that recent events will sharpen the focus on climate, or weather, resilience and raise this issue up the list of key election issues this year.
Last August the Government issued what Climate Change Minister James Shaw described as New Zealand's first national climate adaptation plan, bringing together in one place the Government’s efforts to help to build climate resilience and setting out priorities for the next six years. This move to building a "climate resilient" NZ even talks about managed retreat, moving the likes of assets, activities and sites of cultural significance away from areas of high risk.
The adaptation plan doesn't, however, feature much detail on how all this would be paid for. Shaw did, however, indicate that asset or property owners, their insurance companies, their banks, local government and central government can all expect to share the cost.
The Climate Adaptation Act is in the works as part of the Government's moves to replace the Resource Management Act.
Six months ago the development of this new Act was probably set to largely slide under the public's radar. I really hope, however, that recent events will lift it much higher on the political, media and public's agenda. Because it's really important.
Whatever reason(s) you ascribe to what's going on with our weather, we aren't well enough prepared for it. We need to have a long hard think about what we've built and where, what we want to build in the future and where, where some of us live, work, play, grow stuff and farm, and if, how and why this may need to change.
We need to have wide ranging and honest discussions and debates across our society. Our politicians need to be involved, and ideally we need as much consensus across the political divides as we can get so that key decisions survive changes of government. We don't need our media reporting the political side of this, as some like to do, as if it's a sport. We need to do better than that.
In my opinion NZ suffers from a lack of long-term planning in the way our cities and towns have grown and in the way we have, or often haven't, developed infrastructure. Working to improve our climate resilience is an important opportunity to try and reverse this. I really hope we don't drop the ball on this.
(*Also see the Of Interest podcast on climate adaptation finance with David Hall, and the podcast with Tower CEO Blair Turnbull on insurance & climate change).
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