Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee is being tasked with deciding how New Zealand will cope with the risks and costs of future extreme weather events.
Decades of greenhouse gas emissions have created a warmer atmosphere which is capable of holding more water vapour and releasing heavier rainfalls than when it was cooler.
This means the risk of severe flooding and more serious storms, such Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary floods last year, has increased.
Local and central government need to decide how to spread the cost of this risk between authorities, individuals, and private institutions.
On Thursday night, all parties in Parliament voted for a select committee inquiry into climate adaptation, intended to develop objectives and principles for an adaptation framework.
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said this framework would set out how the Government would approach sharing the costs of preparing for the impacts of climate change.
“It will help communities and businesses understand what investment is planned in their area, for example whether the council will build flood protection infrastructure, and what support will be available to help with recovery from events like slips or floods,” he said.
Having a framework in place will mean the Government won’t have to decide what support it will offer on an ad hoc basis after disaster has struck.
It could also send a signal to homeowners and insurers about whether particular locations are suitable to be built on and could result in some vulnerable areas being vacated.
The Finance and Expenditure Committee will pick up on the work that was already underway in the Environment Committee during the previous Parliamentary term
Shifting the inquiry to the Finance Committee reflects the different focus of the new Government and because it includes many of the various parties’ most senior MPs.
A report on adaptation will be due back in early September and legislation to support the new framework could be introduced early next year.
All in
Labour’s climate spokesperson, Megan Woods said it was important the framework could outlast any one government.
“Climate impacts will affect everyone. Climate change and the wild and weird weather it brings know no partisan politics. So it makes sense to support work on adaptation across the House,” she said in a statement.
During the debate in the house, she said climate adaptation was one of the most complex pieces of public policy that the world had to face in the 21st century.
“It is also important that we tackle and address that fundamental question of the funding and the financing and who pays and have that advice as we tackle the work around climate adaptation”.
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said she welcomed the chance to continue working with all different parties in the new committee.
“Just over a year ago our North Island was hammered by deadly and devastating climate-change charged weather events. Many are still grappling with the clean-up, insurance issues and infrastructure gaps.”
“We commend Minister Watts for picking up the mantle from Hon. James Shaw to progress critical climate adaptation work in a cross-party manner,” she said.
The Act Party, New Zealand First, and Te Pāti Māori all supported the inquiry.
In 2022 the then-government released NZ's first national adaptation plan, which it said aimed to "build a climate resilient NZ," bringing the Government’s efforts together in one place, and setting out priorities for six years.
In the plan's foreword James Shaw, who was then Climate Change Minister, said central government wouldn't bear every risk and cost of climate change, including climate change adaptation.
"Risk and cost will fall across different parts of society, including asset or property owners, their insurance companies, their banks, local government and central government. The Government can choose the role it plays and how it influences the way these costs and risks fall. Care will need to be taken to manage any perverse or unintended outcomes such as moral hazard. That is, inappropriate incentives to continue developing in at risk areas," Shaw said.
In February, Suncorp chief executive Jimmy Higgins said the central Government needed to take the lead on climate adaptation work — as the private sector lacked the social license.
“I do think there's an onus on the Government to protect Kiwis and make sure that wherever we're building, it's protecting life risk as well as property risk,” he told Interest.co.nz
RNZ reported in January that 1400 new homes had been consented on Auckland flood plains since the floods last summer that killed four people.
An Auckland councillor told the news outlet it was frustrating but councils were “hamstrung by current planning rules and a lack of direction from central government.”
An expert working group delivered a report on managed retreat in November last year but it hasn’t yet been picked up by the new Government.
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