Newsroom candidates' survey: NZ local government election hopefuls are largely ignorant or reluctant around the controversial topic of climate change-induced managed retreat
When economic risk expert Belinda Storey watched the 2019 South Korean film Parasite she saw what the rest of us saw: a tragi-suspense-comedy of class and capitalism, hope and violence.
She also saw climate change.
Storey is managing director of climate change-related scenario analysis company Climate Sigma and principal investigator with the Deep South National Science Challenge looking into climate adaptation. She watched with horror and fascination as torrential rain in the award-winning movie sent water and sewage down and down from the rich Park family mansion at the top of the hill to flood the desperate Kim family’s sordid basement apartment.
It’s not Hollywood exaggeration, Storey says. This sort of flooding is happening more and more often in the real world, including in New Zealand.
“If one month’s rain falls in half a day, that quickly overwhelms your storm water system and you can have flash flooding. That’s what happened in Westport. It wasn’t water overtopping the stock banks [guarding the city from the two rivers that surround it], it was water overtopping the sewage system.
“So much is gravity based.”
Parasite may be fictional, but in August this year, authorities in Seoul started moves to get rid of the cramped basement flats known as “banjiha”, after four people drowned in what were reported as the heaviest rains in 100 years.
The conversation with Storey comes after a Newsroom poll of 600 local body election candidates from around the country showed three-quarters of future mayors and councillors didn’t think New Zealand needed to speed up progress on ‘managed retreat’ – the process of identifying areas at extreme risk of catastrophic weather events and moving them out of harm’s way.
Asked the question “How would you vote on managed retreat of homes and businesses from areas exposed to climate hazards?” as part of a wider survey, only a quarter (24 percent) said they would accelerate managed retreat.
Thirteen percent said they would slow it down, 41 percent said they would maintain the (so far glacial) pace, and about a fifth (22 percent) didn’t know or didn’t answer the question.
Several respondents suggested because their town or city was inland, the question wasn’t relevant.
“Since Upper Hutt is an inland city, we have no coastal erosion issues”, said a candidate there. “Currently not relevant in Rotorua,” another said.
Storey says that’s a common mistake.
“The presumption managed retreat is an exclusively coastal issue is erroneous,” Storey says, talking about New Zealand and predicted extreme weather patterns. “For every one house on the coast exposed to sea level rise, we have 10 houses inland exposed to flooding from rainfall.
“We will experience managed retreat from our inland floodplains. It will probably be later than on the coast, but it will occur.”
The fact more than 60 percent of local council candidate respondents were either neutral (no change to status quo) or had no view on the issue could be an indication it’s not something councils have had to think about much in the past.
Some of the survey respondents still appear to see managed retreat – perhaps even climate change – as something of a red herring for councils.
“Prove the need first,” said a Nelson mayoral candidate. “Let the market decide,” was the view of one council hopeful in Canterbury’s Waimakariri District.
Managed retreat “should be an individual’s choice,” said another in the same race.
Waimakariri rural residents have had big problems with flooding in the past and heavy rain events are increasingly common, the council’s utilities and roading manager told the New Zealand Herald in August.
"Managed retreat needs to be considered early, otherwise we undertake measures which lock people into harm's way." – Belinda Storey, Climate Sigma
In Napier, where the airport and other buildings are under threat with very little sea level rise, and there has been considerable consultation, at least one candidate appeared to believe the job was done.
“We’ve done the work here, and there’s no need for any managed retreat at least within the next 100 years.”
Of course there are also sceptics. “What is a ‘climate hazard’?" asks a candidate in Masterton. “Real or perceived by modelling hazards? I prefer rules based on facts, not politics or fads.”
And from Whanganui: “We don't have any new threats other than historical events ie flooding of the river. Sea level rises have not affected us and we have no exceptional weather events other than normal.”
Slow retreat in Matatā
So far only one settlement – Matatā in the Bay of Plenty, just north of Whakatāne – has been moved.
It took 16 years to reach a settlement with the owners of the 16 affected homes.
Storey remembers attending a local government managers conference a couple of years ago, where one mayor talked about managed retreat as the “nuclear option” – a last resort.
“Instead managed retreat needs to be considered early, otherwise we undertake measures which lock people into harm's way ... There continues to be development in locations which clearly have a time limit on them.”
Councils need to be consenting housing developments and planning services according to science-based climate change models looking ahead 30, 50 or even 100 years.
These exist. For example, the NZ SeaRise: Te Tai Pari O Aotearoa programme has mapped the whole of New Zealand’s coastline and released location-specific sea-level rise projections out to the year 2300. The data for every two kilometres of coast is available through an online tool developed by Takiwā.
Storey says the Government needs to strengthen the ability of councils to stop developments in locations likely to end up under water or at significant flood risk in the future.
“Developers and some homeowners have deeper pockets to pay for legal representation than local councils. There have been times councils have tried to prevent or slow down development based on the best science of climate change, and they have been challenged and have ended up agreeing [to the development].
“The Government should be clearer about the ability of local government to make decisions in the best interest of the wider community and climate change, and remove the ability of legal challenges to that except in the most egregious cases.”
The Government’s National Adaptation Plan, released in August, puts councils at the centre of the response to climate change, because most events happen on a local scale.
"Councils have statutory responsibilities to avoid or mitigate natural hazards and to have regard to the effects of climate change when making certain decisions,” the plan says. "They are also responsible for civil defence and emergency management, and improving community resilience through public education and local planning.”
Natasha Garvan is an environmental and resource management law specialist and a partner at Bell Gully.
She says one reason why it might have appeared from the Newsroom survey that not enough was being done around planning for managed retreat was because the survey didn’t include regional councils, which have tended to do more work in this space.
But ultimately, the city and district councils will be critical in the future, Garvan says “because they are making those zoning decisions around where the growth is and around future planning for communities.”
“The territorial authorities are going to have a key role to play as part of the new Natural and Built Environments Act,” she says. The legislation will be the main replacement law for the Resource Management Act; an exposure draft was released in June last year for public consultation.
The Ministry for the Environment website says the Natural and Built Environments Bill and sister legislation, the Spatial Planning Bill should be introduced to Parliament later this month, with the third part of the RMA reform trifecta, the Climate Adaptation Bill, expected in 2023.
Garvan says the Spatial Planning reform will make it compulsory for each region of the country to set long-term objectives for urban growth and land use change, including responding to climate change.
That will likely include decisions around managed retreat, Garvan says. But what’s not clear is who is going to fund the potentially significant cost of the infrastructure that will be needed if a community has to be moved from one place to another, out of harm’s way.
“It’s all very well putting lines on maps and saying this is what we are going to do, but you actually have to have plans about how you’re going to achieve that. And sometimes the devil is in the detail.
“Some of these decisions are going to have huge financial implications, so another important part of the puzzle is making sure you have the funding and the financing sorted to actually enable it to happen.
“Otherwise you create a whole lot of uncertainty for the community.”
