There is no denying that climate change has arrived. On a day in early June it was 26 degrees in Hastings – in June (aka winter). New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmosphere Research has recently suggested it is time to reassess what are our new climate ‘normal’ is. New Zealand should, of course, continue to take steps to slow global warming, rather than just give up. But now we need to adapt to the effects of climate change too.

It is also becoming increasing clear that sea level rise is not the only climate change effect that we need to worry about. Scientists have always warned that the effects of climate change are complex, and involve a range of impacts we are now seeing firsthand, from airline turbulence and changes in ocean temperatures, to extreme rainfall leading to floods and landslips, to droughts. 

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts recently highlighted this link between natural disasters and climate change:

Here in New Zealand, we are feeling the impacts of climate change and we are seeing more frequent and severe damaging natural events such as flooding, storms and landslips. Natural disasters are costly, and we need to take steps to safeguard against loss and ensure the things we value most – our communities, jobs, industries and homes – are prepared to withstand the impacts of climate change.

This article examines the importance of climate change resilience in our infrastructure, the need for improved national policy direction in that regard, and the potential implications of the recently announced inquiry into adaptation and the Government’s new ‘climate change strategy’.

Why climate adaption is important for our infrastructure

New Zealand’s cities and communities rely on infrastructure for our health, safety, transport, communication, education and business needs. Most of the time we can rely on the lights working when we switch them on, roads being passable, and water coming out of the tap. But not during extreme weather events. During the Auckland Anniversary weekend storm in January 2023, Auckland Airport was closed, more than 3,000 properties lost water supply, and more than 26,000 properties lost electricity.

Cyclone Gabrielle occurred just weeks later in February 2023, and cut power to thousands, downed communication lines, and led to cancelled flights, ferries and trains. Schools shut across the Upper North Island, communities were cut off, houses were destroyed, and wide-spread flooding wreaked havoc along the East Coast.

The combined cost of asset damage from the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle was estimated to be between NZ$9 billion and NZ$14.5 billion, and the rebuild is still ongoing.

More recently, the East Coast has suffered further flooding due to heavy rain, with an estimated 500 homes evacuated in Wairoa in late June 2024. The Government has committed funds to assist Wairoa with its recovery efforts, and has announced an urgent review to assess Wairoa’s flooding response and whether the local councils could have acted to prevent thousands losing power and hundreds of homes being evacuated.

Due to sea-level rise, by the year 2100 over 1,441 kilometres of roads, 101 kilometres of railways, 72 kilometres of electricity transmission lines, 141 electricity structures, 14 airports, and over 4,000 kilometres of three-water pipelines in New Zealand will require some form of intervention, from protection through to relocation.

New Zealand’s response to past extreme weather events has been ad hoc, reactive, and financially unsustainable. Different approaches are being taken across the country in response to emergencies, as local authorities are left to manage the aftermath.

Bespoke legislation and Orders in Council (OIC) have been used as a mechanism to respond to these events on an individual basis. The Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Act 2023 was passed under urgency and made temporary changes to existing legislation to assist with recovery efforts from Cyclone Gabrielle. A second piece of legislation quickly followed, the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Act 2023, which introduced an OIC mechanism to ‘add flexibility to address specific issues recovering communities may be experiencing’.

The OICs address a range of issues, including how waste from the Cyclone (such as silt and debris) was managed. More recently, an OIC has been issued for flood protection works in Hawke’s Bay. Flooding caused by Cyclone Gabrielle resulted in significant areas of land in Hawke’s Bay becoming unsafe to inhabit without the development of new stop banks and other works to protect homes and communities from future flooding. The OIC temporarily amends the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) and associated regulations to speed up flood protection works in Hawke’s Bay.

To date, the response to these events has largely focussed on recovery or repair after the fact, rather than increased resilience or adaptation in advance of the future events occurring.

New Zealand needs better national direction, and support for proactive action

For those responsible for New Zealand’s infrastructure, the challenge is to make our infrastructure (new and existing) more resilient to extreme events. This could mean changing or relocating our infrastructure so it is less vulnerable to extreme events, or ensuring it can be more quickly repaired after those events occur. We are already seeing the beginnings of this in the work we do for infrastructure providers.  For example:

• Flood modelling commonly allows for changes to rainfall caused by climate change, resulting in changes to stormwater management, higher floor levels, and more headroom for bridges; and
• Essential infrastructure, such as water pipelines, are being built to be easily repairable, with spare parts kept in stock. 

The current framework for addressing climate change includes the National Adaption Plan (NAP) which goes some way to address climate adaption and infrastructure, although it is insufficient on its own as we explain below.

The NAP considers the impacts of climate change now and into the future, and sets out a six yearly ‘action plan’ as to how New Zealand can adapt to the warming globe. The NAP’s Infrastructure chapter contains a set of actions for entities such as Te Waihanga New Zealand Infrastructure Commission and the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi. These actions are to ‘help ensure these services remain resilient in the face of climate change’. Actions include investment in public and active transport, managing drought risk, and implementing adaption plans for the likes of Transpower and NZ Transport Agency.

There are also the following overarching objectives for the Government to build resilient infrastructure:

• INF1: Reduce the vulnerability of assets exposed to climate change;

• INF2: Ensure all new infrastructure is fit for a changing climate; and

• INF3: Use renewal programmes to improve adaptive capacity.

However, some of the key actions identified in the NAP (such as Three Waters and the previous Labour Government’s RMA reforms), are no longer going ahead. The scrapped Natural and Built Environment Act and Strategic Planning Act were going to embed adaptation and resilience planning into regional spatial strategies.¹ A proposed Climate Change Adaption Bill would have supported managed retreat and addressed the complex and distinctive issues associated with it, such as funding, compensation, land acquisition, liability and insurance.²

One of the most significant risks the NAP attempts to address is the risk to potable water supplies due to changes in rainfall, temperature, drought, extreme weather events, and ongoing sea-level rise. Action 4.5 of the NAP is to reform the institutional arrangements for water services, thereby moving water supply risk from local government to the new water entities (i.e. Three Waters). This risk will now continue to rest with local authorities (or new council-controlled organisations, if established).

Every two years, He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission is tasked with providing a progress report on the implementation and effectiveness of the NAP. The first progress report is due in August 2024 and will give us an insight into how we are performing on the climate adaption front. Nonetheless, by itself the NAP is not enough to ensure our infrastructure is fit for purpose in the face of climate change.

There have been some efforts in the past to address these issues. A proposed National Policy Statement on Natural Hazard Decision-making (NPS-NHD) was in the works under the previous Government, and would have directed councils to give greater weight to natural hazards when considering resource consent applications. If the risk of a hazard, such as flood, earthquake, or landslip, was deemed too high, new development could be stopped. In areas where the hazard risk was moderate, developers would need to undertake risk reduction works. The intention was for the NPS-NHD to be introduced early this year as an interim measure, while a more comprehensive National Direction for Natural Hazards was developed in the longer term. The new Government is yet to comment on whether the NPS-NHD will be issued.

It was promising to see that the motion to establish the inquiry received support from across the House, which means its conclusions are hopefully more likely to be adopted and to endure in time even as Governments change. Climate change adaptation is a long-term issue requiring continued focus, rather than being revisited each election cycle.

The Committee has been tasked with preparing a report that identifies the high-level objectives and principles required to support the design of a climate change adaptation framework. This work builds on the inquiry initiated by the previous Government and undertaken by the Environment Committee into community-led retreat and adaption funding. The new inquiry’s terms of reference do not specifically reference managed retreat, or the resource management system, which some local government authorities have criticised as inadequate for preventing development in areas prone to natural hazards. However, the approximately 150 public submissions made under the previous inquiry, and the expert working group report into managed retreat, will be considered by the Committee in this new inquiry.

The Committee must report on the inquiry by 5 September 2024. Any legislation required to support the framework is expected to be introduced in early 2025.

In another relevant announcement, the Government last week released a new high level climate strategy, ‘Responding to a Changing Climate’, which sets out its approach to how it will deliver on New Zealand’s climate goals. There are five ‘pillars’ to the strategy, focused on making sure: 

• Infrastructure is resilient and communities are well prepared;

• credible markets support the climate transition;

• clean energy is abundant and affordable;

• world-leading climate innovation boosts the economy; and

• nature-based solutions address climate change.

The example of the Government’s plan given under the first pillar is “Delivering a fair and enduring adaptation system that helps New Zealand be ready for climate change and provides clarity on costs”. What this means in practice is unclear at this stage, though we expect more detail to be released. Criticism has been levelled at the strategy, with Labour climate spokesperson Megan Woods stating that the strategy was “flimsy and backwards looking”.

Consultation on the second Emissions Reduction Plan has also just opened. New projections released alongside the Government’s consultation show the country is no longer set to reach the 2050 net zero target, nor the third emissions budget in 2031 to 2035. The figures are a marked departure from projections developed under the previous Government, which would have achieved net zero by 2041. Reportedly, if we do not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions trajectory, then the cost to meet the 2030 target in carbon credits is $23 billion, which has not been budgeted for by the Government.

While we wait for adequate national direction or new legislation, infrastructure and housing are still being built in hazard prone areas. In Auckland for example, more than 1400 consents for new houses and supporting infrastructure were granted in flood plains, in the 12 months after the devastating floods last year. Councils are increasingly using RMA instruments such as district plans to influence land use, but the RMA does not provide all of the tools councils need (i.e. a way to change plans faster to address climate change-induced changes and more funding to update natural hazard data and models).³ RMA plans cannot direct who should pay for adaptation (including managed retreat), and RMA existing use rights complicate council initiatives for managed retreat. Overall, our current system is not equipped to deal with severe weather events. The process is too slow, ad hoc, and it is reactive rather than proactive. A new national structure and funding system for climate adaptation measures are required to:

• Limit the impact of climate-related events in the first instance; and 

• Respond effectively and efficiently after the fact. 

The new inquiry into adaption and the progress report on the NAP will give us a good indication of where we are now and how we can move forward. While this is a promising start, swift action is required so we can actually begin to adapt our infrastructure to climate change. Climate-related natural hazard events will not wait for New Zealand to finish our inquiries, reporting and planning.

This article was written with the assistance of Hermione Kemp, a Solicitor in the Wellington Environment and Planning team.

1. Actions 4.1 and 4.2 in the NAP.
2. Action 5.1 in the NAP.
3. New Directions for Resource Management in New Zealand, Report of the Resource Management Review Panel, June 2020, paragraph 63.