The Climate Change Commission's recent report serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need for decisive action in the face of looming climate risks. While the report highlights the 10 most significant risks, it's crucial to recognize that the broader implications extend far beyond these specific concerns. This article delves into the report's key findings, offering a comprehensive analysis and commentary on the challenges and opportunities it presents.
The Looming Risks
The report identifies a range of risks, from the physical infrastructure that underpins our daily lives to the social and cultural fabric of our communities. Here's a closer look at some of the key areas of concern:
Water Infrastructure
The country's water infrastructure is already degraded and under strain, and the report warns that this will be the first risk to reach an 'extreme severity level' within 25 years. Drinking water pipelines are vulnerable to flooding, and drought, declining water quality, and higher temperatures are putting additional stress on supplies. This is a critical issue, as water is essential for life and the functioning of our society.
Buildings
Approximately 556,000 buildings are already exposed to inland flooding, and the financial implications are far-reaching. Moreover, most buildings in New Zealand were not designed with higher temperatures in mind, which could make them unliveable under future climate conditions. This poses acute health risks, particularly for poorer households who may struggle to strengthen their homes or afford higher insurance costs.
Road and Rail Networks
A quarter of roads and a third of rail lines are exposed to surface, coastal, and river flooding, which can lead to both short-term disruption and long-lasting damage. Extreme heat can soften asphalt, create potholes, and buckle bridges and railway lines, reducing the reliability and service levels of these networks. This is particularly concerning for rural and isolated areas, where alternative routes are limited.
Social and Community Wellbeing
The report highlights the significant human and financial costs associated with forced relocation and the unchecked impacts of climate-related distress, grief, discontent, and uncertainty. Uncertainty about housing and livelihoods can erode people's sense of safety and belonging, and the prospect of relocation can break relationships, divide communities, and undermine trust in institutions. Planning and managing relocation well, and working together with affected communities, is crucial to reducing these negative effects.
Emergency Management
The current emergency management system lacks the capacity or capability to deal with significant, complex, widespread events impacting multiple regions at once. While the government has introduced reforms, it's too early to tell how successful they will be. Local response networks, such as coastal and riverside marae, are also vulnerable to climate change, and some communities have strengthened their own responses.
Māori World
For Māori, climate change is not just a physical or economic problem. Many sites of cultural significance are now highly exposed to climate hazards, and extreme weather and environmental changes are affecting taonga species, habitats, and harvesting practices. Climate change is also compounding structural inequalities, with many at-risk locations having higher Māori populations and higher rates of heat-affected health conditions.
Ecosystems and Biodiversity
Increasing land and marine temperatures change the environmental conditions species live in, while extreme weather events and wildfires cause shocks to ecosystems. Under more severe scenarios, the combined effects of climate change and existing pressures could push some systems past a point where they can recover, disrupting food production, increasing damage from extreme weather, and impacting health and wellbeing.
Forestry
Planting trees is central to New Zealand's plan to reach net zero emissions, but extreme weather, drought, wildfire, and new pests and diseases threaten this strategy and the economic benefits from forestry. Damage to these forests reduces their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and the sector's economic contribution, while also exposing waterways and downstream communities to devastating sediment and debris flows.
Central and Local Government Funding
Climate change is putting growing pressure on central and local government finances, with climate disasters being costly and hard to budget for. Since 2010, 97% of government expenditure on natural hazards has been on responding to and recovering from disasters, with just 3% spent on reducing risk and increasing resilience. The government's National Adaptation Framework signals that costs will be shared across society and over time, but the details of how and when decisions will be made are still unclear.
Decision-Making and Delivery
The demands of climate change are putting New Zealand's ability to plan, decide, and act together under increasing pressure. Decision-makers need to drive forward on adapting to climate change, as delays leave the country facing spiralling costs without effective ways of planning and acting together. The consequences of failing to manage the overall climate response will land hardest on people who are already the most exposed, particularly those in areas with smaller, rural councils and lower rates income.
The Way Forward
The report provides a comprehensive assessment of the risks and challenges facing New Zealand, but it also offers a roadmap for the way forward. The government now has two years to develop a national adaptation plan that responds to the risks raised by the report, and the Climate Change Commission will provide a progress review on the current adaptation plan later this year.
While the report highlights the urgency of the situation, it also emphasizes the importance of global efforts to curb emissions. While we don't directly control global emissions, we should be doing what we can to help make that happen. The choice is not between funding climate resilience or paying for other things the country needs; it's whether we stay paying to clean up the same disruption over and over again or we move to actually put that money into building resilience.
In conclusion, the Climate Change Commission's report is a wake-up call for New Zealand to take decisive action on climate change. While the risks are significant, the report also offers a sense of hope and opportunity. By addressing the challenges outlined in the report, we can build a more resilient and sustainable future for our country and our planet.
