Kiota. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. New Zealand has seen plenty of severe weather in recent years. Stories about towns flooding when hit with heavy rainfall have become commonplace. Just in the last month, towns like Nelson and Marlborough have been devastated, while other areas like Taranaki have been badly affected as this type of rainfall becomes
the norm. But what are the long term solutions? Today on the Front Page, Doctor Tom Logan, senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury and Chief Technical Officer at Urban Intelligence, is with us to explore how we can better protect our towns from severe weather and if moving them should be on the cards. Tom, when you look at some of the extreme weather events we've had this year, does it seem that the risk of flooding and other climate impacts is becoming more of a reality.
Yeah. I think the we're certainly seeing more of the impacts of climate change and definitely is feeling more real to everyone. I think over the last not even this year, but over the last maybe five years, it's just seemed like there's been another disaster all the time, and we've seen a lot of studies that attribute those weather events to climate change.
What do you see is some of the common issues that come up whenever there is a major weather event.
So the obvious one is flooding of homes, but I think it's we're starting to see a lot more nuance to what those impacts are. Like. Obviously homes and infrastructure that is affected, so people then get cut off or stranded, but a lot more disruption sort of what we would call cascading or domino effects, if you will, where the
where the hazard has affected an infrastructure. But because we've designed society on what we describe as interdependent systems, so all of these connections, as soon as one domino falls, all of these others for and that's where we see these longer term outages or impacts, whether it's road or power or water, what have you.
Yeah, you often see the same thing around roads, flooding, rivers bursting their banks, power lines falling down, and all that.
Right, Yeah, that's right. And it's those sort of physical impacts that then lead to the wider, perhaps less tangible impacts, and that's those ones that are actually more insidious. These are things that actually affect people. It's those disruptions to homes or businesses or supply chains.
What do we get wrong at a local central government level around how we approach preparing for the future.
I think the key one of the key challenges is that we still generally we recognize that climate changes is happening, but we haven't really embedded that into our design that we have to change and design for different conditions in ten or twenty years. It's not what we can't continue to design for the environment that we had ten twenty
fifty years ago. And as a result, our planning and the system set up by the BI central government aren't equipped, aren't providing the resources for or even empowering local government to make the decisions that they need to be making.
Really, the process we're preparing for a big event like that is decades in the making, or at least years in the making. Our pipes just simply can't handle that much water at one time, and that's how we drain our cities in our streets. What we need to look at is more nature based solutions, or we call sponge city approach to absorbing a lot of that water and lessening the impact.
The Herald recently reported that Auckland Council has approved four thousand new homes in flood prone areas and that since twenty twenty three. Are you surprised by this?
No. Analysis that we did in twenty nineteen showed that christ Church and I think christ Church and Denedan with some of the areas with the highest increases of new builds and that would have been a percentage of their total residential property. So I'm not surprised that Auckland as
a total number would be up there as well. But then in terms of number of properties built in coastal flood zones, and that's just coastal, not including river and I think that's where that challenges is that we're still often counselors find themselves up being a rock and a hard place because they don't always have the resources or the mandate to prevent that development.
What are some of the short term solutions that you think aren't working.
I think there's this pressure that we have to act quickly and visibly, but what we've seen from international research is that these what we would call disaster driven responses can be inefficient or even now adaptive. So for example, there'll be a drive following a wildfire, for example, to increase burnoffs, but we know that burnoffs actually can maybe they suppress frequent fires, but make the impacts of bigger
fires much worse. And similarly we would see somelar. We would see the same thing happening with postal or river protection in some cases, where where protective structures can reduce the impacts of those regular but smaller events but make the rest worse from bigger ones. And partially that can be due to people thinking that the problem is fixed and then their behavior not shifting. So essentially what we're doing is decision makers are wanting to be seen to
do something useful and immediately after. But sometimes when that's not thought out well enough, it can be either inefficient or not effective at all.
Right, so what sort of long term solutions should we be looking at instead?
That's essentially when we need to be much more proactive in terms of is this the right place for us to be investing development? What's the We will need some hard we will need things like sea walls or harder infrastructure protective measures in some areas, but we can't afford to do that everywhere in the country, so we need
to be very strategic around where we do that. Ultimately, what we need to see around the country a risk estments, that multi hazard risk assessment, so understand our risk from not just flooding but also fire and landslide, even earthquakes, groundwater as well, groundwater rise, which could be a major problem for us. And then say, let's make sure that we don't avoid one area, I need to make us
more at risk from a different area. And ultimately, what we're wanting to do is not take like disproportionate action, but saying let's have a plan or have a series of plans. That's that says, once the risk becomes intolerable in this area, here are some things that we could do to reduce them. So plan A, B and C.
Are there any communities that you think are leading the way on long term adaptations?
Think so, christ Church has just finished an adaptation plan for the Diamond Harbor area and that's one of that's probably the best example of that in the country and possibly worldwide. Actually equally, Bullet District Council has a plan to relocate the town of Westport, and that's not saying everyone like pack your bags tomorrow. That's saying, look, if there's a if there's another major disaster, this is an option for us, so that we're not basically sitting ducks
with no plan of action. So I think that's where where there's a challenge, and often we get a lot of Often we'll see vocal pushback in the community, but it's not saying, look, this is what we have to do, and we have to do it immediately. It's saying there's a plan in place if we need it. South Dondan is also another area that's been doing some really proactive work in this.
In this space, well, I feel like a lot of towns in the South Island, especially like you look at Tasman, Marlborough and Nelson always make the headlines for flooding when there's a major storm. Could we be looking at having to move entire communities at some point? So there's one thing to have a plan, but I feel like how soon will it be to be? Like right, the cost of moving an entire town is actually more feasible than the adaptation.
Efforts that'll surely happen in the next few decades. The challenges is going to be around insurance as well, because at the moment our properties are still largely insured and ideally we'd want to move them following when there is still insurance in place. Once we lose the insurance, that means that the resources available to us to do that
it will become obviously significantly less. But realistically there are going to be some areas that because we've built so many towns and communities in floodplains for history reasons, but yeah, we will we will likely have to move some of them.
Figuring out how to do that in a way that's as best for the residents and for a sense of community and all of those aspects is going to be as a massive challenge for local government, central government and is a big focus of a lot of social science research as well.
Where do you move a down to?
Like, what what do you do?
How do you start that process?
Yeah, well, that's the conversation that Westport is having at the moment is first off, where would you go? And then starting to think about essentially anchor projects that that
would incentivize or or attract other development. Often, I think what we'll see is that there could be a huge number of co benefits or other benefits to relocating if it's well, we can design the new space and not just in somewhere that has less risk from hazards, but also maybe it is designed more for walking and cycling so it's easier to get around or to get things that you want to want to go to, or what have you, or just having nicer, you know, nicer homes
rather than all of our cold, cold, classic buildings. But it's really going to have to be a conversation that include it's going to be a long process to talk to the talk to the communities, see what their their preferences. We saw in Japan actually that after the Tsunamis, they really located a lot of their coastal coastal communities or coastal towns, but they did it in a really really top down way, which meant that a lot of people
just left. So now so they put all this infrastructure in, but there was no one, no one stuck around to live there because they missed the step of actually asking the residents what they wanted. So we can't. Yeah, we
need to. That's the reason why we still have to this with the technical side in terms of way is safe, and then the social side of well there's no point of moving away from all of the For example, if you're in Japan, if it's a fishing village, there's no point of moving on to the top of the hill where you can't easily exiss your livelihood.
Today, the physical scars of the tsunami have been all but erased from resent Takata. Massive sea walls over forty feet high have been erected, but that's just the first line of defense. In an elaborate effort to the tsunami proof the city represent Takata literally moved mountains, using nearly two mile long conveyor belts to carry in enough gravel and rock to build the Great Pyramids of Egypt. In an extraordinary civil works undertaking to lift the downtown commercial district
out of harm's way. And here's the final result. A city that was once at sea level has elevated itself by thirty feet. It's a controversial that's cost Japanese taxpayers more than one billion dollars.
It sounds like there's a real opportunity for New Zealand to be a world leader almost in this in this area. Given the fact that you said, what we will have to start having serious conversations about this within the next few decades.
I think so. I think especially if we can consider it in terms of an opportunity rather than just a big problem. But I think that comes from being able to have that proactive rather than response like post disaster response, being able to say, what is it that we want from from the community, What is it that we value? Is that is that something that we can still achieve
or even enhance by moving down the road or so. Yes, I do think that there's a big opportunity to be world leaders and think about what is how can we make everyone's lives better as we do this, and by the way, and reduce our rescue natural hazards well.
One of the criticisms of the adaptation approach is that it can feel like we're giving up when it comes to climate change, preparing to live in this new world of extreme weather, rather than trying to avoid sea levels and temperatures rising. Where do you see adaptation fitting in with the fight against climate change?
So they have to be joined up. Yeah. Clarifying those terms, what when we talk about mitigation, we're talking about actions that we can take to stop climate change and adaptation actions we can take to protect against climate change that's already happening, and those terms are such a pain in the butt because mitigation and adaptation meant nothing to real people. We can't just prepare for climate change and continue to let it get worse, because essentially they're saying is we
have to manage the unavoidable. So we have to manage what we've locked them, and we have to avoid the unmanageable. And that's where we still really urgently have to do everything we can to to ensure that climate change doesn't get worse, because if it continues to get worse, it we'll get to a point where we can't where we can't protect against it. The IBCC has some pretty severe impacts that would make life very difficult for for all of us. So it's definitely a hand in hand kind
of approach. We can both future proof our communities in terms of natural hazards also do that in a way that reduces emissions, builds builds community cohesion and economic vibrancy. So to me, it's it is a big opportunity, but it's also something that we have to have to start thinking about proactively.
Thanks for joining us, Tom, Thank you, it's great that's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot co dot mz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.