A rolling symposium on drought, climate change and primary sector resilience
In this webinar, researchers will look at what changes need to be made in the policy and decision making space.
This webinar investigates the effect the projected changes in climate might have on land use suitability and decision-making in the future – in particular what are the implications of future drought?
What will it mean for farmers and growers – what are the limitations and opportunities that may present themselves with this changing climate?
We will also explore how planning, policy, data and decision-making could be informed by mātauranga Māori and include social and cultural indicators of wellbeing.
What is a rolling symposium?
Three short background webinars, bringing you the latest in climate projections, drought resilience research and land-use science, culminating in an all-day event to generate evidence-based conversation around future drought policy.
Registrations for all three webinars and the all-day event are now open:
A rolling symposium on drought, climate change and primary sector resilience
In this webinar, researchers look at the social, economic and cultural impacts of drought in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The concept of ‘resilience’ has recently gained traction in a range of contexts. Its various interpretations and framings are now used to examine a variety of issues, particularly relating to the human dimensions of global change.
In Aotearoa, resilience concepts are used by researchers, policy-makers and practitioners, to prepare for, recover from, and better understand the impacts of climate variability and extremes. For the most part, resilience focuses on change: it includes the ability of a system to maintain its current state despite disturbances, its ability to adapt, and to transform. Resilience covers both stability and change, and often involves identifying what enables farms, individuals or industries to cope – or not – with the impact of a shock.
What is a rolling symposium?
Three short background webinars, bringing you the latest in climate projections, drought resilience research and land-use science, culminating in an all-day event to generate evidence-based conversation around future drought policy.
Registrations for all three webinars and the all-day event are now open:
A rolling symposium on drought, climate change and primary sector resilience
This webinar, the first of three in our Rolling Symposium on Drought and the Changing Climate, will cover the most recent drought projections. It will take you through how drought is modelled, will cover projections out to the end of this century, and will explain how the science has progressed.
The webinar will also cover the quickly changing science of extreme weather modelling. This form of climate modelling investigates the fraction exteme events (like drought) that can be attributed to climate change, and estimates how much climate change is costing us.
Information and projections like this form the basis of guidance and planning at both regional and national levels and provides an insight for farmers, growers and policy makers into a future of more severe drought.
What is a rolling symposium?
Three short background webinars, bringing you the latest in climate projections, drought resilience research and land-use science, culminating in an all-day event to generate evidence-based conversation around future drought policy.
Registrations for all three webinars and the all-day event are now open:
The Deep South Challenge (DSC) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission on the Climate Change Commission’s (CCC) Draft Advice for Consultation. The DSC’s mission is to enable New Zealanders to anticipate, adapt, manage risk and thrive in a changing climate, and therefore our focus is on adaptation to climate change.
We would like to emphasise that adaptation needs to be considered alongside mitigation. Considering both together will help ensure that policy and investment decisions do not impede upon on Aotearoa’s ability to adapt to climate change and provide an opportunity for building resilience to climate change as we decarbonise the economy.
We note that the majority of the CCC’s advice is concerned with mitigation, but we welcome the limited recommendations around adaptation and would like to provide some further comments regarding these.
We strongly support the recommendation of avoiding “overshoot” in the emissions scenarios, as overshooting is expected to raise adaptation costs, and importantly make adaptation more challenging. We are unclear if the emission costs of adaptation have been considered in the emissions budget. While there are anticipated co-benefits, adaptation may also cause an initial increase in emissions e.g., from the construction of new infrastructure. Where this is the case it should be noted this requires further emission reductions from other sectors for the proposed budgets to be met.
Without effective mitigation in both Aotearoa and globally, adaptation becomes increasingly urgent, painful, and costly. DSC funded research starkly demonstrates the implications of high temperature increases across systems, communities and the economy. For example, $135 billion worth of buildings are potentially exposed to fluvial and pluvial flooding (Paulik et al. 2019). Thirty centimetres of sea level rise (foreseeable in the next 30 years) would expose $18.49 billion worth of buildings around New Zealand to coastal flooding, 2,000 km of roads, 112 km of railway tracks, 4,000 km of water pipelines, 1,600 km2 of agricultural land and 14 domestic / international airports would also be exposed (Paulik et al. 2020). This may lead to “insurance retreat”, where with a 1% probability of coastal inundation exposed homes in Wellington and Christchurch are expected to face a partial insurance retreat from 2030, with homes in similarly exposed locations in Auckland and Dunedin following only a few years later (Storey et al. 2020). Who bears this cost is yet to be decided.
Already, communities are struggling with their current exposure to extreme events such as flooding (e.g. Stephenson 2020). Other research demonstrates the inequalities already currently occurring in climate change adaptation (Ellis 2018). This threatens the notion of a “just transition”, exacerbates existing inequalities, and is only likely to increase as climate change affects more communities.
We support the enabling recommendation 2: To coordinate efforts to address climate change across Government, particularly a multi-agency appropriation which consolidates existing and future government funding for core climate change mitigation and adaptation activities. DSC research with local government and communities identified the need for centralised Government action on climate change (both adaptation and mitigation) (Barth and Vincent 2018). DSC research has identified the existence of “cascading impacts” of climate change that propagate throughout the economy and across sectors (Lawrence et al. 2020), which may be anticipated be reduced and/or better managed if there was a coordinated approach.
Similarly, we support Enabling Recommendation 4: Align legislation and policy to enable local government to make effective decisions for climate change mitigation and adaptation. DSC research has illustrated the contradictions and liabilities inherent in the current legislative environment, disempower local authorities from making effective long-term adaptation decisions (James et al. 2020.; Iorns Magallenes et al. 2019).
We note with respect to Necessary Action 4; Maximise the use of electricity as a low emissions fuel, that Aotearoa will need to become increasing dependent on renewable electricity. The DSC is supporting a research project examining the impact the climate change on the New Zealand energy system, as it is recognised that this is not well modelled across the range of IPCC future emission scenarios (led by Dr Jen Purdie, University of Otago). This project aims to model climate impacts on the entire energy system out to at least 2050, including climate projections; scenario changes to electricity demand from decarbonisation; and anticipated load changes from irrigation pumping, heating and air conditioning.
We emphasise the importance of considering adaptation in Necessary Action 10: To ensure that urban planning does not create greater exposure and vulnerability to infrastructure in future. DSC research highlights the ways that a changing climate and increasing severity and frequency of extremes will affect critical infrastructure (Hughes et al. 2019, 2020), including drinking water (Kamish et al. 2020).
DSC research (past and current) can provide insights into Necessary Action 11: Create options for alternative farming systems and practices. Completed projects include an analysis of capturing climate uncertainty in the construction of water storage for agricultural production (Wreford et al. under review), and an exploration of the suitability of land uses under climate change (Ausseil et al. 2019) – which is continuing in a second phase, co-funded with the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge. Other current projects include a transdisciplinary project examining the impacts of climate change, adaptation options, and the costs and timing of action in the dairy sector (led by Anita Wreford, Lincoln University), and a project developing adaptation planning and processes in the wine sector (led by Nick Cradock-Henry, Manaaki-Whenua Landcare Research).
In conclusion the Deep South Challenge is keen to continue collaborating with the Climate Change Commission. We invite you to look at our recently refreshed website and welcome the opportunity to discuss both the research outlined above and our wider portfolio of research.
In recent years, the policy landscape for climate adaptation in Aotearoa has shifted dramatically. There is also growing recognition that stakeholders and end users require methods and tools that help them make decisions despite uncertainty about the future.
Our mission is to enable New Zealanders to anticipate, adapt, manage risk and thrive in a changing climate. To date, our comprehensive research portfolio has helped us deliver on “anticipating” the nature and magnitude of the challenges ahead, and the urgency with which action needs to be taken.
We are now increasing our focus on the second part of our mission statement, and are asking for your research ideas as the first stage of a new Impacts and Implications funding round, “Living with Uncertainty.”
We recognise that, as a “climate adaptation” science challenge, it’s incumbent upon us to be adaptive! We are up for the challenge of changing, not just with our climate, but with the needs of our communities, in line with expert advice from adaptation researchers.
We are looking to fund projects that either:
Work with end users or stakeholders on implementing adaptation approaches, where possible utilising existing research, or
Develop or apply approaches to support decision making under uncertainty.
This funding round will follow a two-stage process:
Stage One: Interested researchers provide a brief outline of their research idea/s, using the template provided. The Challenge, and key stakeholders, will review research ideas to identify those which clearly address either of the priority areas, have new or existing teams which could credibly conduct the research, and correspond with research needs already identified by stakeholders.
Stage Two: Based on the research ideas we receive, the Challenge will develop an RfP, and invite a small number of research teams to develop full research proposals. In this stage, we may suggest that researchers combine forces, or that particular researchers work with specific or general stakeholder groups. This may include limited funding and support for co-development.
What does climate change mean for our house insurance?
Constant Change seminar with Belinda Storey
Climate change is a slow-moving disaster that will affect all communities across Aotearoa. It might hit some of us this year, or in the next 10 years, or it might eventually take out a home we have deep historical attachment to.
Worsening coastal hazards are not yet fully reflected in homeowners’ decisions to purchase, develop or renovate coastal property. New Zealand is also still building new residential developments in climate-risky locations.
What does this mean for our house insurance?
Within our four largest cities, at least 10,000 houses currently sit within a 1-in-100-year coastal flood zone. Nationally, around 450,000 houses are within 1km of the coast. These homes are likely to be affected by more frequent and intense storms and by sea level rise. In this seminar, Belinda Storey (Climate Sigma) will take you through her much-anticipated research into “Climate change and the withdrawal of insurance.”
A recording of this seminar will be available on our YouTube channel in the days following this seminar. Please subscribe to stay up-to-date.
One of the key trends in domestic and international climate litigation is in trying to establish who is liable for taking (or not taking) adaptation measures.
There have been at least 19 court challenges in Aotearoa to council decisions on adaptation to sea level rise. Currently, councils have a lot of leeway in their approaches to climate hazard risks, including sea-level rise. Court action across the nation is testing the limits of council authority, and showing up gaps in the legislative and policy environment.
And even though leeway exists for councils, some of their options will incur larger future liability costs than others. Further, some councils – at least some of those involved in making adaptation decisions – appear to be unaware of the extent of their possible liability.
Contractors clear road after slip. Ngaio, Wellington. Photo by Dave Allen.
In her much-anticipated Deep South Challenge research report, Insurance Retreat, Belinda Storey (Climate Sigma) attempts to look to the future, to ask how the insurance sector will respond to the ever-increasing impacts of climate change.
Within our four largest cities, at least 10,000 houses currently sit within a 1-in-100-year coastal flood zone. Nationally, around 450,000 houses are within 1km of the coast. These homes are likely to be affected by more frequent and intense storms and by sea level rise. One reason is that sea level rise allows storm surges to reach further inland.
Just 10cm of sea-level rise in Wellington, for example, will change the probability of a flood event by five times. That is, an event that might have occurred once every 100 years will soon occur every 20 years. But worsening coastal hazards are not yet fully reflected in homeowners’ decisions to purchase, develop or renovate coastal property. New Zealand is also still building new residential developments in climate-risky locations.
“People tend to be very good at ignoring low-probability events,” Storey says. “This has been noticed internationally, even when there is significant risk facing a property. Although these events, such as flooding, are devastating, the low probability makes people think they’re a long way off.”
But how are insurance companies in Aotearoa New Zealand likely to respond? Will they be as relaxed about risk as homeowners? That’s unlikely.
International experience and anecdotal evidence from those in the industry suggest that companies start pulling out of insuring properties at around 2% AEP. By 5% AEP, insurance is completely unavailable. That is, insurance companies withdraw insurance from an area when disasters (like floods) begin to occur between every 50 to 20 years. This is probably a conservative estimate.
If the probability of your hazard increases five-fold, from 1% to 5% AEP, your premium and/or excess will go up and you’ll find it increasingly difficult to renew your insurance for that hazard.
In this research, Storey analyses extreme sea levels for the Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin coastlines. Her findings indicate that homes that might currently flood only once every 100 years are likely to experience insurance retreat over the next 15 years:
In this webinar, our Vision Mātauranga programme lead, Associate Professor Sandy Morrison (University of Waikato), will be speaking about her Deep South Challenge research project Te Tai Uka a Pia. The webinar is part of a series organised by the rōpū rangahau Māori in Antarctica, which sets a wero to think about how Māori and indigenous knowledges can strengthen the global collective approach to Antarctic science, policy and governance.
We’re delighted to share news of this webinar event organised by the Vision Mātauranga rōpū rangahau of the Ross RAMP project.
Sandy Morrison (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Maniapoto; Ngāti Rārua ki te Tau Ihu, Ngāti Tama ki te Waipounamu) and Aimee Kaio (Ngāi Tahu, Tuhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue and Ngāpuhi) will speak about their imminent research Iwi relationships with the Southern and Antarctic Oceans(August 2020). The research documents Māori narratives of voyaging and mātauranga of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
According to the tribal narratives of Ngāti Rārua and Te Āti Awa, the first human to travel to the Antarctic was the Polynesian explorer Hui Te Rangiora.
Hui Te Rangiora sits aloft the meeting house Tūrangapeke, at Te Awhina marae in Motueka. He gazes out in his continual search for new lands, and in this way his journey is remembered and honoured. Te Rangiora also adorns the Pou at the entrance to the Riuwaka Resurgence in Kahurangi National Park. At this place, he took rest and prepared himself spiritually and physically for his journey into the Southern Ocean.
This is one recorded version of Māori journeying into the Southern Ocean. But what other stories are held by hapū and iwi – especially those from Te Waipounamu (the South Island) and Rekohu (the Chatham Islands)? How might these stories frame our ongoing relationship with the Antarctic and our adaptation responses to climate change?
In this project, Sandy and Aimee worked with hapū and iwi from Te Waipounamu and Rekohu to better understand the extent and nature of the relationships Māori had with the Antarctic and Southern Oceans, and to identify local challenges associated with climate change through both tribal stories and contemporary living arrangements.
Recent and ongoing drought in Auckland and Northland highlights how vulnerable New Zealand’s water infrastructure is. We haven’t yet hit Day Zero – as happened in South Africa when Cape Town ran out of drinking water – but the spectre of thirsty people and thirsty paddocks looms large.
So is our infrastructure planning up to the task? And are our planners making the smartest possible investment decisions, given that water availability under climate change is critical but also uncertain?
Can our dams and reservoirs be designed with both climate projections and flexibility into the projects’ very foundations? The short answer is, yes. In this seminar, Anita Wreford (Lincoln University) and Wageed Kamish (Tonkin+Taylor) will take you through their research projects, which address different aspects of these questions: Making robust decisions about New Zealand’s water and Drinking water, drought and climate change.
Anita’s research has tested a method for designing flexibility into large climate adaptation projects. Called Real Options Analysis (ROA), the method is useful across a range of investment decisions in New Zealand, where the initial cost is large and the investment is at least partially irreversible.
Using the case study of an on-farm irrigation scheme, Anita’s multidisciplinary team – including hydrologists, economists and farm specialists – considers that ROA enables more cost-effective investment than cost-benefit analysis, for example, or other methods that use only a single climate scenario.
Wageed’s research investigates the drinking water risks that urban and rural communities would be exposed to under “yet to occur droughts” due to climate change. These risks have not, until now, been quantified. As in Anita’s project, Wageed’s team developed and tested new methods for quantifying this risk. The team’s work represents a first substantial step towards the development of a practical, transparent way of assessing the potential impact of climate change on reservoir and catchment yields for water supply.
This seminar is the first in our new-look, Covid-era Constant Change seminar series. We hope you’ll join us online from home, from your office or from the waiting room of a Covid-testing facility, to make sure we keep climate change at the forefront of planning and investment in this time of global pandemic.
