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Climate adaptation research in Aotearoa is set to be invigorated by an unprecedented 14 research projects led by Māori, for Māori.

These highly localised projects, made up of multidisciplinary teams including tohunga and kairangahau, will investigate climate impacts and responses and shine a light on indigenous leadership through the urgent challenges of the climate crisis.

“This is a game-changer,” says Sandy Morrison, Chair of the Kāhui Māori of the Deep South Challenge. “Communities have been saying for a long time that they’re ready to lead their own climate adaptation research, but too often hapū and iwi are completely excluded from the environmental, social and political decisions that directly impact them. It’s time to remove the barriers and restore power to marae and hapū to define and develop their own appropriate solutions.” 

It’s time to remove the barriers and restore power to marae and hapū to define and develop their own appropriate solutions.

Sandy Morrison, Chair of the Kāhui Māori of the Deep South Challenge

The core thread connecting these 14 projects is the knowledge that hapū and iwi have the ability, experience and research expertise to identify and activate robust adaptation solutions. Each reflects an exciting and overdue development for climate adaptation research. They are:

• Are the kina still fat when pōhutukawa bloom? Project led by Kura Paul-Burke.
• Eating with my Tuupuna: Climate resilience for Waikato hauanga kai. Project led by Cheri van Schravendijk-Goodman and Rangitaho Mahuta.
• He Pā Mataora: Learning to live with the Living Pā. Project led by Meegan Hall.
• He whakaneke a te hapori o Te Hāpua ki tētahi ara haumaru: Relocating Te Hāpua to safety as sea levels rise. Project by Marama Pohatu and Hauiti Hakopa.
• Hei Matapihi ki te Ao, Toi te Moana, Toi te Whenua, Toitū te Mokopuna: Intrinsic and effective climate leadership. Project led by Ngareta Timutimu and Jack Thatcher.
• Higher carbon prices: Impacts on farming and forestry whānau. Project led by Manu Caddie and Nicki Douglas.
• Kai ora: Restoring local Māori food systems by restoring power to marae. Project led by Haylee Anne Koroi and Teah Carlson.
• Ki te whare tū tonu, ki te whare manawaroa: Towards a climate resilient meeting house. Project led by Sylvia Tapuke.
• Kōhanga pēpi kōura: Creating pēpi kōura nurseries to protect against a changing climate. Project led by Kia Māia Ellis.
• Moutoa Island Restoration. Project led by Meri Haami and Rāwiri Tinirau.
• Taranaki climate resilience: Te tirohanga o ngā tohu. Biodiversity in a changing climate. Project led by Mahuru Wilcox and Nikki Harcourt.
• Te Ara o Raukawa Moana: Active kaitiakitanga in response to climate change. Project led by Robert McClean and Ashleigh Sagar.
• Te Huka o Te Tai: Protecting our takutai in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Project led by Tina Ngata and William Atlee Waitoa.
• Toi Tu Ihumātao. Project led by Pania Newton.

All projects centre mātauranga, tikanga and te reo Māori, and together showcase the inherent adaptability and relevance of ancestral knowledge to solve contemporary challenges. The urgency for this research could not could not be greater, with marae around the country facing climate impacts that threaten homes, urupā, wharenui, infrastructure and livelihoods. Tairāwhiti is just the latest in an ever-growing number of communities feeling the force of extreme weather, flooding, slips and tide-on-storm events. Mahinga kai are collapsing from marine changes and overfishing, while industry encroaches on previously undeveloped land. Decisions cannot be delayed any longer, and for Māori communities, those decisions are often complicated by competing political and legislative pressures imposed by local and central government.

These research projects, lasting between one and two years, recognise that cultural and spiritual health is inextricably linked to the health of the taiao. Teams will investigate multiple interrelated kaupapa, including (to name only a few), takutai moana, tohu taiao, well being, food sovereignty, indigenous capability and tikanga Māori decision making. The questions driving each project provide rich insight for other hāpori. For example, How does resilience to colonisation also build climate resilience? What mātauranga can support marae or even hāpori relocation? How can hākari be used to identify climate impacts and foster kaitiakitanga? How can wānanga be used to build climate capability, including the capability to engage with and develop local and national climate policy?  

From the IPCC to New Zealand’s own climate adaptation instruments, there is a recognition that indigenous knowledge, and the voices of indigenous communities, are crucial. Yet these same organisations and instruments often lack a strategy for – or knowledge about – how to include, let alone centre, indigenous research.

Morrison adds, “While funding 14 kaupapa Māori climate research projects is unprecedented in Aotearoa, these are only a fraction of the number of proposals we received. Māori urgently need more funding to support our research aspirations and capacity. Kua tae te wā.”

Media enquiries:

Naomi Simmonds, Kaitakawaenga, Deep South Challenge

+64 272 066 594 | [email protected]

Alexandra Keeble, Communications, Deep South Challenge

+64 210 657 291 | [email protected]

Māori and Pasifika rangatahi will be among the most impacted by climate change. This project, funded through Living with Uncertainty is set to grow their capability to lead communities in an uncertain, climate change impacted future. 

It comes as the IPCC releases the Working Group II report: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, highlighting how climate change will impact communities both physically and socio-economically, and ways in which people can adapt to these impacts.

Reshaping communities: how and where we live, how we use our land, and how we work, is at the heart of The Deep South Challenge’s latest funding round, Living With Uncertainty. 

Before covid-19 hit our shores, bringing forth the now well-known adage of “living with uncertainty”, researchers were invited to put forward proposals for projects that would help prepare communities, iwi-Māori, policy-makers and decision-makers to live with the uncertainty of climate change. 

Mana Rangatahi: Climate change decision-making is one of three new climate adaptation projects which will work with Māori and Pasifika rangatahi aged 10 – 14 from two different Canterbury schools at high-risk of flooding. 

It is led by Canterbury University professors, Bronwyn Hayward (a coordinating lead author of Chapter 6 of the IPCC report), Executive Director Māori, Pacific and Equity Sacha McMeeking (Ngāi Tahu) and Distinguished Professor and Director of Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, Steven Ratuva. 

The project will work with rangatahi to design pathways to navigate the climate future, by drawing on their cultural narratives and values to conceptualise how they will respond to climate scenarios. 

“Māori and Pasifika youth will be most impacted by climate extremes, but also have the potential to contribute much needed transformative leadership to how we collectively survive and thrive in a climate change impacted future,” McMeeking says.

A number of climate hui/talanoa/tala will be hosted with rangatahi and their whānau to consider future climate scenarios and how they might redesign their communities in the face of these. 

Professor Ratuva, Director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies says it is important climate adaptation focuses on whānau and communities, rather than individuals, Ratuva says. 

“The consequences of one’s action impacts on others so addressing the climate crisis is a collective responsibility.” 

Professor Bronwyn Hayward says she is excited to be supporting a project which is inspired by the power of ‘intergenerational learning’. 

Other projects funded through the Living With Uncertainty round include: Simplifying real options analysis for climate change adaptation, which will create a tool for councils to more simply appraise the likes of roading improvements and sea walls; and Supporting community wellbeing when water is scarce, looking at the effectiveness of measures to protect water security. 

The strength of indigenous values in guiding communities and businesses in the face of climate change is a major finding of a recently published paper on culture and climate change, authored by Priya Kurian, Debashi Munshi, Sandy Morrison, Raven Cretney and Lyn Kathlene. This paper features in the IPCC Working Group II report. 

Conducted prior to the pandemic, it uses tourism as a case study of how cultural politics is influencing climate adaptation. 

It found over half of tourism businesses were extremely concerned about climate change. While there was some awareness of its major impacts such as shrinking glaciers and rising sea levels, there was ultimately a lack of urgency in the sector for dealing with large-scale disruption in the near future.

Where adaptation approaches had been adopted, they tended to be carbon-intensive solutions like using helicopters to reach glaciers and generating artificial snow on ski-fields. 

Māori tourism businesses were found to have a greater awareness of climate change impacts, because of their intimate relationship with the natural environment. 

“I think tourism is about storytelling and introducing those stories relevant to Te Āo Māori, and Papa and Rangi is one way in which you can educate people about the environment and kaitiakitanga,” a Waitomo Caves guide interviewed for the research said. 

The values of kaitiakitanga (guardianship of nature) and whānaungatanga (relationships and connections between people, communities and all living things) were found to provide a possible pathway for not only tourism businesses but at a political level to guide more sustainable practices into the future. 

A concerted political push was needed, with a national climate adaptation plan with clear guidelines for tourism businesses, was needed to future-proof the sector against climate impacts, the report concludes. 

It’s never been clearer that “drastic and rapid” emissions cuts are needed to curb catastrophic climate change. While targets put forward at COP26 might have fallen a little short, at least world leaders and policy-makers appear to be taking heed of climate science.

Much was made of the perceived successes and failures of the 26^th Conference of the Parties (COP26). Hailed as successes were the international commitment to protect forests and an agreement to “phase down” coal use. But these were also failures, because this commitment lacked details on implementation and legal “teeth”, and the phase-down might open the door to some countries burning coal for many years to come. Underpinning negotiations were the simulations of our future climate, set out in the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released just months prior. In the face of the most weighty and consequential decisions policy makers face today, science must, and arguably did, play a pivotal role.

The first volume of the IPCC report – dealing with physical climate change – appeared in August. Its Summary for Policymakers said it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed” the climate system, and that strong and rapid reductions of CO2 emissions, reaching net zero, are required for the climate to eventually stabilise. Failure to achieve this would result in continuing warming and increasing frequency and intensity of most types of weather extremes. Incidentally, several countries participating in COP26 had recently experienced such catastrophic weather extremes, all made much more likely (or even at all possible) by climate change.  

As a climate scientist, I am pleased to see that my discipline is playing such an important and growing role, when really our common future is at stake… this is a reason for hope and a counterexample to the many falsehoods that often poison our discourse in this and other contexts. 

Olaf Morgenstern

However, the influence of science was not restricted to this momentous time. Many media outlets have reported that Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) would result in 2.4 degrees of warming by the end of the century (optimistically assuming that the NDCs will actually be met…). But these claims are not directly based on the 6^th Assessment Report. The report discusses the future in terms of predefined Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). At their core, these are stories of plausible future human behaviour, including conflicts, competition, technological progress and uptake, regional rivalry, and international collaboration to combat climate change. After translating these stories into future CO₂ abundances and other physical “climate drivers”, the SSPs are like islands of knowledge, gained by running climate models driven with these scenarios, in the sea of possible climate futures. By interpolating smartly between these islands, we can however fill in the voids between them; this is how the projection of 2.4 degrees of warming under the present NDCs was arrived at.

The role of science in the COP26 process is exemplified in that now over 90% of the world is covered by zero-carbon targets, up from 30% just two years ago. The parties to the Glasgow Climate Pact express “alarm and utmost concern that human activities have caused around 1.1°C of global warming to date and that impacts are already being felt in every region”. This is an unusually strong language for 197 countries to agree on. While COP26 clearly left more progress to be desired, to me it is a sign that increasingly the voice of science is being heard. As a climate scientist, I am pleased to see that my discipline is playing such an important and growing role, when really our common future is at stake. Given the dire prospects implied in high-emissions scenarios, such as the disappearance of whole nations whose territories would be swallowed by the sea, to me this is a reason for hope and a counterexample to the many falsehoods that often poison our discourse in this and other contexts. 

The IPCC working group II report, Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, will be released in February. This will be followed by the IPCC Working Group III report on mitigation in March. Keep an eye out on our blog for more information, and contributions from our scientists.

“Get in there… and help some really smart people do what they need to do”

We’re really excited to welcome Phil Wiles to the Deep South Challenge, who takes on the role of Director in the new year. Phil brings a breadth of experience across climate policy, community engagement and science, and we know he’ll steer the Challenge ship well through our critical final years.

Taking on the Directorship at the Challenge, while continuing to keep a foot in at the Climate Change Commission (CCC), is the next stage of a career that began in physical climate science but has expanded to encompass policy, people and culture. Phil is a natural choice to lead the Challenge through an important time in Aotearoa history: we have a National Adaptation Plan in development, managed retreat legislation on the cards, and mandated climate-related disclosures, which together mean that all sectors must get better at understanding climate risks (and opportunities). 

Most importantly, everyday New Zealanders are beginning to drive for adaptation in their own communities. There is much opportunity for evidence to inform policy, and Phil is focussed on ensuring we meet this challenge.

“I think the [national] science challenges have been a massive success… for me it’s about making sure that the really good work that has been done can be translated into something that is useful.”

Phil (who is also the husband of our earlier Challenge Manager Lucy Jacob!) began his career as an oceanographic technician at NIWA. He took this strong foundation in research to American Samoa (with Lucy), where he spent three years with the local Environmental Protection Agency. 

From there, the couple travelled to nearby Apia, Samoa, where he worked for SPREP (Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme), an intergovernmental organisation that supports Pacific nations with science advice and support on environmental issues. Phil’s focus was on the impact of climate change on oceans.

It’s a huge amount of work, but if you can get in there and guide some of it, and help some really smart people do what they need to do, that’s what I’m really excited about.

Phil Wiles on joining the Deep South Challenge

This was less about “time on boats taking measurements”, and more about connecting information with people who needed it. 

“There’s some really talented people doing some really amazing stuff,” he says, and the role was an “opportunity to give them a bit of support, so they could do more”. 

Phil returned to Aotearoa with his family in 2014 (their eldest son was born in American Samoa, “the skinniest little ginger American Samoan,” Phil laughs). This is where Phil moved from community engagement to policy, taking up a position with the Ministry for the Environment. It was “a bit of a shock”, but he came to enjoy the different work, in particular relishing his role guiding New Zealand’s contribution to the Paris Agreement. 

In his current role at the Climate Change Commission, he’s continued his work in the mitigation space, where he leads the agriculture, forests and waste team. 

What excites him the most about joining the Challenge is being part of driving forward climate adaptation and connecting that research with iwi Māori, rural communities, and industry. 

“It’s a huge amount of work, but if you can get in there and guide some of it, and help some really smart people do what they need to do, that’s what I’m really excited about,” he says. 

Phil’s official start date as director is January 31,2022.

Spotlight on Deep South Challenge energy researcher, Jen Purdie

Jen Purdie, lead researcher in our Climate change impacts on NZ electricity project, is helping to future proof our energy supply, as we move away from fossil fuels and towards 100% renewables.

Having worked across industry and research, Jen is now bringing her experience to bear on the problem of climate change. How will future rain and snow supply impact hydroelectricity? Can we hydro our way out of our energy issues, or do we need to think more holistically about this critically important challenge?

Jen has spent most of her career in the electricity sector, working for 14 years at Meridian Energy as a water, wind and energy modeller, and then a climate change modeller. She’s currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Otago. Jen describes her industry and research experiences as complimentary. In industry, she explains, you have to respond to issues immediately as they arise, while research gives you “the luxury of sitting back and looking at things with an umbrella view… taking time to go into things in more detail”. 

Jen is now modelling the impact of climate change on our electricity sector up to 2050. The electricity model she’s using is on loan from Meridian Energy, while Richard Turner from NIWA is providing wind projections. Jen’s team also includes previous Deep South Challenge researchers, including NIWA hydrologist Christian Zammit, and University of Otago community development and energy guru Janet Stephenson. 

In rare good news, unlike the impact of climate change on other sectors, hydro-electricity may be in better shape by 2050. Our largest hydro dams are based in the west of the lower South Island, an area expected to get wetter under climate change. More winter rainfall is likely in the Southern Alps, which along with warmer temperatures will mean 10 percent more water flowing into hydro lakes in winter (when we need it) instead of being stored as snow. 

Pumped-storage hydroelectricity works like this: When there’s a period with excess water – say, when there’s a lot of snow melt in the summer but little demand for power – that water is pumped back uphill to an upper reservoir (using the excess power). In winter, when electricity demand increases and there may be a shortage of water, the dammed water is released downhill to the generator. 

These hydro schemes are key to our electricity system. They’re the “big battery banks,” as Jen puts it, which supply 55 per cent of the nation’s power. However, building more hydro dams as a means for meeting future demand is not necessarily the best or only option. Hydro schemes face difficulties obtaining resource consents, in part because “there is little appetite for flooding valleys”. 

And this option for meeting future electricity demand is also costly. The government has turned its attention to the feasibility of building a pump hydro-scheme at Lake Onslow in Central Otago. If funded (a decision is expected in 2023), the scheme could cost $4 billion. 

It’s one solution, and “a good one…,” Jen says, “but there might be other solutions that don’t have such an environmental impact and don’t cost as much”.  

Another “dry winter” solution the team is exploring in the project is demand response, where consumers opt to reduce or cut off their power during peak hours, using smart appliances. So, for example, while you might plug in your electric car as soon as you get home from work, it may not begin charging until 2am. 

This can be taken further, Jen says. For instance, the grid assesses how much power is already in the vehicle when it’s plugged in, figures out how much may be needed overnight, and, if the vehicle has excess energy stored, can take back some of the power back into the network. 

Consumers would get paid for the service they’re providing to the grid… There’s talk already in industry that we need to get systems set up so this can happen smoothly, efficiently and fairly invisibly to people.

Jen Purdie

Project modelling by Jen, student Aleida Powell and colleague Michael Jack has found demand-response could take 20 percent off electricity demand during the winter peak by 2050. One obvious benefit is a reduced need for expensive infrastructure. 

And in 2022, one of Jen’s students will potentially looking at the practicalities of demand response: whether smart meters and appliances are up to the task; whether government regulations require updating; and whether the Electricity Authority would need to build demand-response solutions into its code. 

Modelling our future electricity sector is full of “massive uncertainty”, Purdie says, which is a major challenge for her and her team. As an example, uncertainty around how many electric cars we’ll have in 2050 (anywhere between 200,000 to 4 million), means Purdie must model a wide range of scenarios. 

Her approach is to take the extremes of these kinds of scenarios, and find a middle ground. This gives industry some confidence and the tools to consider their investment options, from hydro to hydrogen plants, from solar to wind, and including devices that control demand response. 

There’s no single solution, Jen says. For Aotearoa to reach its carbon zero goals by 2050, it will take all of these, big industry participation and a change in the way consumers expect to use electricity.

Jen’s project is set to conclude in late 2023, so there’s a lot of water left to run through the river. If you want to get in touch with us about Jen’s research, please email our Partnerships Director Waverley Jones.