An interview with our new Science Lead in the Engagement Programme, GNS social scientist Wendy Saunders

Wendy Saunders is a social scientist specialising in land use planning and natural hazards – whether geological or weather-related, and including hazards that are exacerbated by climate change. Wendy has worked for many years at GNS Science, where a core part of her work is engaging with communities, councils and others, to improve the way natural hazards are incorporated into planning for land use.

In 2013, Wendy was a World Social Science Fellow in Risk Interpretation and Action, and in 2017 she won a New Zealand Planning Institute award for best practice, in relation to an online natural hazard planning toolkit she developed for councils.

She is member of the Mātauranga Māori and Governance programmes in the Resilience to Nature’s Challenges National Science Challenge. More recently, Wendy has come on board the Deep South Challenge as the Science Lead in our Engagement Programme. It’s a great fit for many reasons, some of which we explored in this interview.

Kia ora Wendy. Can you talk about where your interest in natural hazards might have sprung from?

When I was growing up, if there was ever a flood, Dad would put us all in the car and drive us out to have a look. Which you shouldn’t do! Totally not what you’re supposed to do!

Hamilton is considered to be the safest place in the country. But you know, when the Waikato river flooded, up round Ngāruawāhia, and along the wetlands there, it was amazing. Dad always got pretty excited when something happened.

So I guess I’ve always been interested in hazards. When I finished school, I worked for an insurance broker for a number of years. I became interested in the insurance side of hazard management. And when I finally went to university, I carried that interest in natural hazards over.

Can you tell us a bit about your family?

There are very strong women in my family. It’s really humbling to see my grandmother’s photo, and my aunt’s, on the back wall of our marae. We come from a line of such awesome women!

I’m Ngāti Raukawa, from the north. Our marae is at Pikitū, near Waotu, by Lake Arapuni. My grandmother was brought up at Waotu. She spoke te reo fluently, though I never heard her speak it. We are keen as a family to strengthen our ties to Pikitū, and I’d really like to organise a trip back there. 

What about your work in the Resilience to Nature’s Hazards challenge?

Under the Resilience challenge, I’m looking at the role of iwi management plans in natural hazard management. Once they’re lodged with a council, iwi management plans become legislative documents. They can be quite powerful. I’m looking at the Bay of Plenty as a pilot case study area, because the Bay of Plenty has every single hazard that we have in New Zealand. They also have a lot of iwi management plans, and the council helps to fund those plans. So, if they have every hazard, how are those hazards represented in the plans? My findings are, they’re not represented very well.

Partly that might be because of other priorities in the short term, such as water quality. But I’m also hoping to tease out whether the issue is the accessibility of science, or whether it’s that there’s not a good sharing of knowledge and information between council, iwi and scientists. How is the information exchange going? How can it be improved?

As a hazards researcher, if I’m going to work anywhere around New Zealand, the first thing I should do is look at the iwi management plan if it exists, and see how my research aligns with the priorities of that iwi. It may align well, and that gives you a good conversation starter. Research of course is two-way, and iwi have a lot to offer. They know the land.

So the next part of our research is looking at the relationship – how can we better share our hazard information? Are councils sharing the information they get from us, and passing it on in a way that’s meaningful? It’s not enough to put hazard information up on a website. It’s talking to researchers, to find out what steps they take to ensure their information is getting through. And it’s talking to iwi, about their experiences, opportunities, and the expectations they have of these iwi management plans in relation to hazard management.

It seems like there’s a huge amount of crossover between the Resilience challenge and ours, the Deep South Challenge: Changing with our Climate. Can you talk about that?

Yes. My research has also considered how these plans have included climate change and sea level rise, for example, in hazard planning. Because when I’m looking at natural hazards, I don’t differentiate.

You can’t have a conversation about hazards without also talking about climate change. I don’t think you can separate them at all. They have to be combined. Even tsunami. A tsunami is triggered by an earthquake, generally. People say, that’s got nothing to do with climate change. But the impacts of the tsunami are influenced by climate change. If you’re experiencing increased sea level rise, increased chop, increased storminess, increased erosion, and if you’re losing metres of your shoreline, then your tsunami inundation zone could potentially go much further inland.

It’s the same with landslides, which increase with the amount of heavy rainfall. Or flooding. If we want to take a holistic view, we need to be incorporating climate change into everything.

We have an opportunity to strengthen the links and integrate our research between the national science challenges, especially the Resilience challenge (but I’m biased!). What information is the Deep South producing that could be fed into the Resilience challenge, and vice versa?

How do your values drive your work?

For me it’s about building trust, and doing really good work that’s useful, usable and used. I’m a very action-based person. I like to do stuff that’s useful. That’s where I’ve had my best career highlights, actually seeing my work being picked up.

The online toolbox I’ve developed, for example, is not only a framework to work out levels of risk. The toolbox supports councils to engage with communities, and within councils themselves.

I guess it’s around having integrity being trusted. Not compromising myself to fit in with other values that others may have. A lesson I’ve learned is to hold your own values close, and don’t succumb to other people’s. A friend gave me a good quote: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” It reminds me not to stoop, to hold to my own values, to hold my head high.

We’re lucky to have you as Engagement Lead. What are your priorities? What would success look like to you?

First I want to fully recognise the awesome job that Rhian Salmon has done does to build up the Engagement Programme, starting from scratch. Engagement is now embedded throughout each of the Deep South Challenge’s five programmes, which is quite an accomplishment.

The key opportunities I see are around engaging with some of the other National Science Challenges, creating better linkages, and leveraging efficiencies, so we can create greater value out of our research.

I’m excited about being able to contribute to the strategic direction of the Challenge as we move into the rebid phase, and about reviewing our current engagement strategy.

The funding period is quite short. But in 10 years’ time, success would be seeing Deep South Challenge science being incorporated into decision making – and having really strong evidence of that. Success would also be that all New Zealanders understanding how climate change effects them, and what they can do to adapt. That’s not just a Deep South Challenge issue but we are a key part of that. Only when you really understand climate change can you actually meaningfully do something about it.

But the Deep South Challenge is really well-regarded outside of the Challenge. And, I’m really excited to be a part of it moving forward.

Rescuing historic weather to understand New Zealand’s future climate

In this seminar, off the back of the highly successful ACRE: Antarctica conference, NIWA climate scientists Andrew Lorrey and Petra Pearce will take you back to the days when weather observations about Antarctica and the Southern Ocean were recorded in black ink on parchment.

Drew and Petra are part of a Deep South Challenge project which is testing the ability of the NZ Earth System Model (NZESM) to simulate reality, by comparing its results against modern and historical observations.

The NZESM is designed to simulate how our climate will change over the coming decades. It’s highly complex, modelling everything from weather systems to changes in Antarctic sea ice, ocean temperatures to stratospheric chemistry.

If, in comparison with past climate and atmospheric data, the model accurately replicates the past, we’ll have increased confidence that the model can accurately simulate future changes in climate.

To gather comprehensive historical climate data, the project sees scientists and historians working together to recover meteorological observations over the southern hemisphere made as far back as 1850. Rescued data are being archived and made publicly available through the International Surface Pressure Databank and NIWA’s database.

Physical hubs:

• NIWA Wellington: Conference Room
• NIWA Auckland: River Room
• NIWA Lauder: VC Computer Room
• Victoria University: CO118 
• University of Canterbury: Law411
• University of Otago: Physics 312
• Metservice Wellington – Contact: James Lunny

We encourage you to set up your own hub and bring friends and colleagues together to participate in the seminar.

Email: [email protected]

2018 may well be the year New Zealand gets serious about adapting to our changing climate. Last year, and the start of this one, gave all of us plenty of opportunities to experience a future in which creeping sea level rise and extreme weather – from drought to flood to surprise storm surges – make day-to-day life more precarious and more expensive.

Last year’s various high-level climate change reports also made us increasingly aware of the roadblocks to effective decision-making around climate adaptation (the Adapting to climate change in New Zealand: Stocktake report, from the Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working Group; the Coastal hazards and climate change guidance published by the Ministry for the Environment; and the Human health impacts of climate change for New Zealand report produced by Royal Society Te Apārangi are three examples).

At the Deep South Challenge, we are often asked, “which cities are doing climate adaptation well?” People are looking for examples and for leaders to show how these roadblocks can be systematically dismantled.

And now, a community-driven initiative in South Dunedin may just get the ball rolling. “Our City, Our Climate,” led by the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust and supported by the Deep South Challenge, is calling in the big guns – key climate scientists, local and central government decision makers, iwi with cultural and financial assets at stake, and property and business owners with livelihoods on the line, to find ways to break through the red tape that currently hinders progress on climate adaptation.

The urgency of adapting to our changing climate is, in the words of Scott Willis, organiser of the initiative, a “no brainer. We know what’s coming,” he says, “even if we don’t quite know when. We have to adapt.”

The event, being staged as three workshops over February and March, will bring together climate and engagement researchers, city and regional councillors and senior staff, the Otago Chamber of Commerce, the University of Otago, Otago Polytechnic, the Southern District Health Board, local NGOs and residents.

The event aims to bring climate science to the general public and to local decision-makers, to enable a more coordinated, participatory approach to tackling the challenge of climate change in the city of Dunedin.

“This isn’t just about hard materials, or about managed retreat,” Scott says. “It’s about how we think, what our processes look like. It’s about being more open to change, and about becoming more resilient.”

Given all the news lately on the importance of climate adaptation and the fact that New Zealand, like the rest of the world, is lagging well behind where we need to be, the event might open up some ways forward for different communities facing various climate adaptation challenges.

“The real challenge,” Scott continues, “is that we move so damn slowly, or we can’t actually find ways to move. People have got to feel that they have the ability to be more creative, to find different pathways to change and adapt.”

So this event is about decision-making at the local and regional level – where most climate adaptation decisions need to be made. “I don’t know the answer,” he says, “but I’m intimate with the questions. The process of developing district plans – the documents that control what we can do in the environment – is slow and cumbersome. It’s not suited to rapidly evolving climate science and the increased pace of climate change. We need a simpler, more flexible process. So how can we adapt our decision making process to our up-to-date science? How can we make local government more friendly for decision-making on climate action? How can the community participate in decision making and action more effectively? We need to work through these questions and challenges together.”

The event has been in the pipeline for a long time, but resourcing from the Deep South Challenge, and the support of the challenge to provide climate and social science expertise, has finally made it possible. The first two workshops will be held on February 8 and 9, with a third workshop in early March. For more information check out http://climatesafehouse.nz/event/our-city-our-climate/

For more information about the Deep South Challenge (and particularly our Engagement and Impacts & Implications programmes), check out our website: www.deepsouthchallenge.co.nz

The whānau of Omaio in the Bay of Plenty have joined forces with NIWA researchers to explore the viability of climate-resilient, high-value crops for the rohe.

The group has won a $250,000 research grant under the Vision Mātauranga programme of the Deep South National Science Challenge to better understand Omaio’s changing climate and how it might support the community to create a local economy based around a high-value product like kiwi fruit.

Omaio whānau have for many generations been sustained by ancestral lands, forests, rivers and the moana, all of which bear ancestral names. But climate change is already impacting the community, with more frequent storms resulting in increased river and sea bed sedimentation as well as damage to roading and other infrastructure.

A range of future climate change impacts may also affect growing conditions, including increasing temperatures, less rainfall, sea-level rise resulting in salt-water intrusion, and the likelihood of insufficient winter chilling. The availability of water to support crop irrigation will affect the viability of particular crops as well.

Nevertheless, Omaio’s coastal lands of hold some of the most productive soils – the deep, loamy Te Kaha soils – in New Zealand. Chris Karamea Insley, Chair of Te Rau Aroha Trust (which represents Omaio whānau), says, “We have these sheltered hills, we have these highly fertile soils. Scientists have been telling us for a number of years now that our environment creates the best growing climate for high-value crops, like kiwi fruit. Currently,” Chris continues, “these lands are utilised for low-value maize. Maize growers provide no employment for whānau and contribute nothing to growing the local economy.”

Research has already established that shifting from low- to high-value crops like kiwi fruit could generate significant income, create 100 local jobs for whānau and 500 jobs across the wider district. Chris adds, “We’ve formed a relationship with the head of Zespri, who’s been encouraging of us. He’s said to us, ‘I think what you guys are doing is hugely exciting. Get started.’ And that’s what we’re doing.”

Nevertheless, recent extreme weather events and longer, dryer summers mean that the whānau of Omaio need to better understand their future climate, before investing in climate-dependent crops.

This project therefore aims to provide the community of Omaio with the tools and training to monitor essential climate and hydrology data, as well as irrigation management tools, so they can better consider and respond to changing climatic conditions. “Our project,” Chris continues, “will also run individual and group workshops to inform decision making around the use of water both for community purposes and for both commercial applications.”

“This is one of three priority projects identified by the Iwi Leaders Forum. We’re also engaging closely with regional council and large horticultural companies to ensure our project is viable and that our research findings are broadly shared. Our project seeks to integrate the best science and research about climate, climate change and land-use planning, in order to grow a local economy in Omaio that is environmentally, economically and culturally sustainable.”

Vision Mātauranga science projects are built around four research themes: Understanding climate change; exploring adaptation options for Māori communities; assisting Māori businesses to aid decision-making and long-term sustainability; and exploring products, services and systems derived from mātauranga Māori.For more information about the Deep South Challenge and our Vision Mātauranga programme and projects, check out our website: www.deepsouthchallenge.co.nz/programmes/vision-matauranga

In October 2017, the Deep South Challenge released a report into the state of the nation’s storm and waste water infrastructure, in the face of a changing climate. The report garnered significant media attention – not surprising given the infrastructure is currently valued at well over $20 billion.

The report gathered together what we already know about how climate change is likely to affect our stormwater and wastewater systems:

• Sea level rise will affect all coastal infrastructure and will likely result in increasing sewage overflows, pipes corroded by salt water, and exposure to liquefaction.
• More severe and more frequent coastal storms will affect infrastructure, causing increasing inundation, physical damage and electrical failure at treatment plants.
• Changes in extreme rainfall will overwhelm the networks, restricting opportunities for maintenance, and increasing the infiltration of wastewater into stormwater (with concerning flow on effects for health, ecology, cultural and recreational spaces, and water supply for drinking).
• Drought will also affect networks, disrupting gravity systems by slowing flow and leading to blocked pipes.

The report also highlighted significant gaps in our knowledge about how climate change might impact our stormwater and wastewater infrastructure, as well as in our understandings about the extent to which damage to this infrastructure might impact our economy, environment, culture and society.

The Deep South Challenge, through our Impacts and Implications programme, is now investing in research that seeks to fill these knowledge gaps.

We’ve just funded a new research project lead by consultants Tonkin + Taylor, called “Stormwater, wastewater, climate change: Impacts on our economy, environment, culture and society”. Over one year, this project aims to explore these potential impacts and to develop a detailed “theory of change”. The project is based on the idea that only once we have determined the performance we require of our storm and wastewater network in a changed climate, as well as the full range of likely impacts, can we design an efficient and effective solutions pathway.

Project leader James Hughes says, “Aside from the obvious impacts we are aware of, and those we are beginning to understand, there is so much that we actually don’t know. For someone working in this field this can be both very worrying and intriguing at the same time!”

This project will involve a comprehensive review of New Zealand and international literature, including local and regional case studies, as well as a detailed process to gather end user needs and requirements, via a panel of a key experts, including iwi representatives. 

Those key experts include Blair Dickie (Environment Waikato), Gavin Palmer (Otago Regional Council), Iain White (Waikato University), Jackie Colliar (NIWA, Waikato Tainui), Mark Bishop (Watercare), Noel Roberts (Water NZ), Sue Ellen Fenelon (Ministry for the Environment), Tumanako Faaui (Ngāti Whakahemo), and Tom Cochrane (Canterbury University).

The research intends to produce a summary of the physical impacts of climate change on storm water and waste water systems, and related outcomes across social, environmental, cultural and economic domains; a summary of how these outcomes may vary across New Zealand and where these may be more likely to occur; and some guiding principles for practitioners and decision-makers in the planning and engineering sectors.

James Hughes continues: “The outcomes of research like this can have potential to offer some really practical outcomes for New Zealand towns and cities, which is what we will be aiming to achieve.”

The research team combines excellence in engineering, economics and physical science – and comprises experts from Tonkin + Taylor, NIWA and Infometrics. For more information about the Deep South Challenge (and particularly our Engagement and Impacts & Implications programmes), check out our website: www.deepsouthchallenge.co.nz

What can Weather@Home ANZ tell us about changing climate and weather extremes?

One of the most reliable ways of understanding future climate extremes is through distributed computing.

weather@home, based in the United Kingdom, is a highly successful citizen science project, in which volunteers from around the world donate their PCs’ spare processing power, running state-of-the-art climate models and returning the results. The enormous amount of computing power harnessed in this way enables these models to be run many more times than usually possible, enough for scientists to investigate how climate and weather extremes might be changing with the human influence on climate.

In weather@home ANZ we’ve examined recent extreme rainfall events that have caused significant flooding, and been able to quantify the degree to which human influence altered the risk of such events. Matching this information with estimates of the insured losses from these events, it’s also possible to estimate the financial cost of the human influence on climate.

Dr Suzanne Rosier is a climate scientist at NIWA in Wellington. She played a key part in helping launch weather@home ANZ to the public, and has subsequently analysed the large NZ datasets with a particular focus on extreme rainfall. Her new weather@home ANZ experiments are looking into how weather and climate extremes might be different a few decades from now.

Physical hubs:

• Victoria University: Room AM103
• NIWA Wellington: Board Room
• NIWA Auckland: Lake Room
• NIWA Lauder: VC Computer Room
• University of Otago: Room 229, Science III Building

We encourage you to set up your own hub and bring friends and colleagues together to participate in the seminar.

Email: [email protected]

Climate change is happening and our stormwater and wastewater systems are particularly vulnerable. This webinar with Professor Iain White follows on from the release in October 2017 of the Deep South Challenge report into climate change, stormwater and wastewater systems.

The recent Edgecumbe floods saw raw sewage floating through the streets, making the clean-up extremely challenging. Over 300 homes in the district were damaged and six months later, 240 houses are still unliveable. Flood-proofing the town itself remains a distant goal.

The asset value of stormwater and wastewater assets in New Zealand is well over $20 billion. This includes 24,000 kilometres of public wastewater networks with more than 3,000 pumping stations, and over 17,000 kilometres of stormwater networks. Much of it, however, was not designed for the challenges climate change will bring, from sea level rise to the predicted changes in precipitation frequency and intensity.

This session will discuss the problems of decision making in an era of uncertainty, and will outline our current knowledge and the priority areas of research needed to prepare our stormwater and wastewater systems for a changing climate.

This webinar is being hosted by The Sustainability Society (TSS), a Technical Interest Group of Engineering NZ, which fosters dialogue and action on sustainability through workshops, forums, advocacy and collaborative projects.

This webinar is part of a series of webinars being co-hosted by The Sustainability Society and The Coastal Society focussed on aspects of Climate Change Adaptation. Take a look at the other sessions on offer here: https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/o/the-sustainability-society-10927824027

The recent Edgecumbe floods saw raw sewage floating through the streets, making the clean-up extremely challenging. Over 300 homes in the district were damaged and six months later, 240 houses are still unliveable. Flood-proofing the town itself remains a distant goal.

The asset value of stormwater and wastewater assets in New Zealand is well over $20 billion. This includes 24,000 kilometres of public wastewater networks with more than 3,000 pumping stations, and over 17,000 kilometres of stormwater networks. Much of it, however, was not designed for the challenges climate change will bring, from sea level rise to the predicted changes in precipitation frequency and intensity.

“The way climate change is predicted to affect our stormwater and wastewater will have a considerable impact on many aspects of NZ life, including health, disaster resilience, drinking water, ecology, and transport, not to mention how flooding or infrastructure failure will impact on communities,” said Professor Iain White, Professor at Waikato University and a co-author of the Deep South National Science Challenge report Climate Change and Stormwater and Wastewater Systems (link below).

Earlier this year, the Deep South National Science Challenge Impacts and Implications Programme brought experts together to discuss the challenges and concerns for the sector in Aotearoa New Zealand. Participants ranged from academics and scientists to business people, government policy analysts, water service providers and consultants.

This discussion resulted in the report, designed to outline current knowledge and the priority areas of research needed to prepare our stormwater and wastewater systems for a changing climate.

“For example, in many local water systems, roads are designed to be used as a secondary stormwater routes in extreme flooding. This is fine in most situations, but in extreme inundation events wastewater containing sewage may mix with the stormwater overflows, which of course brings problems such as we saw in Edgecumbe,” said Professor White.

The increase in extreme rainfall events will also add stress to the system by overwhelming the networks, restricting opportunities for maintenance, and increasing the occurrence of infiltration of wastewater into stormwater.

“We already know that sea level rise will affect all coastal infrastructure, and as many of our water networks use gravity to discharge to water bodies, the most costly areas of the network are often located in low-lying areas or on the coast. From this, increasing sewage overflows, pipes corroded by salt water, and exposure to liquefaction are all more likely,” said Professor White.

An increase in the number and frequency of coastal storms will also affect coastal infrastructure in particular, causing increasing inundation, physical damage, and electrical failure at treatment plants.

“It’s not just too much water, though,” said Professor White. “Drought brings its own problems, disrupting gravity systems by slowing flow and leading to blocked pipes. Particularly lengthy droughts can also affect wastewater treatment processes, creating functional and safety concerns.”

A priority for the Deep South National Science Challenge is to do further research in this space to better understand the risks, including cascading indirect effects where failure in one part of the system will have significant impacts elsewhere – many of which we may not yet be aware of. Professor White is also keen for Aotearoa New Zealand to incorporate these aspects within its decision-making frameworks.

“Once we have this knowledge we need to consider the most appropriate adaptation response and which practical solutions may help reduce these impacts,” said Professor White. “Filling these research gaps will help Aotearoa New Zealand reduce future disruption and cost by adapting to the forthcoming climate.”

The Climate Change and Stormwater and Wastewater Systems report (link below), commissioned by the Deep South National Science Challenge, highlights infrastructure issues Aotearoa New Zealand may face as it grapples with “increasingly severe risks” of extreme rainfall, storm surges, sea level rise and drought. 

All over New Zealand, from Haumoana to Westport, from Edgecumbe to the Kāpiti Coast, from Dunedin to Wellington City, homeowners and businesses are starting to feel the financial effects of climate change.

After the recent Edgecumbe flood, for example, Tower Insurance stated that while there had been no blanket increase for insurance costs in Edgecumbe, some prices were going up: “On average, due to higher reinsurance costs and the increased risk, customers in the region could expect prices to increase by around 15 to 30 percent, with customers in areas of significant risk sometimes experiencing larger increases,” a spokesperson said in this Radio New Zealand report.

So are insurance companies taking more notice of climate change risk than homeowners themselves, or than local or central government? And who should pay for the damage caused by climate-related disasters, or for the incremental costs our changing climate is starting to rack up?

Three new projects in the Deep South National Science Challenge  address this question and others raised by insurance experts, social and economic policy researchers and climate scientists – who came together earlier this year in a dialogue process facilitated by Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust and supported by the Deep South Challenge. Together, these projects investigate the legal, economic and ethical dimensions of who should pay for damage caused by climate change events.

Legal liability, insurance and the risks of climate change

Coastal hazards are escalating with climate change. In particular, coastal homeowners can expect sea level rise and more frequent and intense coastal storms to affect their properties. Catherine Iorns, from the Law Faculty at Victoria University of Wellington, is investigating some of the legal questions surrounding sea level rise and insurance. Her project looks into the “tipping points” at which insurance companies might decide to refuse insurance to coastal property owners, and asks, what happens next? To what extent can or should homeowners rely on the Earthquake Commission (EQC) , or on local or central government, to compensate them if their homes become uninsurable, or uninhabitable, due to sea level rise, or because of associated climate risks like storm surges or coastal erosion?

Iorns’ project looks at one of the key trends in international climate litigation: trying to establish who is liable for taking (or not taking) adaptation measures.

The economic implications of insurance retreat

Despite the risks of sea level rise, coastal erosion and powerful storm surges, we’re continuing to see demand for coastal housing increase, as well as new and intensified development of existing urban coastal areas. Belinda Storey, Managing Director of Climate Sigma, who is undertaking a PhD in economics at Victoria University of Wellington, is investigating insurance retreat, through an economic lens. Escalating coastal hazards don’t seem to be reflected in home-owners’ decisions to purchase and renovate coastal property, and further, climate risk is likely not currently incorporated into the price of residential coastal property.  Evidence from overseas suggests that high insurance premiums and the unavailability of insurance has a stronger impact on private decision making than the uncertain risk of extreme events. Storey’s project therefore explores how coastal housing markets impacted by climate change might respond to “insurance retreat” – if insurance becomes unavailable. Her project will identify the locations around New Zealand most likely to lose access to insurance within the next few decades, as the likelihood of extreme events increases. 

The ethics of sharing risk

A third project being run by Elisabeth Ellis from the University of Otago addresses a key question that emerged from that dialogue between insurance companies and researchers: On a principled level, how should the risks of sea level rise be distributed between individuals, insurance, local and central government? Should we choose to view responsibility as individual or collective? And either way, which approach delivers the best and fairest outcomes? Ellis’s project will also look international literature on the ethics of risk distribution while highlighting New Zealand’s unique history and institutions.

Extreme weather, climate change & the EQC

One other (existing) project of the Deep South Challenge, being run out of Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust, by David Fleming, looks at the role of the EQC in paying for climate-related events and in fostering recovery post climate-related disasters. Although the EQC mainly helps households suffering earthquake damage, homeowners impacted by extreme weather like storms, floods or landslips can also make EQC claims for some damages. (For floods and storms, for example, the EQC will only cover the cleanup of debris and mud from the land below a house; it won’t cover damage to the house or its contents.) More frequent and more intense weather can therefore affect the EQC’s long-term sustainability. Over the last 20 years, the EQC has paid out over $240 million, on more than 17,000 claims, to households affected by non-earthquake disasters. Fleming’s project will study these claims, along with data from Statistics NZ, GNS and NIWA, to better understand how the EQC has covered households over time and across regions after extreme weather events; whether insurance pay-outs have supported households and communities to recover economically; and what the EQC’s financial liabilities might be into the future, given climate change projections about extreme weather.

Together, these projects represent a new and innovative direction for climate adaptation research in New Zealand. The Deep South Challenge is conducting research that responds directly to the needs of “the public” (represented by a range of professions and organisations), in order to better prepare New Zealand to deal with the risks of climate change and to begin to make changes now, while there’s still time for reasonable discussion and debate.

Susan Livengood is the Partnerships Director of the Deep South Challenge, and works within the Engagement programme – which tries to connect what’s happening in every programme of the challenge with both the broader public and with targeted individuals and organisations throughout New Zealand’s public and private sectors.

Susan is responsible for building and maintaining one-on-one relationships that will ultimately enable decision makers to factor climate change into their planning and decision making.

If you ask Susan what she does all day, she’ll humbly tell you that she drinks a lot of coffee with a lot of people. But, in fact, over the past year, Susan has been building a comprehensive network – people with passion and clout, who can and will help New Zealand adapt to a changing climate.

It seems unusual that a predominantly “science” organisation – the Deep South Challenge – places so much emphasis on two-way engagement with stakeholders and end users that it funds a specific role to build these relationships. But, in fact, one of the primary aims of all the National Science Challenges is to connect science with society, to gain real traction on some of the most pressing (and most intractable) issues of our time – issues like climate change.

To get a better sense of what Susan does, and how the relationships she helps build benefit both our challenge and, hopefully, our “end users” (those we hope will “use” the research we “produce”), it might be helpful to look at her work through the lens of a specific issue – New Zealand’s water infrastructure, for example. For while it’s oxymoronic to note the importance of water for a well-functioning society, water infrastructure is also something most New Zealanders tend not to think very much about.

In the main, water infrastructure is out of sight – quite literally buried – and is therefore sometimes taken for granted. Yet a lot of that existing infrastructure was built last century, and it’s not entirely clear how it will cope with the “new normal” – sea level rise, for example, or flooding due to extreme weather events.

“Water in New Zealand is really interesting,” says Susan. “There’s not the same central government oversight of water, as there is for example in the primary industries, where MPI works with agriculture, horticulture, aquaculture, etc.” In general, local government develops and maintains water infrastructure, and they also have the statutory responsibility to plan for climate change, under the Resource Management Act.

“But we’re a small team,” continues Susan, “so we need to work through industry associations, rather than going, for example, straight to the water engineer at Hauraki District Council.” In the case of water, one key body is the not-for-profit Water New Zealand, “the principal voice for the water sector, focusing on the sustainable management and promotion of the water environment and encompassing the three waters: drinking water, waste and storm water” (WaterNZ website).

“We’ve worked a lot with Water New Zealand,” Susan says, and outlines her initial meetings where she introduced the work of the Deep South Challenge and the broader climate impacts likely to affect water infrastructure. “In these initial bilateral meetings, our aims are four-fold,” she explains. “We provide information on our challenge, so they’re aware of us and know that our research is happening. We try to gauge their motivation – whether they’re factoring climate change into decisions, and if so, what information they’re using, and what information they still need. (We will then feed these needs into our research programme, rather than providing a report which tells them what we think they need to know.) Our third aim is collaboration: we’re looking for future channels through which we can disseminate our science… newsletters, emails, conferences, workshops, the more interactive the better. Finally, we’re sensitive to their level of interest: do they actually want to work with us?” In the case of Water New Zealand, they were very interested, and had already established that climate change posed a risk to the sector and needed to be better understood.

“Next, we contributed scientific expertise on climate change to their water modelling symposium. The Deep South Challenge enabled hydrologist Daniel Collins (NIWA) and Mike Williams, the director of the challenge, to attend the modelling symposium and engage directly with practitioners and their most pressing questions around how our future climate might interact with water management. This was the first time that climate change had been put on the agenda at the modelling symposium.

Susan explains that the inclusion of climate change into the symposium reflects growing interest in the sector. In part, she suggests, this might be because of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s reports on sea level rise, and in part it might be because this year and last we’ve had so many floods, and in some cases, our infrastructure has not coped well.

“In heavy rainfall, apart from generalised flooding, storm water can overflow into the waste water network, which can overload the system so you can have sewage spilling out into the streets. In the case of sea level rise, saltwater could block storm water outlets, causing water to back up.  There may also be increased pumping may be required, which would have a further impact on cost.”

But while there’s growing awareness that climate change will have a huge impact on water infrastructure, there’s much less certainty about the exact nature of the impact or when it will come. To help address this gap, the Deep South Challenge Impacts and Implications Programme framed a “Deep South Dialogue” – a meeting of industry professionals, scientists and researchers that teased out the most important issues and framed them as research questions. Researchers will now be invited to carry out work on these very questions.

The “Storm water & Wastewater Infrastructure Dialogue” was held over two all-day meetings in May/June of this year, and the dialogue discussion document is due out at the end of this month. Participants in the dialogue included people from Water NZ, the Ministry for the Environment, industry, councils, a couple of NIWA scientists, and environmental and consultants like Tonkin + Taylor.

Once the report is released, and having done the spade work (establishing the relationships with key end users), Susan will go back again and brief the organisations involved and also those who weren’t involved. “In this case, we’ll brief organisations such as Local Government New Zealand, the Ministry for the Environment, Treasury, IPENZ (Engineers NZ), Infrastructure NZ, the New Zealand Planning Institute, the Society of Local Government Managers, and the Insurance Council, as insurance companies deal with the implications of storm water flooding people’s homes.”

The research that happens as a direct result of Susan’s relationship building and the Deep South Dialogues, will fill gaps in both the physical and social sciences, investigating the environmental, economic, cultural or legal impacts and implications of our changing climate on the water sector.

“Finally,” Susan says, “as the research itself gets done, it will be a matter of staying in touch with our end users, sharing our early results, and again once the research is complete, through more meetings, briefings, press releases, etc. It’s a matter of having useful information to feed relationships and also putting people in touch with others who are working on similar issues in different parts of New Zealand.”

It’s a resource intensive process, but one that Susan finds rewarding. “What’s really cool is you’re creating a community of clever people who are interested, and you’re helping to grow their knowledge around climate impacts. We’re responding to previous research that found that, in the case of climate change, ‘siloed’ decision making has been a big problem. So we’re trying to break down barriers. We’re also working at a fairly high level, because research has also found that there’s a lack of leadership in both the public and private sectors on climate change impacts, implications and adaptation.”

To foster such leadership, Susan also acknowledges that there needs to be a louder public conversation about the significance of climate change for ordinary New Zealanders. She relates a meeting with a local government representative who described the difficulty of having local conversations with communities about coastal impacts when a similar conversation was not happening nationally.

“Finally,” Susan adds, “the technical director of Water New Zealand, Noel Roberts, is also on our Representative User Group, a body which helps guide the overall strategy of the Deep South Challenge. “In this way,” Susan says, “end users have many opportunities to influence the direction of the challenge. Once you have the relationships,” she continues, “all sorts of things can happen.”

To give the last work on this particular relationship to Water New Zealand, Noel Roberts himself says: 

“It’s a challenge connecting the science and research with industry knowledge and requirements. Often the two areas of expertise don’t overlap and as such there are lost opportunities that would greater benefit the tax and rate payers who are ultimately funding these issues. When it comes to research and innovation, 1+1 can equal 3, and no single sector has the monopoly on bright ideas. The engagement programme and dialogue sessions for the Deep South Challenge is one of the few exceptions and it’s refreshing to have CRIs, Universities and the industry in sync and working towards a common problem. This could well be a model to adopt for future New Zealand challenges and issues.”