Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
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
(00:24):
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
(00:45):
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
(01:08):
it seem that the risk of flooding and other climate
impacts is becoming more of a reality.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
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
(01:35):
to climate change.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
What do you see is some of the common issues
that come up whenever there is a major weather event.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
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
(02:03):
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
(02:26):
these longer term outages or impacts, whether it's road or
power or water, what have you.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, you often see the same thing around roads, flooding,
rivers bursting their banks, power lines falling down, and all that.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
What do we get wrong at a local central government
level around how we approach preparing for the future.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
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
(03:27):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
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
(04:09):
lessening the impact.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
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?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
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
(04:47):
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
(05:07):
the mandate to prevent that development.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
What are some of the short term solutions that you
think aren't working.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
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
(05:39):
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
(06:02):
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
(06:22):
or not effective at all.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Right, so what sort of long term solutions should we
be looking at instead?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
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
(06:50):
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,
(07:11):
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
(07:35):
in this area, here are some things that we could
do to reduce them. So plan A, B and C.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Are there any communities that you think are leading the
way on long term adaptations?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
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
(08:09):
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
(08:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
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
(09:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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
(09:42):
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.
(10:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Where do you move a down to?
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Like, what what do you do?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
How do you start that process?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
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
(10:52):
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
(11:13):
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
(11:36):
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
(11:59):
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.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
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
(12:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
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?
(13:43):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
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?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
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.
(14:43):
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
(15:04):
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.
(15:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
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
(16:00):
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.