Simon Watts: Climate change minister discusses newly announced climate adaptation plan

The government has announced a climate adaptation plan to help handle floods, cyclones, and other natural disasters.  

Councils will now have to draw up 30-year plans, and a national flood map is due in 2027. 

Climate change minister Simon Watts told Mike Hosking that the current system lacks a coordinated approach to respond to natural hazards.  

“We don't have good data to make decisions, we don't have clear roles and responsibilities...we don't have a clear framework to deal with that reality.” 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
More climate and use how long a wait? Did I
use that term? Loosely? Long awaited climate adaptation plan is out.
Councils now have to draw up thirty year plans in
the national flood Maps due in twenty twenty seven. Simon
Watts is the Climate Change Minister and is with us morning.
Good to hear you, Mike, how much of Watson? This
report is rock solid science and we know what we're
doing and where we're going and how we're going to
do it versus guesswork.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, a lot of the reality of what we face
right now is we don't have a coordinated approach to
deal with floods and the cyclones and the impacts we
have from natural hazards. It's pretty uncoordinated. We don't have
good data to make decisions. We don't have clear roles
and responsibilities next year as a country if you compare
ourselves to like Japan, we don't have a clear framework

(00:42):
to deal without reality. So this has been a big
piece of work. We've released our findings yesterday and this
is going to be the bed rock in terms of
moving forward around how we deal with these events in
a more coordinating manner. Primarily, Mike the challenges is that
we need to make sure that you know, kiwis have
the right information to make informed decisions where they live

(01:04):
and where they build, and that responsibility needs to be
moving from away from government to be the last resort
every time something goes wrong, to make sure people have
got the good information to make good decisions.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Does it counteract the post code scenario? I mean some
of the things we're talking about don't affect some part.
I mean the earth quake scenario the other day was
your classic example, wasn't it? I mean, does it cover
the whole country or is it post co dish?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
No. We looked at said it's got to cover the
areas that are actually high priority and at risk. You know,
it's not covering everywhere. And I think that's the challenge
with the status quo. There wasn't necessarily a focus on
the you know, the areas which need it, and that
has a cost. So we said, focus on the priority areas,
make sure they've got plans. If other areas want to
do stuff, then that's fine, but you know, the priority

(01:51):
is you know, the areas that we know get hit
a lot. But the information sphere is the big one,
and that's the blood modeling recommend plan that we're going
to have there. We don't have complete information for people.
It's not necessarily independent. But actually when you look behind,
government actually has a huge amount of data through Earth

(02:11):
Sciences for all of our government departments and a lot
of that information isn't available two kiwis And if they
had that, the reality is I think they'll be able
to make better informed decisions.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
How reliant are we on local authorities and their ability
and if they're a bit useless, we're in trouble.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, they play a big role. And one of the
major challenges that we've seen through events is we've just
had lack of clarity of who does what and even
in the post event, you know who actually is responsible
in terms of who pays and how do you share
the costs. So what we've done in this in line
with the work that Minister Bishop's doing on RIMA, is
we've said for those priority areas of the country, then

(02:50):
local government needs to take a responsibility for that planning
and coordination role and central government will support them in
that task. But that means that it's really clear on
who's responsible, and that's not the case at the moment.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
All right, have a good week in Simon wants the
climate at Minister Willis this morning. For more from the
Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to News Talks at B
from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio