Aotearoa New Zealand’s first Adaptation Plan

Photo by Quinn Pocock

Have you read New Zealand’s adaptation plan? Well done if you have because it runs to about two hundred pages.  Its importance is clear though, as it sets the tone for over-arching change that we can expect as we react to risks from changes in the Earth’s climate.

The Climate Change Response Act 2002 requires that the Government prepares a plan addressing significant climate change risks and setting out what is to be done in New Zealand to adapt to those risks.  The first of these plans was published this August having evolved through a consultation process earlier in the year.  It is now publicly available and will regularly be assessed for effectiveness. 

We are not alone doing this work, and adaptation plans are becoming commonplace internationally. In the UK, their first adaptation plan covered the period from 2013 to 2018. Australia launched its adaptation strategy in 2021. Canada is finalizing theirs now. China originally published an adaptation plan in 2013 and significantly updated it this year.

Our plan follows the publication in 2020 of our national climate change risk assessment. Minister James Shaw described the adaptation plan as a document which

“brings together in one place the Government’s current efforts to help to build our climate resilience.  And it sets out a proposed future works programme, indicating our priorities over the next six years.”

The plan sits alongside other actions to build resilience and address climate change risk.

Every 6 years the Climate Change Commission will produce an assessment of climate change risks in Aotearoa New Zealand.  Because adapting to these risks will be an on-going process for many years to come, after each such risk assessment, the adaptation plan will be reviewed and updated if need be.  The next climate change risk assessment is due in 2026. 

The Climate Change Response Act gives the Minister powers to check in with government departments, local authorities and their companies, companies owned by the Crown and others to understand how those entities are dealing with climate change adaptation. The expectation is that at least:

·        their governance arrangements will specifically deal with climate change risks,

·        they will understand the effects of the risks on the business, strategy and financial planning of the organization,

·        there will be processes in place (including metrics and targets) to assess and manage climate change risks and opportunities,

Other expectations may also be made clear over time.

New Zealand’s adaptation plan will impact your practice, whether you advise the public entities with direct responsibility for implementing the anticipated shifts in policies and frameworks, or whether you act for private entities who interact with those organisations.  You can expect the adaptation plan to impact planning decisions, procurement terms, development potential, property values, and more. At a social level it will influence whether people will remain in their same business, or in their same home.  It will require us to examine the role equity plays as we adapt.

In this article I aim to give some broad understanding of aspects of the adaptation plan that are particularly relevant to clients of a property law practice.

The plan focuses on four streams of work:

·        enabling better risk-informed decisions

·        driving climate-resilient development in the right locations

·        adaptation options including managed retreat

·        embedding climate resilience across government policy

A series of objectives and actions are set out for each of these priorities.  These are wide ranging, including the creation of new legislation to support managed retreat, supporting communities to adapt, developing guidance, developing home flood insurance options and raising risk awareness. They deal with adaptations expected across the entire New Zealand community, and in all aspects of our lives.

The first two of these priorities are briefly addressed below with a view to considering how they might impact on the day-to-day practice of a property lawyer acting for property clients other than government.

Enabling better risk-informed decisions 

Hopefully it is clear by now that lawyers’ advice and clients’ decisions must, if they are to properly account for risks, respond to climate change risk.  Certainly, climate change is a risk that is not fully addressed, but it must by now be a risk that is acknowledged. The plan itself expects that climate change will be “routinely considered in business, investment lending and insurance.”

One intention of the adaptation plan is to make it easier to access the information that enables these risks to be addressed and to identify where the responsibilities for providing the information lie.  Sometimes this will be in response to legislative requirements.  The Financial Markets Conduct 2013 is a good example of this with its climate related disclosure requirements.  The Fair Trading Act, and the client and customer care requirements of the Real Estate Agents Act will play a role in this too.

Making climate data accessible is integral to good decision-making. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made global projections about changes in climate.   The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) is working at making that information applicable nationally.  It is expected that NIWA will produce this information in the first part of 2023.  Your clients will then be able to make decisions understanding the risks from climate change that are relevant to their particular region. 

Work is underway at both the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Toka Tū Ake (EQC) to create one or more information portals where the public will be able to easily access information about both natural hazard risks and climate change. This will include, not only risk assessment data, but also strategies and frameworks for adaptation. Expect to see the first phase of the portal by the end of 2022.  This might be the delivery of existing risk and resilience information held by EQC, but by the end of 2023 the portal is expected to be further developed.  By that stage user needs will have been properly identified and a design scope delivery plan completed.

MfE is also responsible for creating a climate response partnership with Māori.  One of the goals is to increase the role of te ao Māori in our response to climate risk. Another is activating kaupapa Māori in our response. An interim ministerial committee will be established this year, and within the next 2 years a platform for Māori climate action developed.

Expect legislative changes to make it clear that Land Information Memoranda can contain more information about natural hazards.

Driving climate-resilient development in the right locations

The adaptation plan addresses climate-resilient development by examining not just the risks to development itself, but the possibility both that we will fail to adapt and that the risks will:

“be exacerbated because current institutional arrangements are not fit for climate change adaptation.  Institutional arrangements include legislative and decision-making frameworks, coordination within and across levels of government and funding mechanisms”.

We can see resistance to change in our daily lives.  The news and social media feeds are full of reports of resistance to change. As I was writing this article, tractors were crowding urban streets in protest at climate action, ironically as individuals were being arrested in the same streets for protest at climate inaction.  Our society is facing turbulent times as we navigate our way socially through the types of changes anticipated by this and future adaptation plans.  They will challenge our social and business expectations, our cultural norms, our values and the way we look after each other. 

The plan addresses how the resistance impacts governing entities, but these entities do not work in isolation.  The changes at institutional levels are hugely impacted by the willingness of the public to allow change.  Resistance permeates business and society generally.  As both members of the public, and as businesspeople our fallback position is so often to wait.  We wait for the market.  We wait for the law to make requirements.  We wait for better solutions.  And we hustle and negotiate and make decisions based on what is best for us, and for our business. Profit trumps climate change damage. Personal rights trump public risk. (If the snow disappears from one ski field, I’ll catch a plane to another.)

Understanding what might be coming, and what the objectives of the adaptation plan are will help you and your client to both understand the risks and to address them.

Two significant risks to the built environment are addressed in the plan:

·        the availability and quality of our drinking water (which was identified in our national climate change risk assessment as New Zealand’s most urgent risk from climate change), and

·        the risks to buildings through extreme weather, drought, fire, and sea-level rise.

To address these a series of critical actions is anticipated, beginning with the resource management reform. In addition decision-making frameworks are being established and revised to support our ability to address these risks. These will evolve over the 5 years and will impact

·        the resilience of public housing

·        Treasury decisions

·        planning, investment, and decision-making around transport

·        funding models for housing

·        water services, and

·        environmental reporting.

If you would like to read about this in more detail here is the link to the executive summary of Aotearoa New Zealand’s first national adaption plan. The summary will also lead you to the substantive plan and to associated publications.

A version of his article first appeared in The Property Lawyer in late 2022 and is published with the consent of the NZ Law Society, Property Law Section.

© Debra Dorrington 2022.