Time to meet the rising tide

Anyone now considering a coastal property should know what sea level rise is. If they already own one, they shouldn’t be surprised if buyers expect to know how it might affect them.

Ignorance is bliss – right up until the seawater is soaking through your slippers. For flood-prone and coastal property owners it’s time for the cold water: scientific consensus is the waters will rise, we can’t build seawalls around the whole country, and the chilly sting will be felt whether it’s delivered by insurers, government databases or warnings on property LIMs.

How we deal with that will determine how much pain is felt.

A report on climate change planning, delivered to the Government by an independent group of specialists on Thursday, found data was lacking, adaptation funding was largely non-existent, and a nationwide risk assessment was desperately needed to prioritise work in high-risk areas.

Minister for Climate Change James Shaw predicts a risk assessment will be complete in two years; he believes action and adaptation will minimise the impact and cost to come.

That must progress hand-inhand with public acceptance of the research and support for legislation; anything less is as pointless as trying to hold back the sea itself.

The only real question is whether change will be driven by the insurance industry or central government.

Insurance giant IAG has already signalled a shift to risk-based assessing. More insurers are likely to follow.

But it looks increasingly like central government is going to take the reins, as it should in an island nation with a strong coastal focus.

There’s a cautionary tale for Shaw’s plan: the scrap Ka¯ piti Coast District Council endured after slapping hazard warnings on the LIMs of about 1800 coastline properties in 2012. Cheesed-off locals undertook litigation to the High Court. As a result, the council removed the warnings while the science was reviewed.

But that victory was surely just a temporary one. Anyone now considering a coastal property should know what sea level rise is. If they already own one, they shouldn’t be surprised if buyers expect to know how it might affect them.

It’s time to accept these properties may come with some risk, and let government and other agencies get on with the job of preparing without worrying about court battles over lost capital gains.

It’s an inconvenient truth, but it appears that the value of floodprone property will go down and many coastal towns will face a new threat.

That threat is nationwide: a 2015 Niwa report found nearly 70,000 buildings, 2000 kilometres of roads, and five airports prone to flooding. The area most at risk was Christchurch, followed by Hawke’s Bay.

In Dunedin, serious flooding in 2015 prompted then-environment commissioner Jan Wright to release a report noting there were more homes in the city less than 50 centimetres above the high-tide mark than in any other New Zealand centre.

Otago University produced unsettling maps showing a swath of the city flooded under a climate change scenario. In February a state of emergency was declared as the floods returned.

This is our chilling new reality. The tide is turning; it’s vital public opinion turns too, so we can all meet the challenge of climate change.