Dealing with climate change
Last Friday Ka¯ piti Coast District Council deputy mayor Janet Holborow and I attend the Local Government NZ Symposium on Climate Change in Wellington.
I’m mindful that no single person, council, government agency, or even country is going to put in place the plethora of changes needed to slow down or even halt the changing climate, so in the spirit of collaboration I asked Janet to also contribute her thoughts from the symposium. Our independent reflections were so similar. Thankfully. From Cr Janet Holborow:
What a change a year can bring. The recent LGNZ symposium on climate change was worlds away from the words everyone was using just a year ago.
The event was attended by staff and elected members Kapiti Heliworx has been helping with the Transmission Gully project by transporting seedlings into hard to reach areas. “So far we have moved over 34,000 units of kanuka and lucerne,” director Dennis Young said. from across the country and it was clear that we know more now about the extent of the challenges we face than one short year ago.
We now have a new government with a strong focus on mitigation. We have a Local Government sector which has started to drill down into exactly what this is going to entail, socially, culturally and economically.
When we deal with Climate Change the respond falls under two main areas — adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation is about how we respond to the effects — sea walls, moving infrastructure, managed retreat, stormwater upgrades etc. Mitigation is more about how to avoid the worst effects in the first place — reducing our carbon footprint, cutting fossil fuels, reducing carbon and methane gas emissions etc.
This symposium introduced for me the concept of a joined up approach where those two approaches come together. I’d like to see central government address adaptation along with mitigation.
We heard that for iwi, it’s hard to accept that the whenua or land that is so precious is at risk.
Everything is at risk for all of us. The cost of the damage to water pipes and roads is potentially in the billions of dollars, not to mention the social upheaval and community impacts. Everyone present at the symposium left with a better understanding of how we might best address the challenges ahead.
From Penny:
The point of the Symposium was to inform and share what actions are being planned for and actually taking place across the breadth of councils in New Zealand.
Regularly I hear and read comments that local government should be taking more of a leadership role in addressing climate change.
There wouldn’t be a GW council meeting I’ve attended where we didn’t have substantive items on an action we’re taking to tackle climate change.
Across our human behaviours and our natural environment there’s so much happening; what struck me about the Symposium is that there is so much happening that I knew nothing about. We are all so consumed with the very localised activities in our own hood it is difficult to keep up with other’s programmes for change.
It was heartening. And yet it continues to be incredibly frustrating because while the mass of actions are symbolic of where the understanding of climate change no sits, the scales of these activities are still insignificant in proportion to the compounding damage.
As one mayor stated, we are still weighing up the costs of making these profound changes, and yet the cost of the ultimate effects of climate change are higher.