Climate risk assessment framework

WELLINGTON: Climate Change Minister James Shaw has released the framework for assessing climate change risks in New Zealand.

The framework is for the upcoming National Climate Change Risk Assessment (NCCRA) and will inform climate change adaptation and mitigation opportunities.

Mr Shaw said New Zealand was already experiencing the effects of a changing climate in coastal inundation and increasingly frequent and severe droughts, floods, fires and storms.

‘‘The framework will enable a broad range of risks to be compared and evaluated in terms of their nature, severity and urgency,’’ he said.

It includes the framing and templates, along with guidance for assessing climate change risks at a national level.

The Ministry for the Environment’s report said the valuesbased approach to the framework ‘‘combines scientific, technical and expert information with Matauranga Maori, local knowledge and experience’’.

It said the framework aimed to produce a risk assessment that would ‘‘improve the ability of decisionmakers to make informed decisions in the presence of inevitable and, in some cases, substantial and irreducible uncertainty’’ and to ‘‘foster and support the broader public interests in the quality of the decisionmaking process’’.

While the framework’s main focus is risks at the national scale, it will also aim to cover significant regional risks that would influence national priorities and budget process, including rohebased risks for iwi.

These could include the emergence of subtropical pests and diseases and fish species into Northland, or receding snowlines and glaciers.

‘‘This work is critical to set Aotearoa up to be able to respond to climate change as a nation,’’ Mr Shaw said.

The first risk assessment is expected to be published in mid2020. — RNZ