Council staff examining climate change risks in Otago

A CLIMATE change risk assessment specific to Otago is expected to be ready later this year.

A national climate change risk assessment was released on Monday, identifying 10 areas of concern the authors said needed to be urgently addressed in the next six years, including coastal ecosystems, indigenous ecosystems and the financial system.

Otago Regional Council operations general manager Gavin Palmer said council staff were working to identify the risks the region’s communities would face in the next 80 years because of climate change.

ORC staff worked with the Ministry for the Environment to contribute to the national report and were engaging with local groups, including iwi, councils and industry experts, to create the regionspecific report.

The discussions with those groups would help the council understand and prioritise the risks faced by individual communities and allow it to plan a response, Dr Palmer said.

Some climate change adaptation programmes were already in place in Otago, including for the Clutha delta, the head of Lake Wakatipu, South Dunedin and harbourside.

‘‘With the next longterm plan process beginning, we’re looking at how we can use the information from the national climate change risk assessment and our own Otago climate change risk assessment to continue to build on our current adaptation work, and how best to work with local communities to enable their input into these programmes.”