Who should pay for climate change?
A prominent academic is calling for a national debate on the impact of climate change and how to pay for the cost of the sea level rising.
Professor of public policy Jonathan Boston, from Victoria University, said Stuff’s climate change project, ‘‘Quick! Save The Planet’’, had raised awareness and provided a timely oppor- tunity to look at solutions.
‘‘There are huge planning, insurance, funding, and other issues which we really must start grappling with, and the sooner the better.’’
New Zealand needed to move on from debating whether climate change was real to looking at what to do in areas like Petone, Hawke’s Bay and Dunedin South, where rising sea levels would soon cause major problems, he said.
Individual councils were looking at what they could do and who should pay but the scale of the problem was such that it needed a nationally co-ordinated approach.
Local government politicians were naturally reluctant to make decisions that offended voters by telling householders they needed to relocate or pay for a seawall.
Kiwis had strong emotional ties to their homes and would be highly reluctant to acknowledge the problem or move to higher ground, Boston said.
The Insurance Council recently said many coastal areas would lose their insurance. That would leave some people living in houses that had a mortgage but no insurance.
Boston said that would be a nightmare for national and local government, and the time to begin planning how to fund such a scenario was now. ‘‘In my view, we need a new purpose-built national policy framework.’’
A priority was stopping new construction on coastal areas that face flooding by seawater.
Although it might seem like a long time until an area like Petone faced flooding, he said insurance companies would withdraw cover many years before any flooding occured.
Good planning now would reduce the eventual cost and Boston favoured a national fund similar to the Earthquake Commission.
As we learn more about climate change, Boston said the scale of the problem facing the planet was becoming clearer.