Tides of change

About half of Aotearoa’s more than 2500 schools are near the coast or inland waterways, putting them at potential risk of flooding or erosion. As climate change increases the risk of exposure, Gianina Schwanecke and Brett Kerr-laurie look at how the Minis

2024-03-09 -

Granity School has battled the relentless tides of the West Coast for decades and learned long ago “mother nature has no rules”. In 2015, a large “rock dune” was constructed to combat savage waves soaking the playground and faster-thanexpected erosion eating away at the 30-pupil coastal school.

But the 2 to 3-metre-high wall wasn’t enough during a particularly fierce storm two years ago that took “big chunks” out of the bank and tossed sizeable rocks on to the school field.

The wall was repaired last year and is “by far and away doing the job we need it to do”, but principal Gemma Rout will “never say never”.

“For the foreseeable future we are in a really good position to maintain what we have, but who knows what the future holds.”

The last few storms and king tides haven’t washed out the wall, but the school has maintained open conversations with the Ministry of Education and Buller District Council.

“The ministry seems to be happy the wall we now have in place is definitely doing its job, the end of the building is safe from erosion … so for now we are sitting tight.”

How will climate change impact education?

It’s only more recently that the ministry undertook work to understand the extent of flooding risks posed to schools.

In 2022, it carried out assessments to determine what schools might be at risk, identifying 103 schools – 50 in the South Island and 53 in the North Island, of which 15 were in the Wellington region.

The project was later expanded to include the risk of flooding for at-risk schools away from the coast, those near rivers or other erosion impacts.

More recently, a briefing supplied to Education Minister Erica Stanford late last year warned that 1102 schools were at risk of flooding.

Reports for 10 pilot schools, in Wellington and along the West Coast (including Granity School), were developed using river and overland flow information from available council data, with further analysis undertaken by Tonkin + Taylor to better understand the potential risk.

The ministry was working closely with local councils and territorial authorities to develop an understanding of the challenges and create adaptive pathways for schools.

Sam Fowler, the ministry’s head of property, infrastructure and digital, said the National Flood Risk Management Programme was relatively new and the impacts faced by each school varied greatly.

“The work that’s been done to identify where these priorities are will enable us to develop programmes of investment that can make that bigger impact, but can also be done efficiently and effectively to the benefit of schools.”

Climate change is a key driver behind the growing risk facing many schools.

Extreme rainfall events not only brought the risk of flooding, but could have compounding risks from extreme winds and landslides, resulting in property damage, power outages or even challenges in students accessing school grounds.

“We expect extreme weather events to be more regular and likely to be more severe,” Fowler said. “That’s going to test our existing infrastructure, and it’s going to mean that the investments we make in that infrastructure are going to have to consider the best response to those challenges, and may ensure that their facilities are as resilient as they need to be.”

This included questions about “putting them in the right place at the sites, as the right levels”. Asked whether some schools may need to consider relocating, Fowler said the ministry would have to work with individual schools and communities about “responding appropriately”.

He said there was “plenty of work” that could be done on existing sites, with existing facilities, to make sure schools were more resilient.

Costs relating to climate change resilience would have to be integrated within the ministry’s planning and delivery. “We’re just going to have to make sure that is part of the investment that we make.”

Events like the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle had highlighted broader infrastructure resilience problems which impacted schooling, such as road washouts and communication systems going down.

“The Auckland floods actually showed that these are challenges that all our schools are going to be facing.”

The ministry was working closely with local councils and territorial authorities to develop an understanding of the challenges and create adaptive pathways for affected schools.

Not just floods, climate change presents heat risks too

Climate change also creates challenges relating to rising temperatures, especially in early childhood centres.

Dr Luke Harrington, a senior lecturer in Climate Change at Waikato University, said the two main climate-related risks for early childcare settings and schools were extreme rainfall and heatwaves.

“In a warming world, extreme heat is the fastest-changing climate hazard over land. Any rise in global temperatures will make things incrementally worse, and we’ll have to adapt to a perpetually warmer future even once carbon emissions reach net zero.”

For rural schools, there are also potential water-availability risks from drought if the schools rely on tank water and are ill-equipped to manage an unprecedented drought.

Harrington said there was ample evidence, both here and overseas, that younger children were “most vulnerable to suffering adverse health impacts from extreme heat”, particularly because of their inability to cool themselves down as well as adults can.

“Even in mild cases, heat stress can affect our concentration levels – for adults, this means a loss of productivity; for children, this means disrupted learning.”

The risks were highest during times of the year when temperatures are hottest, he said.

“No matter where we look, almost every record-breaking high temperature recorded over the last few decades has happened in either the last week of January or the first week of February ... right around the time of the new school year starting.”

Similarly, the tropical cyclone season normally runs until late February – though he noted that risks from extreme rainfall are present year round.

Harrington thought this was a good starting point for an adaptation strategy, moving the school start date back to ensure children aren’t stuck indoors all day during the opening weeks of the first term.

“One of the biggest interventions we can make is educating teachers of the potential health risks from extreme heat, as well as how we can manage this risk by adapting what we expect our students to do during the hottest times of day.”

Improving school buildings, making sure ventilation and cooling measures were adequate, and ensuring school uniform policies were appropriate for temperatures were also important adaptation strategies.

Dr Dermot Coffey, the co-convener of Orataiao New Zealand Climate & Health Council, agreed younger people and those with pre-existing health conditions were more vulnerable to the direct effects of heat.

Mental health was also an area of concern in relation to climate change.

“There’s a lot of evidence for individual extreme events and the mental health burden that causes. The trauma and grief responses that happens.

“What’s less clear, though there is finally decent evidence, is the impact of repeated events, cumulative disasters, and what they call climate anxiety.”

He said it was good to see funding provided for mental health support postcyclone Gabrielle.

Coffey said no New Zealand government had been “particularly proactive” about the climate crisis and he felt there had been less of a focus on adaptation.

“We have been slow to make plans and grasp the fact this is happening.

“The focus has to go on an open discussion and action about mitigation and adaptation.”

He wanted to see young people involved in these conversations too, because the effects would be felt most by their generations.

Adaptation v mitigation

Tracy Finlayson, is the programme director overseeing the ministry’s emissions reductions. Her work focuses largely on how to reduce the impacts of climate change through lowering emissions.

She said there were many challenges as it was a “big emissions profile”.

The ministry, one of the largest government organisations, also includes emissions created by the state schools it represents in its calculations.

Work to understand the ministry’s emissions profile began in 2021, with its first carbon footprint profile released earlier this year.

It found it produced 1.12 million equivalent tonnes of CO2 for 2022-23. Most of this related to purchased goods and services, followed by transport and construction.

The ministry’s corporate operation produced 23,912 tonnes.

Finlayson said she couldn’t comment on what each individual school was doing, but said they “are involved in this process”.

“Emission reductions are happening in schools every day and they care about it,” she said. “I think that heaps of schools are doing heaps of cool stuff, and investigating different ways to engage the students and learning about this.”

This included initiatives such as reducing waste, transitioning to cleaner energy and selecting low-emissions materials in buildings.

In 2022, the ministry announced a decarbonisation project to see all coal boilers which are used to heat schools replaced by June 2025 – they produce about 9000 tonnes of CO2 annually.

Harrington said moving away from coal boilers made complete sense.

Extending that further, a policy of rooftop solar energy generation for schools also seemed a “no-brainer” to him, particularly given the typically large amount of roof space to leverage on school buildings, energy-demand peaks during the daytime, and the potential for community benefit for any excess generation, which could then be fed back to the grid.

A changing tide

Some schools are making bigger waves when it comes to adaptation and futureproofing against the effects of climate change.

Those like Te Raekura Redcliffs School, a coastal school in Christchurch, which has made big changes, including building “boatshed”-style classrooms.

Architect Hugh Tennent said the school was designed to accommodate aspects of climate change, after earthquakes closed the original campus and it was rebuilt overlooking the sea.

The lowest floor levels were 1.8m above the adjacent road, stormwater drainage infrastructure in the area was upgraded and solar panels were used, he said.

Rose Mcinerney, past principal at Redcliffs, said “it was definitely a school built for the future”.

“In the three and a half years that I was on that site we had some really heavy rainfalls, and we didn’t have any flooding at all.”

Although basic flooding shouldn’t be an issue, current Redcliffs principal Nick Leith said tsunamis were still on the radar, with at least yearly evacuation drills despite pretty aware students.

“Recent disasters over the last 10, 15 years have highlighted the real risk because until then a tidal wave was something everyone heard of but didn’t see.

“People are aware of the devastating effects so it has a lot more importance, for sure.”