Climate change report a step in the right direction
Local Government New Zealand welcomes the release of the Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working Group’s (CCATWG) final report on how New Zealand can adapt to the impacts of climate change.
The CCATWG’s report recommends that New Zealand needs a national adaptation action plan, a regularly updated national climate change risk assessment, a review of existing legislation and policy to integrate and align climate change adaptation considerations and an investigation into who should bear the costs of climate change adaptation and how it can be funded.
LGNZ President Dave Cull says the report shows that a number of the CCATWG’s recommendations on adaptation meet the needs of our communities and align with what LGNZ has already outlined in its Climate Change project.
However, there are still a number of sensitive questions that central and local government must collectively discuss with businesses and communities.
“We need to have conversations about sensitive issues that we must address if our communities are to be resilient, such as how to manage the relocation of communities shown to be at risk in a national risk assessment, and whether existing insurance models are sufficient.”
In the report, the CCATWG also recommends the establishment of a centralised service that provides risk-based decision-making expertise to local government.