Cyclone Gabrielle: Adaptation no longer climate change's poor cousin

Wednesday, 1 March 2023

SH2 in and out of Wairoa has suffered significant damage from Cyclone Gabrielle.

Ben Thomas is a commentator and public relations consultant who has worked on both government and private sector projects, and for a minister in a National government. He is a regular contributor to Stuff.

OPINION: “Truth or dare”.

The words, in red biro, were written on the side of a wooden jenga block on a table in Wairoa’s memorial hall, which served as an evacuation centre for the cyclone-hit Hawke’s Bay town.

Like the hall, the jenga set was repurposed for the emergency – leaving its former life as a jerry-rigged stag night or 21st party game, with other blocks inscribed “FMK” and “take two shots!”, to provide wholesome diversion for families displaced by flooding from the town’s swollen river.

Kieran McAnulty, the Local Government and Rural Communities Minister, had been due to visit the town the week I was there, the same week the cyclone hit. Another front in his charm offensive to win back the trust of regions that fell to Labour in the 2020 red wave but now seem almost unreachable by the Government.

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Wairoa resident George Aratia outside his yellow-stickered home after Cyclone Gabrielle brought record rainfall to the region.

* Cyclone Gabrielle mayoral relief funds to target wrecked communities

By Tuesday, however, the town was unreachable by anyone: cut off from phone coverage, cut off from the internet, cut off from power. Cut off by road from Gisborne in the north, and by bridge from Napier in the south, and by slips in Te Urewera to the west.

So instead of a sit-down meeting and perhaps a beer at the Clyde Hotel looking out on the river, McAnulty talked to Wairoa’s tireless mayor, Craig Little, via a single satellite phone with a dwindling battery, through Civil Defence officials.

The river was churning brown, dumping sludge on to the streets and carrying hay bales, trees and, by some accounts, livestock from upstream farms into the sea. Later in the week, he arrived by military helicopter, for a tour of the wreckage.

Plans, then, have to change sometimes. Adaptation is the word of the moment.

Adaptation is the next front after the immediate recovery of February’s disasters, the responsibility of Climate Change Minister James Shaw.

The practicalities of adaptation have in the past been a poor cousin to the debate about how to reduce emissions in climate change discourse. It was most often touted as a “get out of jail” card by those concerned about swift emissions reductions, if not for free then for less than the economic cost of a suddenly zero carbon economy.

That cost is now becoming due. Thanks to the changing climate, one-in-a-100-year weather events are now becoming like once-in-a-lifetime romances in the New York Times wedding pages: each one is surely unique and special, but overall common enough to report on weekly.

In a remarkably unscathed part of Wairoa, Hinemihi marae deals with those who have lost everything with aroha and precision.

Shaw remains working on the climate adaptation legislation that will form the final part of this Government’s trilogy of bills to reform the Resource Management Act. Former National leader Todd Muller, newly repromoted to the climate change portfolio, has been invited to reprise his bipartisan work with Shaw that saw cross-party support for the Zero Carbon Act.

A crucial issue for flood-affected communities is managed retreat. It is acknowledged that some places where baches, houses and even settlements have been built are not realistically habitable in the long term.

The vexed question is cost. There are legitimate financing questions about how the Government will pay for the immediate recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle, for example by borrowing, taxes or simply slashing other projects in favour of the rebuild.

The cost issue for managed retreat is more complex: who should bear the price of managed retreat, and in what proportion, out of property owners, local government, and central government.

There is no right answer, only plenty of complications. Government bailouts encourage more risk-taking behaviour, so surely owners can decide their own risk profile according to insurance costs.

But how would the market signal of increased premiums work in communities like Wairoa, where the majority of residents are low income and without insurance anyway?

Councils have to date been charged with marking out natural risks areas in order to inform future purchasers. The inevitable consequence has been detailed charts ignored by low-choice buyers, and expensive litigation from property owners demanding councils back down from assessments that could affect their valuations.

For small councils especially, with narrow rating bases and wide areas to cover, the threat of court action is a powerful disincentive to do anything.

And local government finances, which have come under increased scrutiny during the debate over water services reform, are just as relevant to the investment in physical works to protect existing infrastructure and communities from rising oceans and extreme weather.

Staying where you are has to be managed, too, and it will be costly, and failures will hit those who are already worst off.

Policies can be punted into the future forever; natural disasters run on their own schedules. This week more heavy rain fell in Wairoa and Hawke’s Bay, and residents once again anxiously watched the river grow and swell, moving their remaining possessions on to elevated surfaces during a sleepless night.

This is adaptation too. Adaptation is whatever we do from here.