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Kaipara District Council last week received a petition seeking to save a $1.5 million climate adaption pilot project launched under its predecessor, which some current councillors do not support.
Set up in 2021, the Ruawai Adaptive Pathways (RAP) pilot project aims to prepare for and respond to coastal hazards, flood hazards and sea level rise in the Ruawai area, land lying mostly at or below sea level.
Work undertaken so far has focused on identifying climate-related risks and examining communities’ tolerance to them, ahead of developing community-driven actions to address them.
In October, council narrowly passed a motion by Mayor Craig Jepson suspending progress on the RAP.
The motion asked the chief executive to report on the implications of cancelling the programme and reallocating its remaining budget to other activities, such as physical works on adaptation benefiting the Ruawai area.
These included the longstanding Ruawai/Raupō drainage scheme, aimed at managing flooding risk on the Ruawai flats through a system of drains and stopbanks.
The petition to save the RAP was initiated by Anna Curnow, a former Kaipara deputy mayor and co-chair of a community panel that advises the pilot project.
She told council’s monthly meeting in Dargaville last week that the number of signatures had risen above 800.
“There are a lot of people who care about what is happening here,” she said, stressing the need for “a long-term, agile plan that’s owned by the community – not by anyone else, but by the people who are affected by it”.
“There are as many views on climate change in Ruawai as there are people. Which is exactly why we need to be doing climate adaptation planning,” Curnow said. “It’s a process that draws out those opinions, that tests them. It brings the evidence into the room and tests that evidence against the lived experience of the people who live there.”
Also giving a brief presentation was the new Green list MP, Hūhana Lyndon, of Te Tai Tokerau.
“The people of Kaipara have felt the bite, the ngau, of climate change just earlier this year,” Lyndon said.
“And nga mihi to our marae, our communities and our people who gathered to work hard to restore, alongside council and government, and the way with which we responded to Cyclone Gabrielle.”
Shortly after hearing the presentations, Jepson proposed a new motion – that council pauses the RAP and all related expenditure, and consults on the climate smart programme through the 2024-2034 Long-Term Plan.
The mayor said the approach to climate change had to change as climate change projection data, and the understanding of the risks, shifted.
“We need to get real, and stop spending money where we don’t need to,” he said. “Spend it on what’s real, which is physical works. Physical works required still at Raupō are significant, and every dollar we can turn that way is the real adaptation.”
The motion divided the council, but passed.
Splits over climate were also seen at council’s September meeting, when councillors passed in a 6-4 vote a motion by deputy mayor Jonathan Larsen to cancel an already-budgeted greenhouse gas emissions accounting contract, and to halt the development of Kaipara’s climate policy.
Larsen argued at the time that there was no statutory requirement to carry out either activity, that they delivered no tangible benefits to ratepayers, and that the funds would be better spent on projects that will.
During that debate, Larsen stressed that his motion would not impact work such as the RAP or the Raupō drainage scheme.
