Case study: challenges with implementing the Clifton to Tangoio Coastal Hazards Strategy 2120 Technical Report
- Author
- Ministry for the Environment &; Hawke's Bay Regional Council
- Year
- 2020
- Publisher / Organisation
- New Zealand Government
- Month
- January
- Pages
- 30
- Keywords
- Hazard, strategy
- Summary
- Executive summary 1. This case study, completed by the Ministry for the Environment in partnership with Hawke's Bay Regional Council, investigates the challenges the three partner counci ls - Napier City Council, Hastings District Council, and Hawke's Bay Regional Council- are experiencing implementing the Clifton to Tangoio Coastal Hazards Strategy 2120 (the Strategy). 2. The councils have spent years involved in a co llaborative process involving a detailed hazard and risk assessment, designing a decision-making framework, and supporting community panels to produce a set of recommendations for action. The Strategy is now in the implementation phase, and the councils are experiencing chal lenges with this phase. Interviews and discussions with council officials have highlighted three key chal lenges: Key challenge 1: core responsibilities for adaptation are ambiguous 3. Regiona l council and territorial authority responsibilities in re lation to natural hazards and climate adaptation are derived from a range of statutes including the RMA (and the NZCPS beneath it), the LGA and the CDEMA. The Hawke's Bay councils describe a situation where, in the absence of clearly delineated responsibilities, councils cannot decide between them who has primary responsibility for addressing natural hazards and climate adaptation. In the Hawke's Bay, this is playing out in discussions on which council/s should rate for the 'public good' component of adaptive action, and there is no clear resolution to this issue on the horizon. Key challenge 2: tools and mechanisms to manage current and future hazards are limited or inefficient 4. The councils are concerned that the current legislative framework is not f it for purpose in terms of implementing a best practice Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning approach. In particular, the system is not set up to respond dynamically to changing information. Changes to, or better integration of, the RMA and the LGA may be necessary to address this. Key challenge 3: there is a lack of agreed approach and principles for sharing costs of works 5. The total cost of the works to implement the coastal hazard strategy is likely to be very large, with high-level estimates from Tonkin and Taylor in 2016 putting the figure at $130-285 million over the Strategy's 100-year planning horizon. In addition to the issue of which council should rate for the 'public benefit' part of the costs, councils are facing difficulties drawing the line between what is paid for by general rates and what should be paid for by targeted rates for properties identified as 'beneficiaries' of works. Councils are concerned that a lack of central guidance on these questions means that whatever they decide to do will set a precedent for the rest of the country without having been informed by principles that would have national applicability. Recommendations 6. This report recommends that central government consider the following avenues as part of a systems approach to addressing these challenges. Further work is needed to develop these recommendations into specific policy proposals and final decision-making on any such policies sits with Government Ministers. We anticipate that this work will be picked up by theRM Review Panel and the Community Resilience work programme. 1. The issues and options raised in this report could be considered in the comprehensive review of the resource management system due to be reported to the Minister for the Environment in May 2020. 2. Community Resilience Group agencies could provide advice to Community Resilience Ministers on how the roles and responsibilities of territorial authorities (district and city councils), regional councils and central government in relation to natural hazards and climate change adaptation could be clarified and made more directive. 3. Cetral government could consider providing further direction on an integrated approach to adaptation issues including how costs for action should be allocated, how managed retreat should be undertaken, and how councils could be supported to implement appropriate restrictive zoning behind defensive measures. This could be pursued through primary or secondary legislation, including potentially new natural hazard risk management and climate change adaptation-specific legislation which sits outside existing LGA and RMA processes. 4. Policy work could be undertaken to develop a system that enables better integration of Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning approaches by, for example by providing better linkages between LG~ and RMA processes. 5. Central government co uld consider developing a protocol for use by councils and other decision-makers to apply around the country on how to approach the question of costs allocation for adaptation action. 6. Central government could consider the case for contributing to funding adaptation action by developing principles for 'who pays' between central and local government and other actors including the private sector.