First climate change risk assessment lays out long list of threats
New Zealands first climate change risk assessment shows the current, gradual pace of preparations is too slow something Climate Change Minister James Shaw acknowledged when he released the report. For the first time, the Government has released an exhaustive list of every major climate-related risk ranked by urgency and severity including threats to drinking water supplies, insurance markets, the financial system, the shellfish industry, kiwifruit, ports and airports. Shaw said it was a relief to have the risks laid out in detail, after years of knowing what they were, but lacking in-depth information. Under the Zero Carbon Act, the Government has until August 2022 to respond with an adaptation plan for coping with the risks laid out in the report. But Otago Universitys Centre for Sustainability director, Janet Stephenson, said two years was too far away. We need serious political attention to be paid to taking action on this impending crisis long before then, she said. New Zealands successful Covid response has shown the advantage in moving fast and hard to solve an impending crisis... investing now for mitigation and adaptation is far more cost-effective than waiting. READ MORE: * New Zealand's Paris target too weak for 1.5C - official advice to Govt * National inventory of climate risks a 'milestone' for New Zealand * Ups and downs of rising seas in a shaky nation Many of the physical risks to New Zealand if nations keep pumping out greenhouse gases were known before this report was released: rising and warming seas, stronger storms, more floods, higher temperatures and more heat waves on land, more droughts and wildfires, more acidic oceans, and less snow and ice, in the next 70 years. But the new report details how those changes might affect people and industries, from pressure on emergency responders from multiple disasters, to health impacts on the elderly, to stress for poorer homeowners who cant afford insurance, to pressure on government and council coffers from rising clean-up costs and compensation claims. It also includes the upsides of a changing climate including business opportunities for companies helping people adapt, kiwifruit growing better in the South Island (although existing growing areas might become more challenging), and pines trees growing faster from higher carbon dioxide levels (assuming the trees are planted somewhere that still has enough water to grow them). The report focuses on a high-emissions scenario, the track the world is on currently, a trajectory which assumes no major cuts to climate pollution. That could see 3 degrees Celsius of heating by 2090, and 67cm sea level rise. Although the report also discusses the impacts if the world gets on a lower emissions track, even the lower track in the report would not be low enough to keep the planet inside 2C heating the upper goal of the Paris Agreement let alone 1.5C, which is the Government's stated goal and the goal of many other countries. The cautious approach was backed yesterday by researchers, including Stephenson. Unfortunately the world is currently heading in this direction, said Stephenson. We punch above our weight in influence, but ultimately the biggest driver of the global greenhouse gas trajectory is the political ambitions of major emitters such as China, USA and Russia. We have to prepare for the worst and plan for a significantly impacted future. Asked why the assessment didnt also model the impacts of lower temperatures, Shaw said adaptation plans needed to prepare New Zealand for the worst outcomes. The worst-case scenario also prepares you for the best case, but the reverse is not true. Based on what were seeing at moment, the high-end scenarios are most likely. Shaw said the scenarios would change in the next assessment, six years from now, if countries had taken dramatic steps to reduce emissions. The climate projections are based on modelling by Niwa, using emissions paths from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The brief is to identify the main risks and opportunities, point out gaps in information and show the Government where to focus its preparation efforts. The Ministry for the Environment wrote this, first assessment, but future ones will come from the Climate Change Commission. Once the Government comes up with a plan for adapting, the commission will also report to the Minister every two years on its how effective it thinks the Governments implementation of the adaptation plan is. MOST URGENT The report details threats to 2090, but highlights a few impacts that pose a major risk now. Among the most extreme and urgent were the risk to the Governments financial position from paying for disaster relief, lost productivity in places suffering more frequent disasters, and the risk of financial instability caused by climate disruption. Reserve Bank boss Adrian Orr has been vocal about calling for financial institutions to be more transparent about the climate risks they face, but, as yet, such disclosure isnt compulsory. Other concerns rated most urgent were lost fishing productivity from the oceans changing, and scarcer and lower-quality drinking water supplies. Risks to buildings from more frequent extreme weather, wildfire, and coastal flooding were also on the urgent list as was preparing for social hurt to communities from people being displaced from their homes. Further-away effects included risks to native species from invasive species being able to survive and establish here. Rodents, pest fish and wilding pines would likely be able to expand their ranges as the climate warms, letting them encroach south, and higher. The assessment considered both the size of the threat and New Zealands preparedness meaning some threats were labelled urgent mainly because not much had been done to prepare. For example, 20 per cent of New Zealands roads are in inland flood risk areas already, and that was likely to increase. Railways (especially in northern regions) would be at increased risk of buckling in the heat, asphalt of melting and airports of flooding. But it was probably easier to address the risks when infrastructure was renewed or built, the assessment said. The authors noted not all infrastructure owners had an obvious plan in place. Ports of Auckland have conducted assessments of climate risk. However, engagement undertaken for the [risk assessment] revealed no further information on adaptation actions planned or under way in relation to this risk, said the report. POLITICAL PROBLEMS Government fumbling could worsen all these problems, as the report makes clear. The assessment notes many impacts could be worse than they need to be if, if laws, financing and Government institutions arent changed, so theyre better adapted to helping New Zealand cope. Even the threat from the political process itself was singled out for attention. The risk assessment says unregulated lobbying on behalf of narrow interest groups, including property developers, coupled with the three-year election cycle and political reluctance to make hard calls, might further delay government action and make it hard to get bipartisan support for action ultimately increasing the impacts New Zealanders suffer. UNEVEN SPREAD The report makes plain the impacts wont be shared equally. For example, the elderly are more at risk than others from extreme events and having to evacuate their homes. Wealthy property owners and profitable businesses can absorb rising insurance premiums better than lower-income people and small businesses. The assessment predicts insurance pricing will change, as climate models get more detailed allowing insurers to better pinpoint neighbourhoods where the risk of claims has grown too high, so they can cut off cover. On the positive side, warmer winters could reduce the number of deaths related to cold weather and make it easier for people to afford to keep their homes warm in winter. But that benefit might be counteracted by higher power bills to run air conditioning in summer, and heat stress. Similarly, farming in some parts of the country might become more productive, but also more reliant on irrigation to cope with less certain rainfall and increasing severe droughts, the report said. Indeed, farming was in line to be affected by virtually all the projected impacts, said Shaw. Shaw gave recent flooding in the Far North as an example of what could happen when an area was hit by one extreme, then another. You had this drought that went on and on, and then about ten years worth of water in a single morning. WHATS IN STORE? Natural variability has always played a part in New Zealands climate, but climate change will boost these impacts in gradual ways (sea level rise) as well as sudden ones (extreme flooding and heat waves), the report says. In New Zealand, warming of 1 degree Celsius was recorded between 1909 and 2018. The five warmest years since records began, based on monthly mean temperatures, were 2016, 2018 and 1998 (tied), 1999 and 2013. Sea level rise has accelerated from 1.22mm a year from 1900 to 1960, to 2.44mm a year from 1961 to 2018. Already, the impact has cost millions. Victoria Universitys Dave Frame and others have calculated climate change cost New Zealand $840 million in the decade to 2017, and that was from a conservative estimate of how much climate change worsened a series of major droughts and floods. Looking ahead, unless global emissions drop drastically, therell be fewer below-zero temperature days (as many as 86 per cent fewer by 2090), the report says. The most severe downpours will get more severe almost everywhere in the country, with particular pain in store for Northland the place most likely to see the biggest increases in extreme rainfall, due to a projected increase in ex-tropical cyclones. Otago and Southland, are projected to get a fifth more wet days and the very wettest days will dump 30 per cent heavier rain. For the northern and eastern regions, drought will be the problem. Much of the North Island is projected to suffer a 50mm-bigger deficit in winter rainfall by 2090, with the strongest long-term drying affecting northern and eastern regions of the North Island and northeastern and parts of the central South Island. If global emissions drop, these impacts will be curbed. The report says work on the adaptation plan, for responding to the biggest risks, is already underway.