NIWA is developing guidelines and advice to help coastal communities adapt to climate change.

The issue

Our susceptibility to sea-level rise and climate extremes has increased dramatically over the last two decades. 

There are two primary reasons.  Firstly, our coasts have seen unprecedented development for holiday and permanent homes.  Secondly, tourism and associated facilities have also grown over the last two decades. 

Why do we need to adapt?

• Coastal communities are vulnerable to coastal hazards
• Coastal hazard impacts will increase with projected changes in climate
• Climate change will affect community values for generations to come

Our approach

NIWA and its partners have received 4 years of funding from the Ministry for Science & Innovation (formerly the Foundation for Science Research and Technology) to create the necessary information and tools to enable adaptation - by central and local government and communities - to the impacts of climate-induced change on the coastal environment.

Our project includes three main workstreams:

• Building a national coastal sensitivity profile
• Engaging and informing communities
• Encouraging best practice planning

Key outcomes of our “Coastal adaptation to climate change” programme will be:

• More informed, proactive communities and councils developing local adaptation strategies to climate change
• The inclusion of these strategies in regional and community coastal planning documents
• Evaluation and monitoring of the uptake and performance of adaptation strategies. 

The poster on the right, (click to enlarge, or download full size here) outlines the Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change programme, and our three work areas.

The results

Some findings and documents from the first three years of the Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change project are now available – just follow the links under the three workstream headings below.

Building a national coastal sensitivity profile

Work being carried out by the Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change project team will deliver a consistent national-regional level assessment of coastal sensitivity. More information is available in the Mapping National Coastal Sensitivity section below. 

Engaging and informing communities

What is the best way to engage with local communities about coastal climate change and how to adapt to it? To investigate this, the Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change project team has looked at international literature on the topic, and undertaken work with case study communities in the Coromandel area of the Waikato region of New Zealand.

A report detailing our community case study in Whitianga, Engaging with communities on coastal adaptation to climate change: Whitianga experience, is available. There is also a paper summarising this work, How can we engage with coastal communities over adaptation to climate change?: A case study in Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula, that was delivered at the New Zealand Planning Institute conference in April 2010.

To read more about the work we did with Mercury Bay Area School, read this recent article, published in the New Zealand Science Teacher journal Issue 127, NZST (NZASE). To see the resources that the teachers developed, see the Mercury Bay Area School website.

A research report summarising our work and recommending an approach to engaging with communities, called Engaging communities: Making it Work, is also available.

Encouraging best practice planning

Another important aspect of the Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change project is in encouraging New Zealand's local authorities to plan for and implement adaptation options to prepare for climate change impacts at the coast.

We undertook an evaluation of planning, policy and institutional processes in 2009. Written and verbal interviews were conducted with 30 regional, unitary and district/city councils - the resulting report Local Government planning practice and limitations to adaptation has been finalised, following review from all councils involved and central Government agencies.

A vital part of the Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change project has been to develop some guidance materials to help councils and communities. The team has produced a four-step process to help councils and communities adapt, and this Pathways to Change guidance is available. A PDF poster is also available.

Mapping national coastal sensitivity

In a general sense, vulnerability is the susceptibility to physical or emotional injury or attack. This concept has been used when looking at hazards and disaster management, in which case vulnerability is the extent to which a community can be affected by the impact of a hazard. Vulnerability assessments in the context of hazards and disaster management means assessing the threats from potential hazards to the population and to the infrastructure developed in that particular location. Vulnerability assessments in the context of climate change involve assessing the threats arising from climate change, both in an average sense and from changing extremes

The realm of climate change related vulnerability assessments has evolved rapidly over the last 20 years or so, and many organisations (e.g. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2008) offer guidance on how to carry out these assessments. Kay & Travers (2008) provide a useful overview of a number of Coastal Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment tools and methodologies

We currently have a poor national picture of the relative sensitivity of New Zealand's coastline is to coastal hazards and the potential impacts of climate change. The only previous approach that has attempted to rank sections of the coast susceptible to coastal hazards in a standardised way was the Coastal Sensitivity Index (CSI) developed by Gibb et al. (1992).

This was a relative index based on eight variables which were ranked for sections of the coast based on their susceptibility to coastal hazards on a scale of 1 to 5. The variables were:

• elevation
• storm wave run-up
• gradient
• tsunami
• lithology
• landform
• horizontal trend
• short-term fluctuation

The hazards corresponded to very low, low, medium, high and very high sensitivity to coastal hazards.

An initial New Zealand coastal classification system has previously been developed and is available online on the Coastal Explorer website. The existing coastal classification is based on morphology (sediments, geomorphic character, hinterland characteristics, morphology controls) mapped at a scale of 1:50,000 around the coast.

Several aspects of the above CSI and coastal classification are important physical parameters that will contribute towards a revised New Zealand Coastal Sensitivity Index. Work being carried out by the Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change project team will expand and improve on this work to deliver a consistent national-regional level assessment of coastal sensitivity. In particular it is being expanded to include oceanographic, land-use and socio-economic parameters to create a basic mapping of coastal sensitivity for all open-coast soft shoreline regions of New Zealand. A comparison is also being made of a more comprehensive set of parameters collated for the Northland, Auckland and Waikato coasts to assess the potential benefits of different levels of detail. 

References

Gibb, J., Sheffield, A., Foster, G. 1992. A Standardised Coastal Sensitivity Index Based on an Initial Framework for Physical Coastal Hazards Information; Science & Research Series No. 55. Department of Conservation

Kay, R.C.; Travers, A. (2008). Coastal Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment: Compendium of Coastal Resources Tools & Methodologies. CZM Pty Ltd and the University of Wollangong, 35p.

UNFCCC (2008). UNFCCC Resource Guide for preparing the National Communications of Non-Annex 1 parties, Module 2: Vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. UNFCCC, 31pp.