Govt help for climate adaptation 'wishful thinking' says mayor

It's "wishful thinking" that central government will help councils fund their climate adaptation projects, the mayor of a flood-prone town says.

The government announced legislation yesterday that would make adaptation planning mandatory for areas at high risk of climate change hazards like flooding.

City and district councils will need to plan at least 30 years into the future, and spell out the likely cost.

The government has still not announced how the costs will be shared, saying last year that those decisions would be deferred until the next parliamentary term.

Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) says decisions about cost-sharing must be a priority, because there are councils that will not be able to afford to adapt.

Yesterday, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts told RNZ the government was "simply not at that point" and the first step was to get the plans in place.

Many councils had planning underway but it was inconsistent, while others had not even started, Watts said.

Wairoa Mayor Craig Little, whose town has been hit with frequent floods - most recently as last week - said planning was already happening in his district.

"I don't know whether the government really understands what we're doing because it's nothing new to us, put it that way," he said.

"We've been meeting with our iwi across the community and trying to get everyone together first, get them at the table at the start, so we don't have an idea and [include them] at the end."

If the government wanted his council to plan for climate adaptation a different way, "give us the funding to do it", Little said.

"We're always constrained with funding and then we get criticised that the rates are too high."

A regulatory impact statement published alongside the draft bill estimated the cost of just developing a plan could be up to $5.1 million per council.

The proposed law change would allow councils with existing adaptation plans to keep them, provided they met the required criteria.

Government support is 'wishful thinking'

When it comes to actually paying for adaptation projects, Little was not holding out hope that the government would help.

"That's really wishful thinking. That would be great, but I don't think there will be, to be quite honest," he said.

"Like so many things, they come up with these ideas ... but they don't give us any funding with it. So anything that needs to be done, we will have to fund."

Little's counterpart further up State Highway 2, Opōtiki Mayor David Moore, said what the government was asking of councils was yet another item on the list.

"That's the really tricky thing, all of the [local government] reform that's happening and the things that different councils are having to deal with all at once," Moore said.

"My council may not even survive to worry about this sort of thing."

Severe weather events had forced him to declare a civil defence emergency three times already in his four years as mayor.

"The town of the Opōtiki, it's built between two rivers ... so our town is actually at sea level and it's surrounded by stopbanks."

Those stopbanks would not last forever, he said.

"So what do you do? Do you shift the whole town or do you come up with other methods to keep the town safe? Or do you just put up with flooding?"

The government had to help out councils with protecting infrastructure, he said.

"We've got two state highways that run through the town and they're protected by the stopbanks, and we get no funding whatsoever to protect those roads."

Funding decisions need to happen now - LGNZ

LGNZ regional sector chair Deon Swiggs said a previous lack of clarity about how adaptation planning should happen had created an inconsistent approach across the country.

"So I think this is a really good step to have."

The government must spell out who would share the costs of creating the plans and then actually putting them into action, though.

"For the long-term, for the 30 years, what is an agreed co-funding approach? Because there are small communities that have a disproportionate amount of risk, that will not be able to afford to do what comes out of these plans."

Swiggs disagreed that the planning stage should come before decisions about a funding framework.

"We should be looking at both together. It is very easy to say let's push the funding issue downstream, but you need to be thinking about it and planning for that right now."

The standards that the plans need to meet would have to be laid out by the climate change minister within a year of the law being passed.

"That's where the rubber will hit the road, so we're really looking forward to seeing what those look like."

The minister wrote to councils earlier this month warning them against "unnecessary gold-plating" when planning for climate risks.

Swiggs said he had not seen "any instances" of that.

"Most councils are very responsible with what they're doing around the planning and then the implementation, especially when it comes to resilience and this type of infrastructure."

More extreme scenarios had been used by some councils for "stress-testing" options, he said.

"But when it comes to developing the actual infrastructure, I haven't seen any wholesale going out there and gold-plating."