Need for significant local scrutiny, power

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Re: Growing pains for TREC alliance, October 27 editorial.

Manu Caddie

Like the “Future of Severely Affected Land” proposal the Government and Council have recently consulted on, the current “Transport Rebuild East Coast” severe weather impacts response requires significant scrutiny from a locally-led process to assess the risks of it creating more harm than help.

Maladaptation usually comes in three common forms:

1. Rebounding Vulnerability refers to Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) efforts which increases community vulnerability to climate change (eg, poorly constructed sea walls providing a false sense of security).

2. Shifting Vulnerability refers to CCA strategies which redistribute vulnerability, leaving certain groups more susceptible to climate impacts by limiting their access to effective adaptation measures (eg, such as stop-banks or gravel extraction upstream causing worse impacts downstream).

3. Creating Negative Externalities: The unintended consequences of CCA strategies, often leading to the emergence of new problems previously absent (eg, when managed retreat or buyout schemes lead to increased inequality, displacement, severance from cultural and historical sense of place).

Locally-led processes should be established and resourced to assess all these kinds of initiatives — before, during and after they are implemented — with power given to affected communities to stop or change them if they are not fit for purpose.

These three stages are critical for affected locals to lead and participate in:

1) Formative Evaluation assesses the baseline conditions even before the project is designed, to investigate the potential of maladaptation (eg, is spending money on imported road workers the best option?)

2) Process Evaluation: monitors and evaluates the overarching process of designing, planning and implementing the planned adaptation project (eg, is the project negatively impacting on the local economy and environment by sending profits out of the region, taking good staff from local companies and riding rough-shod over environmental protections?)

3) Outcome Evaluation: evaluates the behavioural, material and policy changes due to the planned adaptation project (eg, if the project was completed, did it achieve the outcomes promised — like a resilient transport system — or could the money have been better spent on an alternative option?)

Some other factors for our communities and regional decision-makers to consider would be:

• does the project have a lack of focus on the root causes of the problem it purports to solve?

• is the strategy employed aligned with community priorities and values?

• is the project consistent with the rangatiratanga and local resilience, or does it impose external priorities and rely too heavily on external expertise and resources?

Tairāwhiti urgently needs to build analytical capability and participatory decision-making infrastructure in these areas — unfortunately it doesn’t seem like we’re committed to doing that just yet. Hopefully some of our new leaders in central government, local government, Trust Tairāwhiti and other organisations can encourage such capability and capacity building across the region.