At its October council meeting, Kaipara District Council requested a report from the Chief Executive on whether to continue with the Ruawai Climate Adaptation Programme and indicated that it may disband the community panel leading that work.

This opens the door to cancelling all of the climate adaptation work across Kaipara and would leave vulnerable communities with no support to plan for and address the very real risks faced.

Please sign this petition to demand that Kaipara District Council continue the programme so that we can plan for and take action on the impacts of climate change on the communities we live in.

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Background Information

Climate adaptation planning is an evidence-based, community led approach to empowering communities to decide for themselves what to do about the growing risks created by climate change.  It identifies risk, consequences and tolerances for different levels of impacts, so that communities can plan for how they respond, how those responses might be funded and who needs to be involved and when.  It is not just about infrastructure, but also includes the services relied on by members of the community, land use change questions and how to influence policy development.

Climate change is not only a future problem. It is happening now with the impacts becoming more pronounced every year.  The following global impacts are reported by NASA:

• glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking
• river and lake ice is breaking up
• plant and animal ranges are shifting
• plants and trees are blooming earlier
• sea ice loss, sea level rise and more intense and longer heatwaves 
• droughts, wildfire and extreme rainfall events are happening more frequently and faster than predicted. 

The photo attached to this petition is of Ruawai in February 2023 after Cyclone Gabrielle swept through.

In 2020 and 2021, Kaipara District Council identified several communities that were likely to experience serious climate change impacts, including Ruawai, Dargaville, Baylys Beach, Glinks Gully, Paparoa, Pahi, Tinopai and Mangawhai.  Ruawai was selected as the pilot. A panel of 24 community members was appointed.  The panel is mid-way through the process and there has been no formal evaluation of the effectiveness as yet.  Council have not asked to hear from the Panel about their experiences.  The pilot is important as it sets the learnings for how adaptation planning will work in Kaipara with other communities.

If the Ruawai programme is cancelled then the people of Ruawai lose the ability to decide for themselves, in a proactive way, how they respond to climate change.  The decision to cancel would also impact the other identified communities as they are unlikely to proceed under this Council if the pilot is cancelled. 

Without a well thought out, evidence-based plan then communities are left to react in an adhoc way with a poor understanding of the wider impacts on everyone in the community.

Please sign this petition to demand that Kaipara District Council does its job to empower the communities it represents to plan for their futures.