The Auditor-General says councils will need to understand and commit to addressing the long-term nature of climate change impacts if they want to effectively play their part in how New Zealand adapts.
The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released a report on Tuesday looking at the actions of Environment Canterbury, Christchurch City Council, Nelson City Council, and Whanganui District Council and how they were responding to the local impacts of climate change.
All four councils have declared a climate emergency and also represent a cross-section of size and type of local authority, according to the OAG.
Auditor-General John Ryan said that all four councils were making progress with their responses to climate change and doing so in an uncertain and evolving national policy environment.
“However, managing the impacts of climate change requires all councils to have a long-term commitment to clear climate strategies and plans, and effective governance arrangements. It also requires sustained and meaningful engagement with communities, other councils, and with central government,” he said.
The OAG report found while work to address climate change is underway, “identifying climate change as a strategic priority has not always translated into treating it as one”.
Ryan said climate strategic priorities needed to “clearly” drive council activities – and be seen to do so.
The four councils were found to be ensuring they were well informed of the potential localised impacts of climate change.
“All had climate risk information from central government organisations and had supplemented it with detailed risk assessments tailored to their local areas,” he said in the report.
All four councils were found to be making progress with their responses to climate change and doing so in an “uncertain and evolving national policy environment”.
However, Ryan said in the report that communities at risk of climate change needed to see “sustained momentum” from central and local government.
For councils, this included keeping a focus on clear climate strategies, effective governance arrangements, meaningful engagement with communities, particularly with iwi, hapū, and Māori, and robust progress monitoring.
“Maintaining community support is critical to the success of climate-related actions, and keeping the community well informed of progress is fundamental to maintaining that support,” Ryan said.
“Formal reporting on performance is also important for community engagement and is a critical part of councils’ accountability to their communities. I encourage all councils to make greater, and better, use of formal public performance reporting frameworks and measures that reflect their climate-related strategic priorities.”
3 Comments
The 3-Clown Circus won't like this
Not one little bit
(to paraphrase Mr Giesel).
Good on the Auditor - he's perhaps the last line of defense. Pity he didn't add in the feed-back-loops from the rest of the overshot Planetary Boundaries (per Rockstrom et al) - that would have really set the cat among the pigeons.
Yes they need to focus on adaptation rather than trying to be leaders in the carbon reduction race
difficult for some councillors who want to be hero's especially the Green leaning ones
and I see he is another civil servant who cant resist serving up the usual tired racial troupes
The 'green leaning' ones are closer to the truth, than the 'develop everything in sight for short-term profit' brigade.
But carrying on what we are doing, is madness. Ecological suicide.
Yes, adaption at this too-late stage trumps mitigation - but that is no excuse to keep on keeping on - that is illogical.
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