Flood-prone developments could still be built in the years before resource management reforms come into effect because it would take the Government too long to provide an urgent solution, Marc Daalder reports
Climate Change Minister James Shaw says the slow pace of policy development and lawmaking makes it difficult to do environmental regulation well.
The latest example is an axed proposal to urgently regulate to bar new real estate developments in areas that could be threatened by climate change. The Government's resource management reforms will handle this issue in the future, but they aren't scheduled to come into effect for a couple more years.
"Adaptation and climate-accelerated natural hazard risk are quite a big feature of both the Strategic Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environments Act and the National Planning Framework that's coming up," Shaw told Newsroom.
Until then, however, there are relatively few hard rules in place to prevent risky development.
In the late stages of the creation of the National Adaptation Plan, the Treasury backed a move to insert an additional action into the plan which proposed "interim regulation in the period before Resource Management reform, limiting development in high-risk areas and thereby reducing long term costs". This would plug the gap until the RMA reforms come into place.
"There is anecdotal evidence that high-risk development and intensification is ongoing, but implementation of the changes planned through resource management reforms will take a number of years. Given that, we see merit in investigating whether there are measures that could be taken in the interim," Treasury officials wrote in a June briefing to Finance Minister Grant Robertson, released to Newsroom under the Official Information Act.
Despite the backing of the Government's top economic advisors, Shaw said the policy didn't end up in the adaptation plan.
"Legislation is roughly a two-year process. Some of these things will only have an effect for quite a short period of time before the new laws take effect. The question is, is it worth doing?" he said.
"It takes forever to create national direction. It's at least a two-year process, which in itself I think is a total disaster. It means you basically can't regulate for the environment in a hurry."
The Ministry for the Environment is still looking into the possibility of regulation for this issue, he added, to see how much risky development was planned before the reforms come in.
Insurance giant IAG recently proposed a National Policy Statement on development in flood-prone areas, but Shaw said this would face the same timeliness issue.
Local Government New Zealand chief executive Susan Freeman-Greene said it was "disappointing" the proposal didn't make the cut.
"LGNZ has always held a strong view that to deal with the harmful impacts of climate change, we need strong short- to medium-term measures backed by longer-term solutions as part of the resource management reform. An immediate measure like that would have shown leadership from central government," she said.
"Councils are dealing with the effects of climate change every day."
Shaw said a consistent theme in consultation on the plan had been the need to "make sure that we stop building in dumb places". And there are policies and programmes that work to reduce risky development.
The National Adaptation Plan did, for example, instruct councils to use new, more conservative sea-level rise projections when considering consenting coastal activities. The Ministry for the Environment is also training council staff how to apply these guidelines properly.
"I do know, anecdotally, that there have been a number of decisions that have been made despite that guidance. At some level, just training people to use our existing tools better than they are would make a difference," Shaw said.
Newsroom has also previously reported on the Government's plans to require councils to put climate hazard information on property LIMs, which experts say would slow risky development.
