Abstract
Climate change adaptation is an unprecedented challenge for decision-making at governance and management levels for local authorities and other groups. This interim report provides a summary of emerging themes one year into the ‘Innovations for Climate Adaptation’ research, focusing on Council staff experiences and perspectives. It draws on semi-structured interview data from Council staff in
Otago, Taranaki, and Bay of Plenty, and is designed to be read in conjunction with the report titled ‘Summary of adaptation initiatives by Māori research partners’. Our findings show that Council staff have been undertaking and implementing various actions to reorganise Council practices and processes for climate response. Our findings identify the following key shifts:
• Using carbon accounting to inform mitigation actions that connect across internal Council teams and processes, resulting in new business cases for climate response in annual and long-term plans
• Shifts towards increased cross-Council collaboration and coordination at regional levels as part of climate change risk assessments and adaptation planning
• Internal reorganising within Councils to embed climate change considerations across decisions and valuing a wider range of knowledge and skills to inform these processes
• Increasing recognition of the need to resource mana whenua and community-led projects and processes for climate response.
These shifts show evidence of both ‘just’ (considering equity) and ‘robust’ (incorporating a wider range of knowledge) considerations in climate response. While these shifts may seem small or tentative, they provide important evidence and examples to build on as New Zealand continues to collectively navigate climate response.