In Pōneke|Wellington, our unique landscape of coasts, low-lying land, and steep hills offers both beauty and challenges. With climate change, we will be at increasing risk of rainfall causing flooding in low-lying areas and slips around our hill suburbs, while sea-level rise will worsen the impact of coastal storms, threatening coastal communities and infrastructure with flooding and erosion.

In the future climate change will continue to negatively impact our city, environment, economy and communities, with disproportionate impacts for many already disadvantaged groups.

And it’s important to remember that this whenua – Te Upoko o te Ika a Māui – has also changed in the past, through natural processes and human actions. Our approach will be guided by our partnership with mana whenua who have been adapting here for centuries.

Wellington City Council has established a long-term Community Climate Adaptation Programme as part of its climate change strategy, Te Atakura – First to Zero. The programme aims to help Wellington’s most at-risk communities prepare for and adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change in a fair and sustainable way.

Within the Community Climate Adaptation Programme, we are launching a pilot project to test a fair and scalable process to investigate suitable options for us to adapt to increasing climate disruption in the capital. The pilot will focus on one area of the city – we are proposing to start in the Island Bay / Houghton Bay water catchment area – with the intention to work in other priority areas once the pilot is completed and evaluated. This is an important step in making the city more resilient to climate change, by working together to reduce risks and improve our ability to adapt.

The pilot is scheduled to start in July 2025.

The following principles, drawn from national guidance, will be used to guide decision-making during the pilot. The Council’s Tākai Here partnership is reflected in the addition of a foundational principle of partnering with mana whenua.

We all need to work together to support our communities in Pōneke|Wellington to prepare for climate change. We need to take steps to prepare for the climate impacts we're already facing, like landslips and coastal flooding, which will only get worse in the future.

Many infrastructure and service providers, including the Council, need to begin making decisions on how to adapt the places, spaces, services, and infrastructure which support our communities to address the growing risks of climate disruption. However, we currently lack an evidence base that tells us what will work where, and what aligns with the values of mana whenua and our unique, diverse communities who know their places best. These decisions, which will need to be made over the next 10, 25 years and 100 years, will affect how future generations live in the places we love.

This pilot will support the development of a scalable and fair process to identify and assess suitable local climate adaptation options for an area of Pōneke|Wellington that is facing considerable coastal and inland flooding risk.

Working with local communities and mana whenua, we want to:

• Increase the collective understanding of local climate change issues and opportunities for adaptation.
• Develop shared understanding of options for how to adapt to increased climate disruption locally, and build an evidence base to inform future city-wide adaptation planning and strategies.
• Ensure suitable options are identified and assessed, relevant to a wide range of groups who contribute to local adaptation, including home-owners, infrastructure owners, utility providers and developers.
• Strengthen local community resilience to climate impacts and disruption.
• Develop a process that can be repeated in other areas of the city to support fair decision-making that aligns to other resilience-building activities in the city.
• Build capacity for ongoing climate adaptation planning, within the Council, communities and mana whenua partners.

This pilot will result in the creation of a Local Climate Adaptation Options Report, outlining suitable place-based options for increasing resilience to climate disruption in the short, medium and long term.

The main steps of the pilot approach are shown in the diagram below.

Part 1. Explore values and vulnerabilities

There are a wide range of ways climate change will affect our lives. This first stage of the pilot will explore the impacts of climate change locally and what this will mean for local communities. 

What matters most?

To begin, we will engage with communities in the area to:

• Explore local histories and knowledge of place
  including changes in land use over time, and what climate impacts and resilience issues they are seeing now.

• Understand what is important
  to the people who live in this place, and what they are worried about with climate change.

• Develop community values and objectives
  that will be used to assess potential adaptation options.

What is happening?

To develop a shared understanding of the climate risks to the area, we will:

• Analyse the local climate change hazards
  and potential climate disruption for the local area and communities. Climate hazards will include inland and coastal flooding and landslips, and both extreme and repetitive “nuisance” events where possible.

• Undertake vulnerability and risk analyses and create a community climate change profile
  to inform where and for what adaptation will be needed. This will include places and assets that the community have identified as being important or at risk.

Part 2. Explore options to adapt

There are many ways we can prepare and adapt to the local impacts. There are solutions in nature, in communities, in engaging with mana whenua and Māori knowledge, and in science, architecture, and engineering. Examples include improving community resilience and disaster preparedness, strengthening natural systems like dunes, wetlands and streams, and strategic and land-use planning.

With mana whenua partners, te ao Māori and mātauranga Māori will be prioritised and woven throughout the process of exploring suitable long-term adaptation options.

What can we do about it?

To do build an understanding of what suitable options we have, we will:

• Building on the Climate Adaptation Options Catalogue for Wellington, source ideas from the community for how we could adapt locally.
  Adaptation options will be identified through community input and expert advice, considering examples from New Zealand and around the world. 

• Assess the potential adaptation options
  with the Community Panel and appropriate technical assessments using criteria detailed below.

Over time we will need to increase our resilience to climate change impacts by accommodating the water, reducing our vulnerability, or relocating infrastructure.

Community spaces, services and infrastructure shape how and where we live, so we’ll explore ways to adapt these neighbourhood elements - like transport, stormwater systems, community facilities, parks and recreation areas, to address the risks we face from climate change.

Additionally, the ability of our communities to respond well to climate disruption and extreme weather is also critical. This involves initiatives and networks that develop community resilience and disaster preparedness.

Each adaptation option comes with trade-offs. Our goal is to explore these together and make informed assessments based on community input and expert advice. While we do not yet have clear guidance on how some adaptation actions could be planned or financed fairly, we remain committed to finding equitable solutions.

Adaptation options generally sit within the following categories:

Assessing climate adaptation options

Once we have a long list of adaptation options, they will be assessed against the following criteria:

• Effectiveness
  Will the option effectively address the risks and vulnerabilities of the area?
• Feasibility
  Are there legal, social, financial or engineering considerations that present significant implementation barriers?
• Social, environmental and cultural impacts
  Does the option have positive social, environmental or cultural impacts?
• Alignment to guiding principles
  Does the option support our guiding principles?
• Community objectives
  Does this option align with what the community values and prioritises for the future?

These assessments will be undertaken by relevant subject-matter experts, the Community Panel and mana whenua, as appropriate.

These assessments won’t provide a list of preferred options, but they will help us to refine the list. This process will help us rule out options that are not sufficiently effective, feasible or suitable.

We will need to prepare for climate change together. This community-centred process aims to bring together diverse community perspectives - residents, business owners, recreational users, people who pass by, and the wider city - to help shape the local adaptation options. The project team will work closely with a Community Panel throughout the pilot.

The Community Panel

The Community Panel, made up of five to 12 local representatives from diverse backgrounds, will ensure community perspectives shape adaptation planning. They will also support the project team to best engage the local community, including those who are often under-represented. The Community Panel will be paid and meet around once a month during the pilot.

Working with the Community Panel, we want to explore:

• What matters most?
  We will gather community perspectives on what is most important to them for a climate-resilient neighbourhood, and use these insights to develop a set of community objectives. These objectives will form a part of the criteria for assessing adaptation options. Additionally, we will explore local histories to understand how past changes have shaped current challenges, and collect community input on locations that hold significance or are at risk.
• What is happening?
  We will host community events, share resources, and provide opportunities for learning about the local impacts of increasing climate disruption.
• What and who is already available to help?
  We will share information about existing services and connect the community to available adaptation and resilience resources – such as emergency response, emission reduction efforts, and funding for local projects – to empower community-led action.
• What can we do about it?
  We will gather community ideas for how we could adapt.
• Create a plan to engage the community.
• Review community objectives, derived from community feedback.
• Consider the risk and vulnerability assessments.
• Assess adaptation options against community objectives.
• Review the final Local Climate Adaptation Report.

Specifically, the panel will:

Community Panel recruitment process

The Community Panel will represent a range of residents living in the area, as well as include city-wide and youth representatives. Our Tākai Here mana whenua partners may also choose to have representatives on this panel. For the pilot, we will invite key representatives and open expressions of interest to ensure broad participation, which will be available through our Let’s Talk hub at the launch of the pilot.

Delivery timeline

The pilot is expected to start in July 2025 and will take up to 12 months to complete.

Proposed location of the pilot

We have chosen to define the boundary of the pilot area using water catchment boundaries. By working at the catchment scale, we can build an integrated view of climate impacts and solutions that consider community resilience, ecosystem health and water management together.

We are aiming to start in the Island Bay / Houghton Bay water catchment area, which includes the coastal and valley suburbs of Island Bay, Houghton Bay, and Berhampore, as well as the hilltop suburbs of Southgate, Vogeltown, Kingston and Mornington, as shown in the map below.

Figure 1. The orange area shows the extent of the proposed pilot location, guided by the reach of the Island Bay / Houghton Bay stormwater catchment (shown by the blue line).

This area is recommended due to the following criteria:

Climate risk profile
This area has been identified as at risk of climate disruption including coastal flooding during storms, rising sea levels over time, and the risk of inland flooding and landslips.

Community interest
This area has engaged community networks who are interested in discussing and shaping climate change adaptation solutions.

Significant exposure
This area includes public infrastructure, residential communities, sites of significance to mana whenua and Māori, and non-council owned assets.

An integrated approach
The catchment-based approach and location align with existing initiatives, such as the Coastal Reserves Management Plan, supporting both short- and long-term adaptation efforts.

This pilot aims to learn further about the best ways to support our most vulnerable communities to climate change by trialling the approach before it is scaled-up to citywide.

In the success of the pilot will be evaluated by:

• Mana whenua partnerships being strengthened
  • Feedback from mana whenua about their ability to influence decision-making in the process
• Effectiveness of the process
  • Did the process effectively add value to existing community initiatives?
  • Did the Local Adaptation Options Report provide useful insights for future climate adaptation planning activities?
  • Were the roles of the Community Panel appropriate and effective?
  • Was there sufficient data available to support the process?
  • Were positive social, environmental, cultural and economic outcomes adequately considered in the process?
• Meaningful involvement for diverse communities
  • Was the process structured to enable inclusive and meaningful involvement for diverse communities?
• Efficiency of the process
  • Was the size and boundaries of the area for adaptation area appropriate?
• Long-term equity outcomes
  • Could diverse communities be involved in efficient but meaningful ways?
  • Does the process provide an equitable approach that could be applied citywide to support those communities most in need?
  • Has there been sufficient regard for intergenerational considerations in the process?