Guru calls for Climate Change Summit

 

Early next year, I will organise a Kāpiti Summit on Climate Change to bring a range of experts, stakeholders and community representatives to explore how Kāpiti can manage the impacts of Climate Change.

 

It would include insurance, banking and legal experts as well as subject experts and local stakeholders like iwi, Coastal Ratepayers United and North Otaki Beach Residents Group.

 

“As council's representative to the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Subcommittee I have supported a community-led panel and successfully advocated for a co-design approach for council to partner with our communities to explore solutions customised to the impacted coastal areas.

 

Guru speaks at the Climate Strike Student Protest March 2019

 

I expect local dialogue to start early next year. Staging a Kāpiti Climate Change Summit will be a good start to this community dialogue.”
The necessity of seawalls will be debated. Beach front properties have a right to defend their properties. Seawalls are the most likely defence in the short to medium term. About 1800 beach front properties, worth an estimated $1.6 billion, face potential coastal erosion.

 

They are some of our highest ratepayers. While sea-levels are projected to rise over the next 50 to 100 years, storm surges are already hammering our coast.
Kāpiti is facing increasingly significant and prohibitive costs defending public assets and residential homes.

 

Practical short to medium term solutions are needed while accepting the long term inevitability of retreat, “On May 23 my motion to declare a Climate Change Emergency was unanimously supported. The declaration has pushed council into giving political urgency to the multi-million dollar problem of coastal erosion and flooding,” said Mayor Guru.

 

The most vulnerable properties lie south of the Waikanae Estuary stretching to Raumati South. With more than 4km of urban residential homes and council assets.
One of the early options the community-led co-design could consider is the exploration of a targeted rating system to start banking the funds needed in the future to build seawalls. With additional Council and potential government funding.