Waikato Regional Council has adopted a new region-wide resilience framework designed to change how natural hazards are factored into planning, infrastructure and investment as communities face growing risks from flooding, drought, coastal inundation, erosion and wildfire.
The Waikato Resilience Framework, adopted by councillors on August 27, establishes a long-term approach to reducing natural hazard risk and helping communities adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Rather than treating resilience solely as an emergency management issue after disaster strikes, the framework is intended to embed risk reduction across the council’s everyday decision-making.
That includes decisions involving regional planning, flood protection, catchment management, infrastructure, transport, science and monitoring, and emergency management.
Four pou to guide future decisions
The framework is structured around four pou, or pillars, establishing the systems, processes and steps council will use when considering natural hazards and adaptation.
Waikato Regional Council Chair Warren Maher says increasingly complex hazards are affecting communities, infrastructure, the environment and the regional economy.
The new approach is intended to ensure different parts of the council are working towards common resilience objectives while improving collaboration with communities and partner organisations.
It also recognises that decisions made today about infrastructure, land use and investment can determine how exposed communities are to hazards decades into the future.
Preparing before disaster strikes
The Waikato region contains a diverse range of environments and communities facing very different natural hazards.
River and floodplain communities must contend with flooding, while coastal settlements face erosion and inundation. Other parts of the rohe can be exposed to drought, unstable land and wildfire.
Those risks can also overlap.
A severe weather event can damage roads and infrastructure, disrupt communities, affect farms and businesses and place additional pressure on waterways and catchments.
The framework is designed to give council a more coordinated way of assessing those risks before committing to major decisions.
For Māori communities, resilience planning also carries particular importance where marae, papakāinga, wāhi tapu, whenua Māori and culturally significant waterways may be exposed to natural hazards.
Planning for uncertainty
A central challenge for councils is making expensive infrastructure and planning decisions when the precise scale and timing of future hazards cannot always be predicted.
The framework aims to provide a consistent approach for making decisions under that uncertainty while considering the wellbeing of both current communities and future generations.
It also positions Waikato Regional Council to respond as national policy and legislation around natural hazard management and climate adaptation continues to evolve.
That could become increasingly important as central and local government confront difficult questions about who pays for adaptation, which infrastructure should be protected and how communities facing increasing hazards should prepare for the future.
Resilience becomes a long-term investment
The adoption of the framework signals a shift towards treating resilience as an ongoing investment rather than simply the cost of responding to emergencies.
For Waikato Regional Council, the objective is to make better-informed decisions now that can reduce damage, disruption and costs later.
With extreme weather and natural hazards placing increasing pressure on communities across Aotearoa, the challenge will now be turning the framework into practical action on the ground.
Because when it comes to natural hazards, the cheapest disaster to recover from is ultimately the one communities were prepared for before it happened.
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