Coastal hazards and climate change: New Zealand guidance

New Zealand's national guidance on planning and decision-making, related to coastal hazard risks and climate change adaptation has been extensively updated. Since the last edition in 2008, there have been considerable advances in: i) attribution of sea-level rise (SLR) and projections; ii) development of adaptive planning that enables decisions in the context of uncertainty and changing risk; iii) approaches to hazard/risk assessments; and iv) collaborative community engagement processes. Users are guided through an iterative 10-step decision cycle, in a process towards implementing and monitoring adaptation options/actions and pathways for managing changing risk in exposed coastal communities and across a region. Key updates in the guidance focus on methods for hazard and risk assessments that are commensurate with the level of uncertainty and scale of development, along with provision of four SLR scenarios to test adaptation plans and better resolve local/regional triggers for unacceptable hazard risks. The guidance provides clarity on the roles and responsibilities of local government, and how statutory planning instruments, along with non-statutory strategies and actions, form a pool of response options from which potential pathways can be drawn and developed into an adaptation strategy. The guidance identifies how adaptation plans can be monitored and adjusted as the risk profiles change over time. Central to the revised guidance is a more collaborative approach to community, iwi/hapu and stakeholder engagement through different stages of the decision cycle. The challenge will be to build capability in: i) collaborative engagement within adaptation decision processes, and ii) in the implementation of the new dynamic adaptive pathways planning approach, to build legitimacy for coastal-hazard risk decision making that also factors in changing risk profiles that will burden future generations. The coastal guidance will be reassessed regularly to maintain validity in the light of relevant new information.