Local climate adaptation is a key part of the Council’s climate change strategy Te Atakura – First to Zero.

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 to 100 years, will affect how future generations live in the places we love.

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 project will test the design of fair and scalable process to investigate suitable options for us to adapt to increasing climate disruption in the capital.

The pilot will first focus on one area of the city, with the intention to work in other priority areas once the pilot is completed and evaluated.

We will run the pilot in the Island Bay/Houghton Bay water catchment area (the Paekawakawa and Haewai catchments) 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.

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. It is scheduled to start in July 2025.

For more information on the pilot process, please refer to this document (PDF).

We are preparing to open applications, or expressions of interest, for a community panel to guide this work and ensure community perspectives shape our public activities and assessment of adaptation options.

There will be various and varied opportunities for wider community input throughout the pilot process.

Below is an explainer video for the community panel, Expressions of Interest open 11th July 2025, keep an eye on this page for updates!

If you would like to know more please contact us at climateaction@wcc.govt.nz.