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. 

We are running a pilot project (in the Paekawakawa Island Bay and Haewai Houghton Valley water catchements) to test the design of fair and repeatable 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.

A water catchment is an area of land where rain collects and drains through streams, pipes and over roads and land out to the sea. In Wellington, the edges of our water catchments are often the ridgelines of our hills.