Resilient: Dunedin can not afford to abandon ambition

There are a few things happening in Dunedin right now, and they look like separate stories. In March, Gregg’s closed its Forth St factory, which has been roasting coffee in this city since 1862. Gone, taking more than 30 jobs with it. In July, the Dunedin City Council was advised that our 2030 net-zero target is “no longer considered achievable”, and quietly began weighing what to lower it to. And, all the while, out on the South Dunedin flat, one of the largest managed-retreat adaptation decisions in the country’s history is being worked through. Businesses shrinking. Climate ambition slipping. A whole suburb’s future on the table. We read each as its own headline. But look at them together and a harder question comes into focus: a city that pulls back on three fronts at once, without ever deciding to, is still making a choice. It is not about any single closure or revised target, but a pattern and what it says about the future we are drifting towards while we are busy weathering the present. I think it is worth asking, while there is still a decision to make: what kind of city do we actually want? The contraction is visible from the street. Gregg’s closed its Forth St factory in March, a factory where coffee had been made under that name, in this city, since 1862. It ended in a single afternoon meeting that cost more than 30 jobs. Moiety, Lincraft and the University Book Shop have followed, each reported in the ODT as its own small obituary. Behind them sits a national picture that gives the local one its weight: unemployment is at its highest since the early 1990s and still forecast to climb through the remainder of the year. The easy response to all this is to hunker down and wait for better weather. But downturns are exactly when a city quietly lets go of its longer commitments, and rarely do these commitments get picked back up when the sun returns. Which brings us to a commitment now being loosened, largely out of public view. In 2019, amid packed public galleries, the Dunedin City Council declared a climate emergency and did something bold: it pulled the city’s net-zero carbon target forward from 2050 to 2030. In July this year, councillors were advised that the 2030 goal is no longer considered achievable. Modelling now puts the earliest realistic date at 2042, even under the most ambitious scenario, and elected members have begun weighing what might replace the target. In fairness, this is slippage, not collapse. Dunedin’s gross emissions have fallen about 13% since 2018-19, and the city remains on track to meet its separate methane target. The officials involved are not being reckless, they are being candid about the situation. But the target that was brought in with a packed gallery is now being softened in a committee room. The third strand is different, because here the decision is still open and it is open right now. On the South Dunedin flat, one of the most significant climate-adaptation exercises ever attempted in a New Zealand residential area is under way involving about 13,500 people and 1500 businesses. The joint council programme has laid out a spectrum of possible futures, from holding the line to a staged retreat. And this is the strand where you, the reader, are not a spectator. Public consultation on those futures is open now and closes on August 9. This is not a decision for some later council or some later generation. It is an open question right now. But let’s reflect for a moment and set these three stories side by side and look at the similarities. A city’s economy is contracting. Its climate ambition is being quietly revised down. And its most exposed suburb faces a generational decision about whether to defend or retreat. All three are unfolding in the same year, in the same city, under the same fiscal and economic pressure and that shared pressure is part of the problem, because it pushes on all three at once. This is where a sustainability lens is useful. The three strands compound each other: a shrinking economy has less capacity to fund adaptation; a lowered climate ambition raises the adaptation bill that South Dunedin and every coastal community will eventually be handed. Retreat on one front makes retreat on the others more likely, and more expensive. Businesses know this. The firms that come through a downturn intact are not the ones that cut every long-term commitment to survive the quarter; they are the ones that decide what they are actually for, and keep investing in it through the cycle. A city is no different. The question is not whether Dunedin can afford ambition in a hard year. It is whether it can afford to abandon it. To return to the question this column began with: what kind of city do we actually want? This is an open question right now and there are places to have your voice heard. First, by submitting on the South Dunedin Futures consultation before August 9. Whether you are a resident, a business owner, or simply a Dunedinite with a view on what this city should be, this is the most consequential open decision in Ōtepoti right now. Second, by demanding a replacement ambition rather than a quiet retreat. If the 2030 target goes, the public that cheered it in should have a say in what takes its place. Ask your councillors what they intend to aim for and by when. And third, in how you run your own business. Treat adaptation and decarbonisation not as compliance costs to be trimmed in a lean year, but as the investment strategy of an organisation that intends to still be here in 2050. That is the private-sector version of the same civic choice. Sara Walton is a professor and tumuaki, head of department at Te Mātauraka Whakahaere, Department of Management, University of Otago. She teaches and researches business sustainability and is a member of He Kaupapa Hononga Otago’s Climate Change Research Network. Each week in this column writers address issues of sustainability.