The Shetland St Community Gardens, the Kaikorai Stream and Kaikorai estuary restoration work (near the Araiteuru Marae) are wonderful examples of this, restoring biodiversity in the urban environment. Further out on the Taieri Plain, Te Nohoaka o Tukiauau/Sinclair Wetlands is home to wetland birds such as the Australasian bittern (matuku), marsh crake (kotoreke) and shy fernbirds (mātātā) and well as a host of wetland creatures, such as tuna (eels) and galaxias, many invertebrates and insects like dragonflies and butterflies. Both places are well worth a visit.
In Wānaka, the restoration of the Bullock Creek Hatchery Springs is ensuring a healthy spawning area for freshwater fish right in Wānaka itself. Meanwhile I’ve been lucky enough to visit the Maitai River and Valley near Nelson/Whakatū in between two major flood events. We saw how river planting stabilised river banks and helped slow run-off. In New Plymouth/Ngāmotu a collaboration between the New Plymouth District Council and Otaraua and Manukorihi Hapū is under way to restore the Tangaroa Stream to a healthy state with thousands of native plants and wetland restoration. Great progress has been made, thanks in part to Jobs for Nature funding.
What all these projects have in common is that they are not only helping to restore biodiversity and repair damage. They are also providing nature-based solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises and connecting communities. Nature-based solutions are actions and projects inspired by natural processes to work with, rather than against, nature. As climate impacts increase in frequency and intensity we simply can’t afford to ignore the need to work with nature.
Our infrastructure is ageing, much of it built when sea-levels were lower and extreme weather events were infrequent and unusual. That’s no longer the case. We’re now in a climate crisis, with climate impacts hitting thick and fast. Yet citizens around the world have often chosen to elect Governments that are intent on fuelling the climate fire. Here in Aotearoa, our own Government is opening coal, oil and gas fossil fuel projects and has cut emissions reduction programmes, such as the clean car discount and the decarbonising industry fund.
However, there’s better news locally. Council leadership (both the Otago Regional Council and the Dunedin City Council) has invested in the South Dunedin Future Programme, and the South Dunedin Future team have been working with the community over the past few years, not only to address immediate impacts together, but to co-develop long-term solutions. Some of the options to reduce flood risk involve protection through building physical measures, such as dedicated water storage areas — detention basins (like the old Forbury Park), ponds and wetlands, and "daylighting" streams and waterways that have been piped underground, creating more blue-green space in the urban environment to capture, retain and absorb excess stormwater.
What is clear through all this mahi is that there is no simple engineering fix, but there are many options to both manage risk and adapt, summarised in the "South Dunedin Future Context Summary Report" as the Protect, Accommodate, Retreat & Avoid framework. "Protect" means building stuff — like detention basins. "Accommodate" means making changes — like daylighting waterways to reduce vulnerability. "Retreat" means moving, repurposing/rewilding and establishing somewhere else, while "Avoid" means staying away from risk.
The work by the South Dunedin Future team is inspiring other councils and regions facing similar challenges, such as Westport/Kawatiri, Nelson/Whakatū and the New Plymouth District Council. We now need some central government leadership and for central government to learn from, and invest in, local government initiatives.
The Green Budget released in May shows what a future Green government would invest in, including delivering urban nature support to councils, iwi and hapū and community groups to restore nature in our local communities; reinstating Jobs for Nature to create nature-based jobs supporting the protection and restoration of te taiao/the environment, and; delivering a Green industrial strategy, with a "Ministry of Green Works" for large-scale green infrastructure that benefits our communities and supports our climate goals.
Nature-based solutions simply make sense, whether for climate change adaptation, healthier cities, or general wellbeing. In an increasingly unstable world — both in a climate sense and a geopolitical sense — there is something wonderful in being able to hear the birds and the buzz of insects, see the splash of a fish and smell the earthy smell of healthy undergrowth. We can have more of this public good, and in doing so, accept we are part of nature and the decisions we make now, matter, not just for humanity, but for all the wealth of nature and Papatūānuku.
Each week in this column writers addresses issues of sustainability.
