New Zealand has become locked in a repeating cycle of post-disaster mistakes, with reviews spanning a decade revealing systemic failures that have gone largely unaddressed.
The analysis was authored by Benjamin D. Tombs, a pūkenga-lecturer in property law at the University of Otago; Judy Lawrence, a senior research fellow at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington; and Rob Bell, a teaching fellow in the environmental planning programme at the University of Waikato.
The researchers said their review of New Zealand’s post-disaster assessments over the past decade found the same problems – some dating as far back as 1986 – have been repeatedly identified but rarely translated into meaningful policy reform. Successive warnings from the scientific community about the country’s exposure to extreme weather have similarly gone unheeded.
With each disaster, the country’s response and recovery system reacts in a largely ad hoc way, straining the capacity and finances of local authorities already grappling with major infrastructure deficits as they lurch from one event to the next.
“New Zealand keeps patching up damage while failing to address its systemic issues - leaving lives, livelihoods, and property increasingly at risk as climate impacts intensify,” the authors wrote.
Among the trends identified was the funnelling of climate change adaptation efforts into engineered protections such as seawalls and levees - an approach the researchers said risks crowding out land-use planning tools that more fundamentally reduce risk by keeping development away from exposed areas or enabling planned, staged relocation of homes and infrastructure over time.
The researchers warned this focus also risks producing a “levee effect,” encouraging further development behind protective structures, increasing flood risk when those protections eventually fail, and delaying more urgently needed avoidance measures.
A strong social and political preference for rapidly returning to normal following a disaster was also identified as a recurring problem - even when that normal represents a state of vulnerability. When government funding is inconsistent and piecemeal, local authorities often use scarce resources to rebuild in place rather than addressing underlying drivers of risk, reinforcing institutional inertia and stifling preventive adaptation.
Unclear roles between agencies were identified as another persistent issue, with most recommendations in the reviews assessed described as vague about how responsibilities should be allocated going forward.
National stocktakes estimate that around 750,000 New Zealanders and approximately 500,000 buildings - valued at more than $145 billion - are located near rivers and along coasts already exposed to extreme flooding.
The researchers said a coherent framework for disaster risk reduction is urgently needed, built around clear responsibilities, sustainable funding, and close integration with adaptation policy. They added that much of the data needed already exists but must be co-ordinated and standardised now.
“Local authorities are in desperate need of stronger legislation to support action on climate risk reduction and preparedness,” the authors wrote.
The researchers pointed to several reforms currently before Parliament as an opportunity to break the cycle, including the Emergency Management Bill, which would replace the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act; the Planning Bill, intended to replace the Resource Management Act; and signalled amendments to the Climate Change Response Act to support a national climate adaptation framework.
“If these reforms fail to align around pre-emptive risk reduction, communities will face growing damage to homes and livelihoods without insurance or the means to relocate,” the authors warned.
