The impacts of climate change affect us all, and in Tasman we continue to experience the effects of significant weather and storm events. As part of our process to create the new Tasman Environment Plan, we are working on a project to enable our Tasman Bay/Te Tai o Aorere and Golden Bay/Mohua communities to prepare how best we respond to sea level rise and coastal hazards.

In 2019, we released our coastal hazards map viewer, which shows the extent of low-lying coastal land that may be exposed to coastal hazards and a range of sea level rise scenarios.

Last year, our focus was on developing a coastal risk assessment to understand Tasman and Golden Bays’ vulnerability to coastal storm inundation and sea level rise. The assessment quantifies the vulnerability of a selection of assets, property, infrastructure and facilities (known as ‘elements at risk’). While the rate and magnitude of future sea level rise is uncertain, we do know that rising sea levels will have increasing implications for development and infrastructure in coastal areas along with environmental, cultural and societal effects.

As a Council, we are looking to better prepare our communities for the effects of ongoing changes to weather patterns and rising sea levels. This is because many of our land use planning, asset and infrastructure decisions that are made today have long lifetimes (e.g. subdivision - permanent; new houses - 80 to 100+ years; infrastructure pipes - 80 years; new roads 50 years; etc). The decisions we make today will affect our children, grandchildren and future communities.

This year, we will be working with local communities to discuss “what can we do about it” including identifying issues and options for coastal management and ways we can improve community resilience over the short and long term.

We are currently planning a series of community-based events for later this year and will publish details once the work programme is finalised.

In the meantime, learn more about what climate change means for Tasman here.