Creating Flood Disasters: Environmental Memory and Adaptation in Aotearoa New Zealand

This article explores three questions. First, why does New Zealand have widespread flooding hazards? Second, why are these persistent, with little seemingly learned from the memory of earlier events? And third, beyond reiterating conventional solutions, what examples of alternatives or adaptations are being developed in different places? It draws on a decade of community and research experiences in the Christchurch red zone, to examine experimental adaptation strategies being undertaken in three locations: South Dunedin and Westport in the South Island and Napier in the North Island. Each case study is contextualised in terms of its environmental history and memory of severe weather events. Although the cases are locally specific, they point towards the common features that should characterise a national adaptation strategy. Not least of these is the vulnerability of many built locations to both intensifying development and the impact of climate change in the form of severe events.