Many of our communities already face significant risks, and these are only expected to increase over time as our climate changes.

While climate hazards threaten some aspects of our lives, there are many parts that aren’t affected or if they are at risk, can be adapted.

Our focus is on adaptation.

Mitigation addresses the cause, while adaptation deals with the consequences.

Learn about the process of adaptive planning

Future Buller is a project to understand what is at risk, what matters most, and what can we do about it to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the district over the next 50 years. As a community, we need to work together to adapt and build our resilience to our hazards now and into the future.

To do this, we are following the 10-step decision cycle from the Ministry for the Environment, which helps us think through how we plan and adapt. The cycle is made up of elements to secure and implement a long-term strategic planning and decision-making framework for coastal areas potentially, or already, affected by coastal hazards and climate-change effects, such as sea-level rise.

At the heart of this decision-making diagram, you’ll see community engagement. People and community are the centre of our adaptation process.

This approach allows us to develop a range of different ways forward for the community and test these against possible future scenarios.

There is so much uncertainty about the future of our climate, but we know that it is changing, and we should plan to respond while we have lots of different options available to us. If we wait for more certainty about how climate change will affect our region, those options that we can do will decrease.

We want to take the time now to talk as a community and plan for Future Buller.