Climate Change Impacts: current projects
CLINZI - climate's long-term impact on New Zealand infrastructure
The New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics conducts research into the interaction between climate change variability and people. One of our core projects is CLINZI.
New Zealand infrastructure owners and managers need to consider the impact of climate change on their assets. CLINZI is an essential tool to assist in this process.
CLINZI aims to:
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ensure all strategic infrastructure systems and services in New Zealand are evaluated for their vulnerability to climate impacts. |
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improve the ability of planners to make strategic decisions about infrastructure system investments in the context of climate change risk. |
The CLINZI approach is comprehensive in two ways. First, we take a broad perspective of infrastructure systems. That is, we consider not only the 'built' infrastructure like roads and electricity transmission lines, but also the 'soft' institutional infrastructure. Second, the CLINZI project does not consider individual infrastructures in isolation. Rather, we consider the interrelationships between infrastructure systems.
The CLINZI analysis is also pragmatic. It combines quantitative modelling (where data are available) with risk analysis and evaluation of institutional policies and strategies.
We have completed case studies for Hamilton, Wellington and Waitakere Cities.
Another study prepared for the Ministry for the Environment looks at the issues involved in communicating the impacts of climate change options. Among the findings of this study was the following:
"Economic modelling of the impacts of reducing greenhouse gas emissions overwhelmingly finds that the emission reductions scenarios are associated with lower, but still positive, rates of economic growth relative to the ‘business as usual’ scenario.These studies – and the news headlines that report them – then describe the difference between the base case and the policy scenarios as the ‘cost’ of reducing emissions.
The research undertaken in this project suggests that this common economic shorthand is likely to mis-communicate the impact of taking action to reduce greenhouse emissions, and mislead a significant portion of the general public by conflating ideas of ‘cost’ and ‘opportunity cost’. In particular, this language may be understood as implying that climate policies will reduce economic living standards relative to current levels – which is not true of any emissions reductions target under consideration. This mis-communication is important because people are, in general, more willing to accept polices that involve sacrificing some portion of future improvements in living standards than policies that involve reductions from current living standards."
To access the full report: Issues in Communicating the Impacts of Climate Change Policy Options
Please contact James Lennox for further details.
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