Perpetuating Disasters

Breaking New Zealand’s cycle of inertia following natural hazards

Abstract

New Zealand is stuck in a loop. The country has accumulated findings from decades of post‑event inquiries into storms, floods, landslides and earthquakes. Yet it continues to default to short‑term fixes despite continual recommendations for system-level reform.
Institutional amnesia and an unwillingness to tackle ingrained systemic issues fuels political short‑termism, permissive land‑use settings, and entrenched path dependency on hard engineering responses such as stop banks and sea walls, which alone are insufficient to reduce the risks, and raise residual risk. The result is the perpetual inertia of a reactive response system. This inhibits any transformation towards a more resilience-centric model in the face of increasingly frequent, intense, progressive and ongoing climate changes.