Try your hand at making climate adaptation decisions at this fun, interactive session run by Beca, the Environmental Defence Society and NIWA.
Increasingly, we are seeing the impacts of climate change across Aotearoa New Zealand. Towns and cities are having to plan whether to avoid, protect, accommodate, or retreat their communities as they start to experience increased frequency and intensity of hazards such as rainfall and rising sea levels. There are difficult questions about how to choose the best adaptation measures to invest in, as they can be expensive and engineered solutions may only provide limited protection in the future.
At this workshop attendees will be broken into teams and given 'money’ to invest a range of adaptation options that could make or break an imaginary town experiencing the impacts of climate change.
Will you act quickly, or wait and see what the future brings? The aim of the game is to make smart investments that achieve key outcomes for the community.
Throughout the game new opportunities will be uncovered, and you may experience a few extreme weather events along the way.
Facilitators:
Cushla Loomb — Business Director: Climate Change Risk &amp; Adaptation, Beca
Cushla is Beca's Business Director for Climate Risk and Resilience and a Technical Director of Environments and Planning. Cushla's Business Director role involves her tracking current best practice and international trends for the management of risks from a changing climate, building a greater understanding of our client's challenges and leading project teams in the delivery of projects 'at the coal face'. Cushla's 20 years of experience in planning has provided her with a strong foundation for understanding the key mechanisms to achieving long-term resilience for communities. She has an excellent interface between engineering, planning and science and long term sustainable outcomes.
Raewyn Peart — Policy Director, Environmental Defence Society (EDS)
Raewyn heads EDS's environmental policy work. She has over 30 years professional experience in environmental law and policy, having worked as a resource management lawyer and policy adviser to business, government and the not-for-profit sector. Raewyn has published widely on coastal, marine and other environmental issues and is currently leading EDS’s work on climate adaptation and managed relocation which is intended to inform the climate adaptation policy process and system design, specifically, the proposed Climate Adaptation Act.
Alex Fear – Senior Communications Advisor, NIWA
Alex is a science communicator with 14 years’ experience at NIWA, AgResearch and DairyNZ. Since 2017 she has worked alongside NIWA Principal Scientist for Environmental Social Science Paula Blackett to develop serious games as a powerful tool to support communities and businesses with climate change adaptation decision-making. By carefully integrating scientific understanding into realistic storylines, NIWA serious games capture critical decision making and credibly portray the different outcomes of these decisions in a way that is engaging and memorable.

Dynamic Futures