South Dunedin can be a place where people and nature thrive, even while we adapt to rising sea levels. The forthcoming South Dunedin Future Programme risk assessment will help inform community-led adaptation, and guide decision-making. I am very much looking forward to reading the report, which is due in September.
The South Dunedin Future Programme team and the South Dunedin Community Network are working not only with local communities, but also working on a model for community-led adaptation that will be useful to other communities around the motu. We took the opportunity on July 18, when our Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick was in town, to meet both the Future Programme team and the community network, political leaders and stakeholders, along with other programme partners such as Aukaha and the Centre for Sustainability. It was so inspiring to learn more about the well-planned and thorough approach to engaging whānau and encouraging full participation in the future of South Dunedin.
The significance of this work, with widespread participation from community, iwi, local government, business, research and academia, needs to be recognised and supported. That’s what the Green Party is committed to, even while this government abandons South Dunedin, raiding the Climate Emergency Response Fund to pay for tax cuts. That’s $2.
9 billion for landlords, and "Trickle down tax cuts that will see 64% of the benefit will go to the top 40% of households". Chloe referred to that visit to South Dunedin when opening her second major speech at our recent Green Party AGM. "I climbed to the top of an artificial sandbank in South Dunedin.
Reaching the peak, it wasn’t the rugged and beautiful strip of St Kilda Beach and wild expanse of rough sea that took my breath away. It was the sight of several diggers and a converted container filled with pumped seawater spewing sand and liquid back out into enormously long, man-made sand bags. "Rising sea levels and ever more extreme weather, supercharged by climate change, had been eroding the vantage point on which we stood, a sandbank itself built on top of a disused landfill.
" King Canute demonstrated we are mere humans; we are not omnipotent and we can’t turn back the tides. But neither are we powerless. We saw people pull together in the 2015 floods, and people working together in South Dunedin today.
We in the Greens will continue to fight for climate justice, pushing support for South Dunedin’s future and continuing to advocate on behalf of the South Dunedin Future Programme to government. There’s too much at stake if we fail. I’ll leave the last word to Chloe: "I’m asking New Zealanders to believe in themselves and to believe in each other, and the collective change that only we, together, can create.
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