With its sheer force and destructive nature Cyclone Gabrielle becomes the new benchmark, just as Bola was before it, and the new place mark in time that will surely banish the ‘pre covid’ and ‘post covid’ vernacular.
This event will remain in the memory of Hawke’s Bays inhabitants for many years to come. Visiting the worst hit parts of our region shocks anew each time and as we all know, there are many years of work ahead of us to repair damaged land and infrastructure.
Many myths, legends and biblical stories across all cultures reference the fury of weather gods.
Noah and the flood, Poseidon’s unleashing of violent storms as punishment on Odysseus for the blinding of his son, and the ongoing battle between Tāwhirimatea, god of weather and Tūmatauenga, the god of human activities are all myths that have been used by humankind for millennia to try to rationalise and understand the sometimes seemingly irrational and wantonly destructive forces of Mother Nature.
In the aftermath of the cyclone, while many people are still reeling from total destruction of their homes and livelihoods, it’s easy to see why the human mind struggles to make sense of what seems to be senseless destruction.
Traditionally, we perhaps had a better understanding of natural laws. Simply the facts that rivers move and will always find their own course in times of flood, that snow will avalanche when it needs to fall and even that fault lines move for reasons of their own discretion. We are, and have always been, at the mercy of nature, but I think we used to live in accordance with, and with more respect for those natural laws.
The fact, of course, is that we have virtually no control over the vagaries of nature. Our intellect and technology only allows us to predict (sometimes) future events and then react to them. It is sometimes confronting to realise we have no ability to change or influence the occurrence of events such as we’ve all just experienced. Overlay this with the premise that our current methods of existing are just making it all worse and you have the makings of a post-apocalyptic mini-drama.
It might seem that I’m suggesting that we are powerless. No, I’m wondering instead how the intelligence of human kind can be used in our planning for the future. It’s our only advantage.
Looking back to previous floods and measuring rain and silt and trees is a distraction that doesn’t really inform the profound questions we’re facing – i.e how do we develop a relationship with the natural world that is more symbiotic yet still sustains the needs of us as people? Which leads to the bigger question – are our current needs as humans even sustainable?
Our highly engineered Heretaunga Plains have served us for decades, creating a world-class production area that is rightly acknowledged as the ‘fruit bowl of New Zealand’. Draining of this enormous wetland and the engineering of rivers to protect cities and production land are a success of human thinking. That same human thinking is now being forced to consider the unpalatable fact that it worked for then, but maybe doesn’t work for now. We must use the cumulative smarts of the whole community if we are to formulate a plan that has any hope of sustaining future generations.
Einstein observed, “We can’t solve problems by employing the same thinking that created them”. So how can we think about this problem, how can we reimagine our future?
Internationally there are many examples of different ways to manage rivers. The Dutch of course are leaders in the ‘Room for Rivers’ programme. But we can do more by thinking about moving vulnerable housing to hills while looking for natural places for rivers to spread, understanding our braided rivers, increasing our natural water retention areas with wetlands and spill ways, accelerating plantings on our erodible land and investigating models for production farming on flood-prone land.
Let’s not be frightened to ask the big questions and come together to find long term, intergenerational solutions that can support both us and our environment.
Sophie Siers
Hawke’s Bay Regional Councillor
What Sophie has written is heartening to read in that she sees this human created drainage and flood control conflict through a wide-angle lens where looking backwards to the old “normal” has no relevance, thus it gives me hope that local body leaders just may be able to competently handle the urgency of holistically sound future planning for the region.
Our intellect and technology not only allows us to predict future events it gives us also some advice. New Zealand Fist Emission Reduction Plan is based on our knowledge that we can’t continue with our wasteful use of recourses. Scientists of world weather attribution1) published “that the 2-day maximum rainfall over Te Matau-a-Māui/Te Tairāwhiti region is now about 30% more intense than it might have been had human greenhouse gas emissions not warmed the climate by 1.2°C. This also means a rainfall event of this magnitude is now about four times more likely to happen than it was when the world was 1.2°C cooler than it is today.” Necessary action to reduce our carbon footprint may not prevent us from a similar devastation event in the near future. However the global community has the long term obligation to control the warming of our planet for further generation.
Let me add to your article that we know adequate adaptation approaches and systemic and collective mitigation efforts are urgent to fight for a better future.
Walter Breustedt
1) https://www.worldweatherattribution.org,