In the final instalment of Regenerative Rebuild (Part 1 and Part 2 here), Phyllis Tichinin and Phillip Schofield weigh in on the issue of ‘getting out of nature’s way’, and the lessons we can learn from the most recent Hawke’s Bay flooding event.
Both Schofield and Tichinin are keen to stress that resilience for our region’s farmers means taking account of what has just happened and addressing how we mitigate against it going forward.
“My thinking is that the event that we had, it was unprecedented big – rainfall intensities that I have never heard of before on top of three months of well-above-average rain fall, so we had a classic case of soil erosion happening on any slope really.
“Part of my message is that we’ve also got to establish resilience for how we live in nature. It’s not only the wet bits, it’s the dry bits. Our climate will be very lumpy going forward,” Schofield says.
Tichinin adds that the disaster can eventually have a silver lining of more ecologically appropriate and profitable agricultural production for Hawke’s Bay.
“By human nature, it takes a collapse of function, a catastrophe of some sort to push us out of the status quo. Why would you change what you’re doing if it’s not a problem? Well, Gabrielle and many other things have clearly shown us that it is a problem when we allow a drive towards economic growth or complacency to lull us into a sense that what we are doing is ok.”
Tichinin certainly doesn’t pull any punches in her assessment of the current place in which we find ourselves. In her opinion this catastrophe should propel us to make some informed, hard decisions about how we plan and regulate the placement of settlements or how forestry is done.
However, she acknowledges the obvious fact that the Heretaunga Plains and their abundant fertility exist precisely because of periodic storms like Gabrielle. The silts that come down from the hills renew and enrich and deepen many of our soils.
“People don’t have to live where they farm. We could do ourselves a huge favour if we just grew some balls and raised the issue of how we regulate people’s behaviour in the environment.”
She is urging the territorial authorities to hold the line, so that we don’t see more people killed in future.
The Esk Valley, she said, is a good example of where it makes sense to limit residential buildings, petrol stations or any hazardous material that could negatively impact the environment in the event of another massive flood.
“We have a tremendous deposit [of silt] that could be of real value in terms of growing quality food again, eventually. The Esk valley has that reputation to produce high value crops. But do people need to live on site there? Or do they need to live seven-to-10 metres above the valley floor?”
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