Sharing is caring: A tale of two conferences.

The past month has bought me the opportunity to reconnect, re-energise and reposition myself in amongst the current mahi in the stormwater, flood, and coastal disciplines of New Zealand (Stormwater 2025 in Rotorua) and the UK (Floods and Coast 2025). Both these conferences confirmed the increasing urgency of addressing climate change impacts globally.

From new research on coastal flooding frequency to discussions on natural flood management and property resilience, the conversations are all pointing towards more adaptive strategies.

Stormwater 2025, New Zealand: A Focus on Integration and Adaptation

The Stormwater 2025 Conference in Rotorua, New Zealand (13-15 May 2025), provided a concentrated exploration of similar challenges, but with a distinctly Aotearoa (New Zealand) flavour.

• Holistic Approaches: The conference captured and showcased the need for a holistic view of stormwater management, emphasising the interconnectedness of water, land, and community well-being.
• Climate Resilience at the Forefront: As highlighted by New Zealand's Local Government and Climate Change Minister, Simon Watts, stormwater is central to the nation's resilience and climate change challenges. This underscores a strong governmental recognition of the issue.
• Bicultural Design and Mana Whenua Partnerships: A significant aspect of the New Zealand approach, evident in discussions around "Bicultural Design Done Well" and "Mana Whenua Partnership in Stormwater Management," is the integration of Māori knowledge (mātauranga Māori) and collaboration with Indigenous communities in stormwater design and delivery. This offers a powerful model for culturally informed climate resilience that the rest of the world should take note of.
• Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning (DAPP): New Zealand is actively exploring and implementing frameworks like DAPP for long-term decision-making in the face of climate risks and uncertainties. This proactive planning approach, moving beyond reactive measures, is a key lesson.
• Case Studies in Flood Management: The conference featured compelling case studies, including the challenges faced by Auckland communities of fitting people into a framework and strategies for advancing flood resilience in areas across Auckland. Practical lessons learned from past events, such as Cyclone Gabrielle, were also a strong focus.

Flood and Coast 2025: A Global Snapshot

The Flood and Coast 2025 Conference in Telford, England (3-5 June 2025), provided a concentrated exploration of similar challenges, including:

• Increased Frequency of Coastal Flooding: New research, such as that highlighted by Skeptical Science, emphasises that land-based sensors are revealing significantly higher frequencies of coastal flooding than previously indicated by tide gauges alone. This points to a critical need for more granular data and understanding of localised impacts.

• Natural Flood Management (NFM) and Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS): The focus of many talks clearly prioritising NFM and SuDS, advocating for green infrastructure solutions like rain gardens, green roofs, and permeable paving to reduce surface water flooding and enhance water quality. This aligns with a growing recognition of nature-based solutions across both geographies.
• Property Flood Resilience (PFR) and Business Continuity: The emphasis on PFR suggests a shift towards empowering individuals and businesses to protect their assets and minimise disruption. This proactive approach is crucial for mitigating the socio-economic impacts of flooding.
• Climate-Induced Displacement: Several sessions touch upon the complex issue of planning for futures that could have climate-related displacement, highlighting the need for infrastructure to support displaced populations and a deeper understanding of human mobility patterns in the face of climate change, as evidenced in well run sessions on strategic adaptation planning for both the Upper Severn and Fens 2100 programmes.

Shared Challenges, Diverse Solutions

While both events promote oppportunities to connect and have the discussion that confirms the critical need for flood and coastal resilience in a changing climate, there are notable comparisons and contrasts:

• Shared Urgency: Both reflect a clear understanding that climate change is intensifying flood and coastal hazards, necessitating urgent action.
• Emphasis on Green Infrastructure: The global trend towards NFM and SuDS is strongly mirrored in across both geographies – with New Zealand's focus on nature based solutions and low-impact development and the UK’s drive for Natural flood management (including many successful pilots implemented across the country) – Raising the question once more of how much more evidence do we need – how can we get to deliver of better outcomes quicker !?
• Data and Modelling: The need for improved data collection and advanced modelling tools for accurate flood assessment is a common thread. New Zealand's efforts in "Continuous Simulation Modelling" and "Developing and Testing a Flood Risk Assessment Workflow for Aotearoa" directly contribute to this and marry up with the exemplary work shown sharing the work to release the National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA2) and the National Coastal Erosion Risk Map (NCERM) data in March 2025.
• Community Engagement and Property Resilience: While the UK discussions have been laden with PFR, New Zealand's experience, particularly post-Cyclone Gabrielle, highlights the importance of strong community-level initiatives and a land categorisation system to guide rebuilding and buy-out options – and discussing the hazards and exposure in advance of the event being easier than during or after.
• Cultural Integration: A distinguishing feature of the New Zealand approach is the deep integration of Indigenous knowledge and partnerships, offering a powerful example of how cultural values and the voices of our diverse communities can and must inform and strengthen climate resilience strategies. This is a valuable lesson for other nations to consider.
• Policy Frameworks: New Zealand's commitment to a National Adaptation Plan and efforts to embed climate resilience into all government strategies, policies, and investment decisions provides a strong, long-term policy framework that is at risk of being unpicked currently. New Zealand must remain steadfast in calling for the delivery of strong and forward-thinking policy for Climate Adaptation in this space that halts developing in high risk hazard exposed areas.

Sharing Lessons from New Zealand

As someone deeply involved in climate resilience, I was genuinely delighted to be able to present at both Stormwater 2025 and Floods and Coast 2025, sharing some of the climate resilience approaches and lessons emerging from New Zealand and to catch up with what all of my colleagues and friends have been upto in this space.

The collaborative spirit, the focus on holistic solutions, and particularly the emphasis on bicultural design and Indigenous partnerships (from the NZ work), offer powerful insights for addressing flood and coastal challenges worldwide.

I was able to issue strong wero / challenges across both audiences to put people at the heart of our adaptation and future thinking with sessions that shared:

• New Zealand’s imminent release of a National Flood Risk Assessment for pluvial and fluvial sources. A workshop sharing the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Endeavour funded project MĀ TE HAUMARU Ō NGA PUNA WAI Ō RĀKAIHAUTŪ KA ORA MO AKE TONU: A NATIONAL HAZARD AND RISK MODEL FOR INCREASING FLOOD RESILIENCE ACROSS AOTEAROA – with Emily Lane
• The role of residential property insurance and the threats to our society of increasing levels of insurance withdrawal - RISING WATERS, RISING COSTS – WHERE SHOULD IT ALL END? - with Kali Mercier & Richard Woods
• The need for local government to capture and learn from the lessons of the summer of 2023 before they have their flood event - PREPARING FOR THE NEXT CYCLONE – EAST COAST LESSONS with Isabelle Farley , Ryan Paulik , Emily Lane , Lucy Gray
• Sharing that effective climate resilience isn't about imposing solutions from the top; it's fundamentally about building genuine relationships and fostering deep trust. It's about ensuring that as many voices as possible contribute to the solutions in the BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENT PLACES plenary session at Flood & Coast 2025. Thank you Gemma Greenshields Tom Simons-Smith Clive Appleton Nick Brown Fiona Macdonald Jonathan Rowe Joao Machado Laura Robichaux Katherine Cowper-Heays for allowing me to pick up insights and snippets from working alongside you that was fabulous material to share with the UK conference.

A Heartfelt Thanks - I would like to thank several organisations that have been vital to enabling this knowledge exchange.

Water New Zealand | Āpōpō | WSP in New Zealand | WSP | CIWEM (The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management) | CIWEM Aotearoa New Zealand branch | Binnies

I for one hope that this meeting of minds can help to accelerate our collective efforts. By learning from each other's experiences – both the challenges and the innovative solutions – we can build stronger, more resilient communities in the face of a changing climate. I look forward to working with you and continuing these crucial dialogues to move them forward into outcomes that help to attain these foundational whakatauki / proverbs that drive me every day:

• Ka ora te wai, ka ora te whenua, ka ora ngā iwi, ka ora ngā tāngata- If the water is healthy, the land is healthy. Then the people too are healthy
• Mō tātou, ā, mō kā uri ā muri ake nei - For us and our children after us
• He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata! - What is the most important thing in the world ?  It is the people, the people, the people.