Houses will be 'red-zoned' due to climate change - Environment Commissioner
Climate change is coming, and with it communities may have to be abandoned or left to deal with major financial costs. Environment Commissioner Jan Wright said the country would face some "big social issues" because of climate change, identified in a report presented to the local government and environment select committee. She urged central and local government to improve their planning and have national guidelines. The report identified 44,000 homes would be affected by flooding when the high-tide rise reached 150 centimetres. An additional 24,000 buildings would also be affected. READ MORE: * Environment Commissioner warns resource management reforms 'go too far' * Environment Minister Nick Smith takes a dip in the Manawatu River * Winston Peters uses Orewa speech to claim RMA changes on separatist track * Government backs off fundamental changes to resource management law When considering a 50cm high-tide rise, 9000 homes would be affected with an additional 4000 buildings. This would equate to a $3b cost for replacement. Wright had been in talks with insurance companies and banks about the effects. "If a particular property is subject to this kind of risk, then insurance companies will start to look at whether they insure it or not," she said. "So you might see premiums go up, you might see the co-payments go up. Eventually a house would become uninsurable - probably a lot before it became uninhabitable." She said insurance companies "would take themselves quietly out of the picture". There could be mortgage holders in the "sad" situation of dealing with negative equity, where their mortgage would be bigger than the value of the house. "It's kind of like a slowly unfolding red-zone in Christchurch." The cost of sea-level rise of 50cm would be affect a similar number of houses in Christchurch's evacuated red-zone within the next couple of decades, she said. Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett said every time you learn a bit more about the science "it is a little more frightening". "I worry about future insurance costs for every day households if they're having to deal with those sorts of flooding events," she said. "I do think we can put more into the kinds of technology and adaptation that would make a difference." However, the advice she had received about Kiwis locked into negative equity was that it would not be the case in the "near future", but was still an "unknown" in decades to come. Bennett was confident she could pull together a longer term plan that was not just Government-run, but led across communities. Finance Minister Bill English said the Government would not budget for the costs of rising sea levels when the report was released in November. The report includes maps by region of risk areas for flooding, erosion and groundwater issues. Those are available online . The UN's climate body had predicted up to a one-metre rise by the year 2100. However, it may be a two-metre rise at the current rate of carbon emissions, according to a study in the journal Nature which took into account Antarctic ice sheets that are melting faster than previously thought. Sign up to receive our new evening newsletter Two Minutes of Stuff - the news, but different.