Climate change again missing in NPDC Plan

12th October 2016

"Climate change is again missing from a document that is supposed to be a guiding plan for New Plymouth's next ten years. The New Plymouth District Council's District Plan, which will shortly go out for public consultation, makes hardly any attempt to adapt to the realities of climate change, let alone mitigate" says Urs Signer, member of community group Climate Justice Taranaki.

"In the 150-page document, there is no single reference to climate change. It is simply unbelievable that local authorities are doing nothing when it comes to planning on climate change issues. Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions has to be our number priority. Yet, the Council is not even planning for adaptation to the effects of climate change."

"We are seeing more and more extreme weather events in Taranaki: droughts, floods, coastal erosion. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning. It is our generation's task to sort this mess out. To do that, we need to take action in our communities, because clearly the so-called political leaders at both national and local level are not prepared to even talk the talk. We should have been walking decades ago. Let's pull our heads out of the sand and start dealing with the root causes of climate change and work towards a society based on triple-bottom-lines of a sustainable society, environment and economics" concludes Urs Signer.

1. The plan will go out for public consultation on 17th October. The draft plan was released in the agenda for the council meeting held on 7th October 2016, which you can find on the NPDC website.

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