Cost of coastal climate change vs value for money

How governments make decisions about investment after coastal disasters created by climate change will be examined by Dr Kenneth A. Gould, an international expert in environmental sociology, at a public lecture on 15 October at the University of Auckland.

 A visiting Seelye Fellow in the Faculty of Arts, Dr Gould is based in the Department of Sociology and the Urban Sustainability Program at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

He is widely associated with the “treadmill of production” concept, which highlights how the constant search for economic growth leads to advanced economies being stuck on a ‘treadmill,’ where the result of pursuing such growth is massive environmental damage and consequent low well-being.

He notes Auckland has significant vulnerabilities to climate change, including sea level rise and intensified storms, as we saw with Cyclone Gabrielle.

“Policies established in moments of post-climate disaster crisis tend to be short sighted, responding to immediate needs.

“The understandable impulse is to build things back as they were before, but taking time now to make long term plans for how the City of Auckland will adapt could help to minimise costs and maximise social well-being and equity," he says.

Governments bear heavy responsibility for leading the largest responses to climate change-related coastal disasters; deciding whether to reinvest and rebuild, to what degree, and in what ways, he says.

“States use four strategies: a “do nothing” approach, managed retreat, accommodation with limited structural mitigation, and massive coastal reconstruction. Based on an analysis of the New York City area following Superstorm Sandy, in my lecture, I outline the consequences of each strategy and their implications for coastal resilience in climate vulnerable places around the world.”

Dr Gould says these climate disaster responses can lead to what he calls “perverse adaptation,” which increases the population in vulnerable locations.

“Post-disaster public investment for these sorts of coastal projects commits the state to further investments over time, which require ever larger shares of total public resources; so I want to raise questions about the use of public money and which investments are likely to be the most sound in terms of successful climate adaptation in the longer term.”

Dr Gould’s books include: Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict (1994), Local Environmental Struggles (1996), The Treadmill of Production (2008), and Green Gentrification: Urban Sustainability and the Struggle for Environmental Justice (2017).

He is the recipient of the Frederick H. Buttel Distinguished Contribution Award of the Environmental Sociology section of the American Sociological Association and is former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Brooklyn College.
 

While in New Zealand from 5 to 19 October, Dr Gould will also be offering seminars and workshops to University of Auckland students, and will be available for media interviews on request.

His free lecture, ‘Perverse Adaptation: The consequences of public investments following coastal climate disasters,’ is on 15 October from 5pm to 6pm in lecture theatre B15 in the basement of the General Library on Alfred Street, City Campus.

Register here

Dr Gould will also be giving a public seminar: ‘Climate Change, Disaster Capitalism, and Environmental Justice: Some Implications for Island Nations’ on 9 October from midday to 1pm in Rm 440, B201, 10 Symonds Street, City Campus.

Register here