Continuity and change in national riskscapes: a New Zealand perspective on the challenges for climate governance theory and practice

Abstract

Climate change challenges how policy agents imagine and manage risks in space and time. The impacts are dynamic, uncertain and contested. We use riskscapes as a lens to analyse how New Zealand has perceived and mediated natural hazard and climate risks over time. We identify five different national riskscapes using a historical timeline, which have changed as global risks cascade into national and sub-national governance. We find that while there has been a major effort to reflect the dynamic and systemic language of risk theory in national policy, a significant challenge remains to develop appropriate governance and implementation strategies and to shift from long-held ways of doing and knowing.