Adapting to drought in the Waikato 2021

Report: TR 2021/28

Authors: Justin D. Connolly (Director, Deliberate), Melissa Hackell (Social Scientist, Waikato Regional Council) and Blair Keenan (Economist, Waikato Regional Council)

This report represents the first phase of the project ‘Adapting to drought in the Waikato’, which seeks to provide research-based advice to contribute to investment and policy decisions that build resilience to the impacts of more frequent and intense droughts in the region.

This report is structured in two parts.

Part I covers background and methodology. Here, section 1 provides some context and the objectives of this research. Section 2 discusses policy drivers and the socio-ecological context of the work including a discussion of different perspectives and definitions of drought. Section 3 outlines the methodology followed.

Part II describes results and insights. Here, section 4 describes WRC activities and insights for adapting to drought gathered from the interviews. Section 5 describes the conceptual water cycle flows used in the system diagram and insights for drought adaptation. Section 6 describes more detailed articulations of the complex interconnected influences on these flows – these are the core elements and insights of the system diagram. Section 7 presents a large-scale version of the complete water cycle system diagram, while section 8 describes a qualitative way of exploring alternative possible futures, using the diagram as a guide. Section 9 provides a conclusion and outlines next steps.