Infrastructure, development and primary sector national direction

New Zealand is located on the boundary of the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates and has numerous fault lines, as well as volcanic and geothermal activity. It has a small landmass, a large coastline and experiences strong winds. These features mean that New Zealand is exposed to a wide range of natural hazards including earthquakes, volcanoes, erosion, landslides, floods, tsunami and extreme weather events. Climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of some natural hazards, including flooding, heatwaves, drought, wildfire, sea-level rise and coastal inundation.

The resource management system, governed by the RMA, determines where and how new development occurs. This makes the RMA the key tool for ensuring either that development is directed away from areas where natural hazard risk is unacceptable or that risk is mitigated to acceptable levels. The RMA currently requires that the management of significant risks from natural hazards is recognised and provided for, as a matter of national importance.⁶⁷

Although the RMA requires local authorities to manage significant risk from natural hazards when making plans and assessing resource consent applications, it does not provide a process to follow. No national direction on natural hazard risk exists, apart from some non-statutory guidance documents and some natural hazard provisions in the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS) relating to the coastal environment and coastal marine area.

^{67  Under section 6(h) of the RMA.}

The resource management system is not being used effectively to manage natural hazard risk, as established through numerous national reviews and investigations, as well as through feedback from insurers, councils and practitioners. New Zealand communities – including the places people live, their property and supporting infrastructure – have been developed in areas at risk from natural hazards, without appropriate measures being taken to reduce that risk. 

Many natural hazard risks, such as flooding, are expected to be exacerbated by climate change, and some communities already face these increasing risks. The RMA is not designed to support climate adaptation for existing homes and other structures, but it can be used to ensure that anything built from now on is resilient.

Resilient new development will limit the future costs (in terms of loss of life, social and economic disruption and property damage) of natural hazard events. This was demonstrated during the severe weather events across New Zealand in 2023, in which development in areas exposed to natural hazard risk resulted in severe damage to life, property and wellbeing, accompanied by high recovery costs.

New Zealand is a growing country. Inappropriately risk-averse approaches to natural hazards may prevent much-needed new development even though it could be designed or located so as to withstand natural hazards. Targeted feedback from developers has revealed concerns that some local authorities have been too risk averse, inappropriately restricting development to avoid risk from natural hazards.

Part of the problem is that the RMA does not provide guidance on the requirement for local authorities to consider natural hazard risk when developing plans or when making resource consent decisions. Further, the RMA does not define the term ‘significant risk’.

Consequently, local authorities have developed their own approaches to identifying, assessing and managing natural hazard risk, leading to variability in natural hazard provisions in their RMA planning documents. Such inefficiency and inconsistency also means that, in some areas, land-use or other use decisions may allow risky development or prevent appropriate development. The result is uncertainty for communities and developers about what to expect for natural hazard risk management in different areas.

Implementing effective planning provisions and making consent decisions that respond to or address natural hazard risk can create legal and practical challenges, including:

• obstacles to gathering and applying hazard and risk information
• funding constraints
• the risk of legal challenge from property owners or developers when local authorities try to introduce or implement natural hazard-related provisions.

To address the challenges outlined above, the Government proposes a new National Policy Statement for Natural Hazards (NPS-NH). The proposed NPS-NH is a first step towards more comprehensive national direction for natural hazards in the future.

The proposed NPS-NH directs local authorities to take a risk-based approach to new development – that is, assessing a specific development for risk from a specific natural hazard. The risk associated with some development (such as childcare facilities or aged care facilities) would be greater than with others (such as an unoccupied storage facility). Although the proposed NPS-NH does not tell local authorities how to respond to a specific level of risk, it does tell them to proportionately manage natural hazard risk. This means high-risk activities should be limited, and low-risk activities should be enabled.

The proposed NPS-NH also requires that, in deciding resource consent applications, consent authorities must consider risk-reduction measures (such as raising floor levels, installing retaining walls or using landscape features such as swales to divert flood waters). Getting the right kind of development in the right place maximises development, while reducing disaster losses from inappropriate new development in the long term.

Many local authorities have limited consideration of natural hazard risk in their planning documents. Although some local authorities already use a risk-based approach, there is no clear national direction on how this should be done. Providing this direction will support the resource management system to improve the ability of local authorities to manage natural hazard risk.

The key elements of the proposed NPS-NH are that local authorities must:

• take a risk-based approach to natural hazard risk, including the introduction of a risk matrix that will define significant risk
• take a proportionate approach to natural hazard risk
• use best available information in assessing natural hazard risk.

The proposed requirement to use the best available information recognises the dynamic nature of natural hazard data and information, leading local authorities to make progress in natural hazard management.

More detail on the proposed provisions for the NPS-NH is included in attachment 1.8 of this document. Guidance will be provided to support the implementation of the NPS-NH.

For coastal environments, new policy introduced would sit alongside the NZCPS, with the NZCPS prevailing where there is any conflict between policies.

The proposed NPS-NH is intended to complement the forthcoming national adaptation framework, which aims to establish an enduring, long-term approach to climate change adaptation in New Zealand. The proposal aims to improve the management of natural hazard risk. It will support decision-makers to avoid inappropriate use and subdivision in risky locations, thereby limiting the increase of people and property exposed to hazards and so limiting costs to New Zealand.

The proposed NPS-NH will have immediate influence on resource consent decision-making and plan changes, including private plan changes. No date is given as to when local authorities must comprehensively give effect to this new instrument in their existing district or regional plans. This deliberate omission is so local authorities do not feel obliged to make plan changes ahead of reforms to replace the RMA at the end of 2025.

The proposed NPS-NH applies to new subdivision, new use and new development in all environments and zones, including coastal environments. ‘New development’ is proposed to include either development of new buildings or structures on land that does not already have buildings or structures on it, or the extension or replacement of existing buildings and structures.

The proposed NPS-NH applies only to seven hazards: flooding, landslips, coastal erosion, coastal inundation, active faults, liquefaction and tsunami. However, the proposal does not intend to limit the management of other natural hazards through land-use and other use planning. It does not prevent local authorities from having policy on other natural hazards, activities or the environment.

The proposal is that the NPS-NH will not apply to infrastructure, as defined in the RMA, and ‘primary production’, as defined in the National Planning Standards.⁶⁸ The proposed NPS-NH is a foundational tool that will be built on, so management of the risk of natural hazards to infrastructure and primary production activities is not a priority. Application of the national direction to a wider scope of activities can be revisited in future policy work.

^{68 The definition of ‘primary production’ includes any aquaculture, pastoral, horticultural, mining, quarrying or forestry activities, and any initial processing of commodities resulting from these activities. Ministry for the Environment. 2019. National Planning Standards (PDF, 933KB). Wellington: Ministry for the Environment. p 62.}

The objective for the proposed NPS-NH focuses on the outcome anticipated for natural hazard risk management. To avoid, mitigate and reduce risks arising from natural hazards on subdivision, land use and development, local authorities should apply:

• a risk-based approach to managing natural hazard risks
• land-use and other use controls that are proportionate to the level of natural hazard risk.

The proposed NPS-NH seeks to improve the location and design of new development by directing local authorities to take a risk-based approach to assessing and managing natural hazard risk in the resource management system.

The proposal introduces a requirement that when assessing natural hazard risk (for the purposes of land-use planning) local authorities must consider:

• the likelihood of a natural hazard event occurring
• the consequences of a natural hazard event for the activity being assessed
• existing and proposed mitigation measures
• residual risk
• potential impacts of climate change on natural hazards at least 100 years into the future.

The proposal provides a definition of ‘significant risk from natural hazards’ for the purposes of the NPS-NH:

Significant risk from natural hazards is defined as ‘medium’, ‘high’ and ‘very high’ risk using the proposed risk matrix, when considering consequences to property and potential for injury or fatalities.

This definition specifies the level of natural hazard risk at which consent authorities would require proposals for new subdivision, land use or development to include mitigation. Otherwise, consent authorities could consider refusing a consent due to risks from natural hazards. In practice, this means that when a proposed development is deemed to be a ‘significant risk’, the development should be avoided or the risk should be reduced (even when the mitigations required to achieve this are minor). The choice between avoiding and reducing risk will depend on both the level of risk associated with the specific proposed activity, and the local authority’s proportionate management approach.

To define significant risk, the proposed NPS-NH also introduces a nationally consistent language of natural hazard risk by using the terms ‘low’, ‘medium’, ‘high’ and ‘very high’. These levels of natural hazard risk do not have to be directly applied to decisions, but they reflect the different levels of risk within ‘significant risk’ and support consistency in decisions being made proportionate to the level of risk.

Figure 1: Definitions of risk based on standardised definitions of likelihood and consequence

 
^{Note: ARI = Average recurrence interval; AEP = Annual exceedance probability.
Source: Ministry for the Environment: 2025}

The proposed NPS-NH introduces a matrix that identifies levels of natural hazard risk, using combinations of defined likelihood and consequences (as shown in figure 1 above) to help with defining ‘significant risk from natural hazards’. A benefit of this matrix is that it provides a nationally consistent language that local authorities can use.

The approach of the proposed NPS-NH is to respond proportionately to natural hazard risk. This means that stronger constraints on development are appropriate when risk is higher, and conversely, development should be enabled where risk is lower. A proportionate approach would ensure that any limitation placed on new development is justified and maximises use of land. The proposed NPS-NH does not set out how to respond to specific classifications of risk, but more detailed non-statutory guidance can be provided to support decision-makers.

The proposed NPS-NH does not include a more directive approach to local authorities on classifying and responding to risk, because the expected implementation of the proposed NPS-NH in the short term will be through resource consents. Increasing process requirements for resource consents is not appropriate, because New Zealand needs to grow. A more standardised approach that allows managing natural hazard risk through planning documents, rather than on a consent-by-consent basis, could be considered as part of any future resource management system reforms.

Information about hazards is constantly improving. The proposed NPS-NH directs local government to make planning decisions using the best available information. This proposed policy encourages local authorities to take all practicable steps to improve information, and to consider the validity of data for intended planning decisions. Local authorities will also be directed to continue with risk assessments where information is unclear or uncertain.

Table 10 outlines the anticipated impacts of the NPS-NH proposal on various parties, with more detail available in the Interim Regulatory Impact Statement: National Policy Statement on Natural Hazards on the Ministry for the Environment’s website.

Table 10: Overview of anticipated impacts of the proposed NPS-NH

^{69 Analysis by Te Puni Kōkiri has found that Māori households face similar exposure to climate hazards as the overall population, but are projected to face greater risks due to a higher proportion of Māori households being at risk from poverty, health disparities, justice and protection concerns and adaptability issues. Te Puni Kōkiri. Understanding climate hazards for hapori Māori. Retrieved 28 April 2025.}

The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform considers the proposals to be consistent with the purpose of the RMA because they:

• support the sustainable use, development and protection of the natural and built environment while managing significant risk from natural hazards through clear and nationally consistent policy
• support people and communities to provide for their social, economic and cultural wellbeing, and for their health and safety, by consistent assessment and management of natural hazard risk which is proportionate to these risks when making resource management decisions for new development.

The proposals will not directly impact the decision-making process requirements under the RMA, Treaty settlements or other legislative arrangements including the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 and the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Act 2019.⁷⁰

Treaty settlements and legislation will continue to apply. Some Treaty settlements place obligations on councils, including involving iwi/Māori in plan development and decision-making and inclusion of policies in plans. The proposals do not present a risk to the operation of these Treaty settlement commitments.

Engagement with Māori on the previous proposal for national direction for natural hazards indicated that many Māori supported efforts to keep people and property safe. However, feedback included concerns that national direction would further narrow the already limited opportunities to develop whenua Māori. Strong support was expressed for including policy to clarify that mātauranga Māori is a valuable and valid source of information.

Consultation will be necessary to test whether iwi, hapū and other Māori groups have concerns about the proposal or any perceived impacts on sites of significance to Māori, marae, Māori land, land returned under Treaty settlements or other matters of significance to Māori groups.

^{70 In line with the requirement in section 8 of the RMA to take into account the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi).}

The proposed NPS-NH is a foundational tool that will be built on in the future to align with amendments to the RMA. The instrument will have an immediate effect on resource consent decisions and will influence plan changes (including private plan changes). There will be no short-term requirement for comprehensive plan changes to give effect to the proposed NPS-NH in existing district or regional plans. Therefore, the proposal does not include a date by which local authorities must give effect to the NPS-NH. This approach is intended to minimise the implementation burden on councils.

The proposed NPS-NH will be supported by non-statutory guidance to support implementation. The guidance will give further detail on implementing the proportionate response policies.

The NZCPS has provisions for natural hazards in relation to the coastal environment and coastal marine area. Where there are inconsistencies with the proposed NPS-NH, the NZCPS provisions will prevail.