Climate Action hub

Our role for a climate-resilient future

We’re lucky to live in a beautiful region known for our warm balmy days, magnificent landscape and bountiful produce that feeds us and the world. Today however, climate change is already affecting our weather patterns – and this presents challenges, risks and opportunities for our community.

In Hawke’s Bay, our communities have experienced first-hand the impact of severe weather events during Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023. We know that rainfall is more intense and storms more frequent under increasing degrees of global warming.

Our role as a council is to ensure a climate-resilient future for the region through supporting infrastructure, systems and people, and to better understand and take proactive action in response to climate change.

The time for climate action is now!

We declared a climate emergency in 2019 and have set a goal for our region to be carbon neutral by 2050. Working with our community, we’re taking the lead for climate action within Hawke’s Bay.

What is climate change?

Climate change describes a change in average weather conditions over a long period of time. It includes changes to seasonal rainfall, air and sea temperatures and sea levels, and also causes weather patterns to be less predictable.

Our climate is shaped by the Earth’s atmosphere, which is made up of oxygen, nitrogen and greenhouse gases. All these elements play an important role, including the greenhouse gases which are responsible for insulating the Earth. These make life possible, as without them our planet would freeze. However, it’s the increasing concentration of these greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that is causing our planet to heat up and our climate to change.

This is sometimes referred to as global warming, but climate change is the best description as it affects all aspects of climate and can bring about extreme events such as flooding, droughts, storms and cyclones – many of which we experience in Hawke’s Bay.

Climate change occurs due to the influence of human activities as well as natural influences. However, it’s scientifically agreed that extensive human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, transport and agriculture, are greatly accelerating the speed of climate change today.

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