Waimate

We are engaging with our community to create the Waimate District Climate Resilience Strategy as a blueprint for collective action and part of a wider conversation about how we work together to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to minimise future harm, and plan for the ongoing effects of climate change.

Seven Action Plans have been identified. These will form the basis of our Climate Resilience Strategy for council to consider sometime in 2025. Throughout 2024, you will have the opportunity to contribute to these Action Plans online or in person at our community workshops held at the Event Centre. The dates of these Action Plan workshops can be found on the Waimate District Council website.

The Action Plans incorporate key climate risk areas identified from both national policy and community feedback from our online climate survey conducted in late 2023.

Healthy ecosystems will better withstand climate stress, while forests and wetlands are carbon sinks.

Environment Canterbury provides funding so communities can plant trees and take action to restore waterways, habitats and wetlands, such as in the restoration projection at the Waihao River’s ‘Black Hole'.

Climate change is a critical consideration in Waimate District Council’s 2021-2031 Long-Term Plan, as the Council works to understand exactly how its services and community facilities may be affected.

The Waimate District Council’s second Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report for the 2022/23 Tax Year showed the Council makes a positive contribution overall, with negative net emissions of -259 tonnes, meaning its activities remove more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than they emit.

Ensuring the air we breathe is clean helps supports both our health and the environment’s health. Waimate now has a ‘clean air zone’ which means rules are in place to help reduce the amount of pollutants going into the air.

These rules include encouraging people to switch to low or ultra-low emissions burners so they emit less smoke, and ensuring farmers have smoke management plans in place.