Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel to open tomorrow's natural hazards forum

Mayor Lianne Dalziel is asking those attending tomorrow’s Our Changing Environment forum about living with natural hazards to look beyond their individual situations to consider how communities should best respond to hazard issues.

“We understand the on-going stress individuals and their neighbourhoods are experiencing as they struggle to get answers and resolve their individual situations,” said the Mayor.

“The City Council is working hard with Government and key agencies to produce sensible and consistent solutions across the range of challenges thrown up by the natural environment.

“However, the objective of Saturday's forum is to look beyond individual situations and consider how Christchurch as a community should best respond to complex challenges resulting from earthquakes, flooding, mass land movement and climate change.

“We have a range of options available – whether to mitigate, avoid or adapt. Which of these responses are most appropriate will depend on our view of time frames and what legacy we want to leave our children and grandchildren,” said the Mayor.

This also includes what value we place on resilience, how we allocate resources and what risks we are willing to tolerate as individuals and communities.”

The Our Changing Environment forum will be held Saturday 15 March from 9.30am–4.30pm at the Salvation Army Hall, 250 Colombo Street, Sydenham.

There will be an introductory session followed by two parallel sessions on flooding and land instability.

This format will run once in the morning from 9.30am–12.30pm and then again in the afternoon from 1pm–4pm.

People can also drop-in anytime to talk about the issues our community faces.

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