Media coverage of the recent fires in Los Angeles showed the heartbreaking damage in Pacific Palisades and elsewhere across Los Angeles County. People lost not only their houses but also the thriving communities of which they had been part.
What was quickly apparent was the . People often want their lives to bounce back from every crisis or disaster and to recreate what they have lost.
And this points to a broader issue that emerges after many natural disasters. People want to rebuild and return to normal when, in the face of an increasingly volatile climate, the best option may be to adapt and change.
There is a tension between a common understanding of personal resilience and the resilience of complex adaptive systems such as cities. People have a psychological and social need for stability and permanence, but all complex systems are resilient only because they adapt when forced to.
In New Zealand, the same tension emerged in the . Ahead of the second anniversary of the devastating cyclone 鈥� and as 鈥� New Zealanders need to ask how we can balance our personal resilience and need for stability while also acknowledging the need for a .
The long history of fires in Los Angeles
In his essay , writer Mike Davis outlines how fire is an inescapable part of Los Angeles history and how after each fire the city has always been rebuilt.
Davis鈥� work focuses on Los Angeles but raises important questions about the future of all communities facing increasing risks from climate change.
The repeated rebuilds in Los Angeles have created an expectation that .
But the city also has unique physical features that make such fires inescapable: the combination of the Santa Ana winds blowing from the desert with vegetation growing in the steep and dry canyons.
Fire has always been a natural part of the cycle of regeneration in this landscape. What has changed is the encroachment of human dwellings at the foot of these hills and canyons, and into them. Between 1990 and 2020, nearly 45% of the homes built in California were placed in these high fire risk areas.
Climate change is also making in the Los Angeles environs more extreme, creating larger and then drier fuel loads.
From a systems perspective, a managed retreat from the areas of worst fire risk makes sense. The resilience of cities requires them to be adaptive.
Yet adaptation in Los Angeles is largely not happening. After previous fires, and with minimal to no change in building design or placement. People have found comfort in the idea of 鈥渂ouncing back鈥� like a rubber ball.
Pricing in the risk
There is one group within this complex system which is actually adapting in the face of increasing climate change 鈥� in Los Angeles and elsewhere, including in New Zealand.
Home insurers have drastically raised premiums in Los Angeles, or , to cover ever-growing losses. The insurance bill for these recent fires is predicted to be and .
Together, the 2023 Auckland Anniversary floods and Cyclone Gabrielle . The cost of insurance in New Zealand , significantly outpacing general consumer price inflation.
In system terms, increased insurance premiums represent some of the of a community that insists on rebuilding in the face of increasing risks.
In economic terms, you can also think of insurance premiums as which is pricing the ever-increasing risk of disaster into the cost of living in such fire or flood zones.
Accepting risk or accepting change in NZ
The approaching second anniversary of Cyclone Gabrielle and demonstrates the same tension in Aotearoa New Zealand between increasing climate risks and our very human need to rebuild and restore what we have lost.
City and regional councils (or rebuild) in .
But with two thirds of our population living in flood risk areas and , how many times can New Zealand rebuild in these risky areas?
In the end, we need to remember that a crucial, and sometimes overlooked, element of psychological resilience is .
In a world of accelerating climate change and related disasters this is increasingly the more realistic response.
, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director, Te Puna Ako Centre for Tertiary Teaching and Learning,
This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .
