Planning for the Future: Climate Resilience & Indigenous Knowledge with Prof. Iain White

What is the biggest misunderstanding people have about urban planning? How do we design cities for extreme climate events when nature is acting unpredictably?

In this episode of the Nature Recovery Podcast, hosts Dr. Wendee Zhang and Ada Grabowska-Zhang sit down with Professor Iain White from the University of Waikato. They explore the delicate politics of climate adaptation, the necessity of designing "safe to fail" infrastructure, and how we can better translate academic research into real-world impact. Professor White also shares fascinating insights into New Zealand’s role as a "living laboratory" for multi-hazard resilience and how Indigenous Māori perspectives (Mātauranga Māori) are reshaping long-term environmental governance.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.

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Transcript

Stephen Thomas: Welcome to the Nature Recovery Podcast. We're going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline, and we'll find out more about the people behind these ideas.

Wendee Zhang: Welcome to the Leverhulme Centre Nature Recovery Podcast. My name's Wendee Zhang. I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Leverhulme Centre, working on human health and green infrastructure. Today I'm with...

Professor Iain White: I'm Professor Iain White. I'm a professor of environmental planning at the University of Waikato, but I did work in the UK for quite a long time at the University of Manchester. I have a few different roles. I'm helping direct a new national research platform in New Zealand around natural hazards and resilience. I'm also the national contact point for Horizon Europe for climate, energy, and mobility for New Zealand, and have been for three years. So that's basically one day a week.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: And I'm Ada Grabowska-Zhang, and I'm an urban ecologist at Oxford Lifelong Learning and a member of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery.

Wendee Zhang: Today's topic is planning for the future: cities, climate, and resilience. I think we'll start with an opening question for Iain. You work across planning, climate resilience, policy impact, flood risk, and public communication. When you look at cities today, what do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that people have about planning?

Professor Iain White: I think when people think about planning, they think it's got a lot of power to change urban form. But really, it's about what might happen. It's not about what's already there. So we have less power than you think to change the existing urban fabric. We've got private property rights. Any politics around urban change, densification, or cycleways is really fraught. Planning is actually much better at what might happen rather than what we've already done. It doesn't do the fixing mistakes really well. And it's not even responsible for a lot of the mistakes, which are due to a lack of planning, not too much planning.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: A great deal of climate adaptation appears very rational on paper, but it's quite a delicate topic politically. How do planners navigate that tension?

Professor Iain White: I've been working in climate adaptation for probably almost 25 years now, which makes me feel really old! I think the difficulty is that it's always quite emergent and it's always future-focused. It's always uncertain; there are scenarios. The nature of trying to prepare for a future against the present, which is very loud, is always quite difficult. There are tensions around how we navigate time, how we navigate certainty, and how we scale. A lot of climate research is global, and then we're thinking, how does that translate down to different spatial scales that have meaning for communities?

We've talked about climate adaptation in a future tense so far, but really it's already here. A few days ago in England, we had 35 degrees in May, which smashed a previous record. In a long time series, it's really unusual for a record to be broken by such a margin. It's like running the 100 meters in seven seconds. You know that it's not just unusual, it's seriously unusual. And we're seeing more and more of those.

We had a rainfall event in Auckland in 2023. I remember speaking to the planners there, and they were designing some planning policy. They thought, "We'll be really clever, we're going to future-proof it." So they picked a 100-year scenario, the worst-case scenario, and designed the policy to cater for that. The idea was whatever we build should last 100 years into the future—raising site levels, floor levels, thinking about flood risk. Just before they were about to release that, they had an event which overshot the 100-year worst-case scenario. How do you plan for this kind of event?

Science and planning try to be rational. We have rules, processes, and try to balance things. But nature is being a little bit more irrational at the moment. One of the difficulties we have around climate adaptation is the process is rational, but the outcomes are less rational and very spatially distributed. You can't just design against a one-in-1,000-year event because it's not a good use of public funds. You can't gold-plate all your infrastructure. Part of the discussion now is around making places "safe to fail"—expecting unusual environments so that when design thresholds are exceeded, it's not the end of the world.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: Because you've moved between different areas—academia, public policy, media, and institutional impact roles—you have a good perspective on how research translates between these contexts. What is your approach to translating research into meaningful public impact?

Professor Iain White: That's the challenge, isn't it? That's the existential question of research. You ask anyone why they do what they do, and they say, "I want to make a difference." And then we all write articles that are behind paywalls that no one reads. As I've gone through my career, I've been thinking more about doing research that truly makes a difference.

We've always done academic impact very well. We write things, other people like us read it. But impact in the economy, society, and policy—universities haven't necessarily been set up for that. They don't incentivize it in promotions. It takes a lot of extra effort. To make an impact, you need to co-design your research project with people who might be the potential users. We ask them what they want. It doesn't stray into consultancy because we still generate missing knowledge, but involving stakeholders in design is key.

There's also a naivety early in your career that there's a linear flow between science and action—that if we just find the facts, politicians will translate that to the real world. That "knowledge deficit model" is flawed. It's not a case of "if only they knew this, they would act." Politics is its own domain with lobby groups and short-term interests. Anyone interested in making a difference needs to upskill on how change actually occurs.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: Do you think academics should get institutional incentives to communicate their research to lay audiences, like getting promotion points for podcasts or popular science books?

Professor Iain White: Yes. I see it as part of a publication strategy. You want to publish in high-ranking journals, but once you've done that, you need to tell different groups about it, and they don't read those journals. You have to make the same research work harder in different formats. University systems need to acknowledge that this is extra work. It's about getting high-quality research out there and spending more time post-research to make it sing before moving on to the next one.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: You mentioned previously that New Zealand can function almost like a living laboratory for climate resilience and environmental governance. How does that shape the research culture at Waikato?

Professor Iain White: New Zealand is prone to every peril: earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, landslips, volcanoes. It's a place where there's a lot going on. One area we lead the world in is multi-hazard research because that's what we have. You might have a drought interacting with intense rainfall, causing a landslide—three different hazards at once.

Because we are prone to multiple hazards, there is a long history of hazard management. Private insurance can't cover earthquakes; it would bankrupt them. So the state has to be involved. Because the state is more involved, there are very close links between government, industry, and local authorities to translate hazard science into practice.

Regarding environmental governance, New Zealand is small enough that you can normally get the right people in the right room. There are fewer gatekeepers, which means you can make more of a difference. At Waikato, I'm the Assistant Vice-Chancellor of Impact, a new role. We want our research to make a difference, so we're changing our internal funds to be multidisciplinary. Disciplinary boundaries are a relic of 150 years ago. The problems we have right now require people who can cut across boundaries.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: That intercultural perspective is interesting too, because New Zealand has a strong framework for Indigenous environmental management. How do you see that operating?

Professor Iain White: It's really fascinating. Mātauranga Māori is Indigenous Māori knowledge. It puts a huge onus on relationship building. You can't just drop in on a project; there has to be a level of trust built over time.

They also look at time differently. We might look at a 5 or 20-year horizon, but they look at seven generations. It's an incredibly powerful tool because it allows conversations you can't have elsewhere—the goal is to leave the environment better than what it is now.

They are also incredibly focused on outcomes rather than the language of science. In Europe, water quality is a complex chemical equation. In New Zealand, the Indigenous perspective was: "Don't tell me that. I only want three things from water: Can I drink it? Can I swim in it? Can I fish in it? Don't tell me this is 'good water quality' if there are no fish." Because of this, New Zealand was the first in the world to give legal rights to water bodies, giving them a voice in legal processes.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: Do you partner with Iwi in the region as partners in research?

Professor Iain White: Yes. Iwi are the tribal groups of New Zealand, and they are very place-based. In my area, Waikato Tainui is the big Iwi. They resist the forces of globalization because they are deeply attached to their place. Capital usually moves around globally, but Iwi invest heavily locally. They are a powerful partner for local authorities in urban regeneration. They have 100-year plans, which would sound crazy in a UK context, but it keeps everyone honest about what good environmental management looks like over the long haul.

Ada Grabowska-Zhang: Where do you see the strongest opportunities and challenges emerging in the next decade of environmental research?

Professor Iain White: I think the next five to ten years will see AI become deeply embedded in multiple disciplines, much like the internet did. It will become an enabling device. Data will become a treasure (taonga). Those who hold long data sets will have huge opportunities. But we'll also need social, cultural, and Indigenous aspects to push back against purely technological urges. As they say, "all models are wrong, but some are useful."

I also think we're going to see a massive increase in international collaboration. Horizon Europe is a great example. New Zealand was the first country outside the European region to join it, followed by Canada and South Korea. It's creating global alignment on how we frame and address environmental issues across different political contexts. It's a very exciting time to be in science.

Wendee Zhang: Thanks so much.

Stephen Thomas: You've been listening to the Nature Recovery Podcast. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you can, please consider leaving us a review, as it will really help other people to find us. Also, why not consider sharing this episode with someone you know? You never know, you might get them interested in the wonderful field of nature recovery. If you want to find out more about the activities of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, you can visit our website at www.naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk. Thanks so much for listening.