New Zealanders want a greater focus on reducing the impacts of climate change.
Over the past few years, many New Zealanders have seen or experienced first-hand the devastating impacts that floods, storms, cyclones and wildfires can cause, and seen the cost of these events showing up in their insurance bills. The frequency and severity of these events is changing and so must our response.
With that in mind, in this year's survey we focused on where people want to see the priority fall in our collective response and the actions they would like to see taken. This is alongside our usual look at peoples’ attitudes towards climate change and their expectations and perceptions of our response.
Despite the many pressures people face, they still see climate change as important and worry about its impacts more than their own emissions. They are not confident our response is on the right track or that the country will be able to reduce the impacts of climate change. They want to see greater focus and investment placed on reducing those impacts and expect the Government to be leading on this.
They want to see development avoided or reduced in high-risk locations, more resilient buildings and infrastructure, greater investment in protective infrastructure, and better community understanding of climate impacts.
We cannot reduce all risk and severe weather events will continue to occur. Recognising this, people say New Zealand needs strong insurers, that taking a more risk-based approach to setting premiums is the fairest way to reflect this risk, and that risk reduction is the most important way to keep insurance affordable.
*The survey of 1,005 people was commissioned by IAG New Zealand and conducted by Ipsos Ltd in June 2024. The survey has a margin of error of ± (plus or minus) 3.1 per cent.