The river corridor is probably the largest area of managed retreat in an urban centre worldwide. How can our experience inform processes of managed retreat elsewhere? The question is central to this project, which has developed a model of ‘retreat’, ‘relocation’ and ‘re-imagining’. Re-imagining asks how can the land be re-used for projects that further lower environmental and social risks.
Rachel Puentener
Rachel Puentener, former Coordinator, How Team, Renew Brighton (currently Senior Environmental Advisor – Climate Change, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu).
Rachel lives in South New Brighton. She has an environmental management background and worked for several years at Ngāi Tahu helping implement the conservation parts of their Treaty settlement with the Crown. She worked at Environment Canterbury from 2011 to support Ngāi Tahu engagement. As a community member, she was a trustee of Renew Brighton after the earthquakes. Later, she was asked to lead the pilot ‘How Team’ for the Southshore & South New Brighton Regeneration Strategy, being led by Regenerate Christchurch. She currently works at Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu as the senior environmental advisor for climate change.
How did the How Team come about?
The How Team came out of Renew Brighton, a charitable trust initiated after the earthquakes by locals in New Brighton to help support the community. Several years after its establishment, one of the group’s focus areas became trying to figure out how to address the tension that existed between the community and the Christchurch City Council. It had been observed there was some unproductive conflict around the city council’s engagement with the community. This was usually due to miscommunication or no communication from the council, and the community being quite strong and clear about what it wanted.
There was a slogan at the time that summed up the feeling of discontent: ‘The Republic of New Brighton. We're revolting’. One of the more significant controversies had been the coastal chapter in the CCC post-earthquake ‘fast-tracked’ replacement district plan, which was based on a coastal hazard report by Tonkin & Taylor. The project occurred without sufficient involvement and discussion with the community, which resulted in significant community protest, and as a result, the chapter was not included. Due to this and other conflicts, Renew Brighton and others felt it would be useful to figure out better ways to engage. Renew did some research on models around the world and ended up creating the How Team concept.
The People’s Independent Republic of New Brighton
Meanwhile, (in mid-2017) Regenerate Christchurch was planning to do a regeneration strategy for the Southshore and South New Brighton stretch of the red zone along the estuary front, that had been separated from the main red zone project. Syliva Smyth at Renew Brighton, and Paul Zannen, Katie McRae and Jane Morgan at Regenerate Christchurch, discussed the idea of using a How Team model for the pending strategy.
What is a How Team?
It’s actually a very simple idea, where the community, rather than the council, leads the design of the community engagement plan for whatever the project might be. That's the ‘how’. It’s based on the concept ‘nothing about us, without us. A simple image is to see the How Team as a bridge. The agencies and community are on different sides of the river, with different ideas about what good engagement looks like, and the How Team is the bridge where they meet to talk about engagement together.
The type of engagement the How Team model aspired to is reflected in this engagement triangle. It recognises the importance of strengthening relationships and building capability as important foundations, rather than just focusing on engagement to inform decisions, which is the usual approach.
Renew Brighton had originally planned to trial the How Team with a simple project, like where to put the bus stop or bike lanes, as even these simple conversations had been quite fraught. So, starting a complex project like the regeneration strategy was quite a brave step by all parties. Funding was provided by Regenerate Christchurch to establish a How Team, and Sylvia asked if I could lead it. I was able to get a part-time secondment from my job at Environment Canterbury (ECan) and was employed by Renew Brighton. Being employed by the community, rather than by Regenerate Christchurch, was an important foundation for starting to build trust. Renew Brighton’s ‘theory of change’ for the project was to create a fit-for-purpose, locally relevant engagement plan, and through this process, build trust between the agencies and the community, and commitment from the agencies to adopt the engagement plan. So, I’m proud to say we met all the short-term outcomes.
The engagement triangle
The How Team model
And then with implementation of the engagement plan, we expected that trust between the agencies and community would continue to build, a range of community people would get involved in decision making, there would be equity in voices being heard, a depth of understanding of the issues, and there would be a clear line of sight and transparency about the decisions eventuating from the engagement process. This would result in an empowered community (including agency staff and governors) because the decisions made would be ‘good’ decisions i.e. understood by and acceptable to the community and the agencies. In other words, having a strong community centric engagement process that is led out of the community will lead to good decisions that are accepted by the community and the Council. As the project wasn’t implemented as anticipated, these outcomes were largely unmet.
How did you go about setting up the How Team?
The first step was socializing the concept with the key community groups that had been working with the council previously. They were fairly wary at the beginning, with some nervousness about a new group being involved. The next step was advertising to get people for the How Team. Making it clear that this was a community-led invitation, not a council-led project was important. My kids and I literally splattered the neighbourhood with posters that Sylvia had arranged for a local person to design. We had two open nights for people to come and learn more about the opportunity, which drew quite a lot of interest.
An initial and interesting question for the How Team model was how do you select people from a community if you're not representing any one group in particular? In the end we decided to ask respected neutral members of the community – a local school teacher who had worked at the
primary school a long time, a community social worker, the local vicar and me. With the help of an experienced facilitator I had worked with previously, we ran a selection night, using a process based on that used by the Canterbury Water Management Strategy. It was pretty much like an open interview. People stood up and explained why they thought they would be good for the How Team, and then we brought them into groups to see how they would work together. Not everybody who had come to the open nights had understood the concept of the ‘how’ and most were very focused on the ‘what’, i.e. the regeneration strategy itself, rather than the process of creating the strategy. But all the people at the interview night really understood it and the importance of the ‘how’ – they were all spot on. It was really impressive.
We had 18 people who stood up and gave their pitch, from who we then had to select eight. Selection was focused on trying to get some diversity, while also being aware of who would work well in a group. It was an imperfect, subjective but solid process. One of the community members we chose for the How Team was the amazing Evan Smith who lived outside the community but was a very strong community advocate. He had previously initiated the Charter of Community Engagement, following the earthquakes. For me, he was my litmus test: if Evan was happy with where we got to, then that was success.
The How Team model also included agency staff, so we had a representative from each of the three agencies involved: Regenerate Christchurch, CCC and ECan. They played an essential role, not only providing their expertise, but also information and context for the project.
How did the How Team process develop?
The job of the How Team was to write the engagement plan for the Southshore South New Brighton Regeneration Strategy, and we only had six weeks to do it. We worked hard!
A key factor for me in taking on the role was that Regenerate Christchurch was committed to using the engagement plan we provided, rather than considering it only as a recommendation. That was quite a bold, brave step on their behalf. Basically, we didn't want to do all this work, get everybody's hopes up, and then have them just decide to take on only parts of it. So that was quite a crucial step in initial trust building. I contracted Kim Chamerlain, a skilled facilitator, to help me design and run the meetings. Later I also brought in Will Allen, an evaluator, to help us with a participatory evaluation process.
We met weekly in the evening (more frequently towards the end), catering a nice dinner to start (made by a fantastic local caterer) and funding childcare for those that needed it. After each meeting we did a simple ‘rose, thorn, bud’ (good, bad, potential) quick evaluation, including a one-word summary of how each person experienced the meeting. That was helpful for me to gauge how it was going and if there was anything I needed to follow up on. At the end I put all the feedback together in this quite cool graphic. You could see how people were quite wary at the beginning. There was a bumpy bit in the middle, and then by the end, everyone was comfortable and happy with the end product.
Meeting Notes: Meeting 1 Wednesday 24 January - Induction Meeting: percolating; heartened; a good start; optimistic; optimistic; optimistic; encouraged but wary; hopeful; keep it simple; excited; awesome possibilities Meeting 2 Thursday 1 February: Overwhelmed with information; full head; sewing it up; positive & a good framework; shit just got real; OMG, this is where we have to walk the walk; optimistic; exhausted; honest; more reassured; alert; interested; collective depth (observation from evaluator) Meeting 3 Thursday 8 February - Agency framework for the Strategy: encouraged x2; stuff to think about; inspired; potential for the community on how to do this stuff well; impressed (by people, knowledge & ideas); potential; full; better informed; trucking on; accelerating (getting to the main course) Meeting 4 Tuesday 13 February - community presentations on engagement: awesome; engagement; a dam bursting; stoked we are on the right track; responsibility; challenging; déjà vu; niggling; stoked/thoughtful; history; potential to heal/on track/challenged Meeting 5 Tuesday 20 February: encouraged; invigorated; therapy; encouraged; thankful for honest communication; emotion/excited; excited/depth; relief (it could work); disturbed moving to reconciled/a way forward; processing; awake; better connected/joining some dots Meeting 6 Tuesday 27 February: invigorated; satisfied; excited; energised; fun; motivated; a window into the future; empowered; empowered; hopeful; stretching; peculating; fantastic Meeting 7 Tuesday 6 March: elephant (how to eat one); lego; complexity; mud; frustrated; bamboozled; trepidation; contemplative; stretched; stretched (time in particular); ‘sandbox’; tricky; what is this really all about? Meeting 8 Thursday 15 March: getting there; thrilled; significant progress; tired; progress; forward thinking; exhausted by the effort; tired & blank; making progress; pleased; making progress; Meeting 9 Tuesday 20 March: merging; starting to land/progressing; anxious that we are running out of time (x 12); lots to do; proof of the pudding will be in the eating; good enough; faith; commitment we can do it Meeting 10 Thursday 22 March - Community engagement session: inspired/ pleasantly surprised; concerned x 3 (re two way trust); optimistic; reassured; complexity; Meeting 11 Tuesday 27 March: EXHAUSTED Meeting 12 Thursday 29 March: SIGN OFF! bubbly; satisfied; woohoo! what an achievement; really excited; stoked; we did it! anticipatory; it feels like spring time; optimistic; pleased; a baby! very happy Presentation to the Leadership Team Thursday 19 April: appreciated; re-energised; validated; grateful; shared responsibility; ready; forward; excited; feel full up; extremely optimistic; excited; responsible; excited/daunted; entrepidation; excited & ready; trusting; commitment; dream team; HEARD.
Coming from a te Tiriti o Waitangi background, I was very conscious of the need to be clear where the Treaty relationship sits in these community-led models. Regenerate Christchurch was very aware of that too. Essentially as the Crown Treaty partner, they were working on the project directly with Ngāi Tūāhuriri, who are the mana whenua for the area. The question I was conscious of was how to integrate or bring in the community voice; how do you weave them together? If you have two parallel conversations, a community-led one and one with mana whenua, how do they inform each other so that you don't end up with potential conflict at the end? I think this still needs further thought in terms of the engagement methodology.
There is also a lot to be said for the community to gain some Treaty-based understanding as part of an engagement process, because most people, to be honest, are pretty Treaty illiterate and don't really understand much at all about the history of where they live. To me that's a crucial part of how you start to weave things together, so there's a better understanding of the mana whenua history and story when you're doing your community-led work. We didn’t manage to address this in our project, due to the delays, the change in direction, and the short timeframes.
An important part of the How Team process was providing space early on, to meet and listen to the concerns of the key community members and groups that had significant and historical issues and distrust of the council processes, and to a lesser extent, concerns with us as the How Team. We also followed up with them near the end, where we invited them in and presented our draft engagement plan to them. That was a real highlight for me, because our engagement plan really resonated with them – they even gave us a standing ovation, which was pretty special, as it meant we had succeeded in meeting one of the key purposes of the How Team.
Evan Smith’s evaluation of the process
At our last How team meeting, we went around the room to see whether people were comfortable with the final engagement plan, and everyone held up a number out of 10. I love this photo of Evan holding a number 9.7. This was another highlight for me, given he was the most sceptical coming into the project.
And the implementation phase?
After the engagement plan was received, Regenerate Christchurch delivered on the How Team recommendation to employ a community person to support the implementation of the
plan, and I was asked to fulfil that role in a full-time capacity. The other two recommendations concerned having a physical space in the community to operate from, and continuing with a How Team to also support the plan’s implementation. Paul Zannen, an employee of Regenerate Christchurch, was assigned to also support the project.
The two of us sat in this fantastic space we had in the middle of South Brighton (the ‘old doctors’ surgery’), with an enormous aerial map of the area on the wall (which is now over in the Dune Café on Bridge Street), plus our engagement plan blown up large. The How Team members made a real effort to make the place homely and welcoming. We had an uplifting launch of ‘Phase One – Warm Up’ – (out of five phases – Two: Baseline Information; Three: Options & Scenarios; Four: Evaluation; Five: Writing the Regeneration Strategy), and things were going quite well with people coming in and having conversations with us about the pending project and their ability to be involved throughout.
Other implementation elements included involving the community as much as possible, for example, we continued to use the graphic designer and caterer we had used previously. And when we started doing leaflet drops for the project, we got the play centre involved as a fundraising opportunity for them, which meant they earned some money, the council saved money, plus we started to broaden the group of people who become aware of the project. We also engaged the local schools with a youth poster competition to highlight the work that came out of Phase One – why we love living here.
However, with Phase Two of the engagement plan, “Baseline Information”, we started to get tripped up. The job of the How Team at this point was to peer review the draft content for the pamphlets and booklets about the baseline information (essentially the physical science and climate scenarios), to enable a well-informed community to engage in Phase Three (Options and Scenarios). With engagement, the key messages matter – being nuanced and using language that people can relate to is important. There are definitely ‘trigger words’ that you want to avoid, which agencies aren’t always aware of.
However, understandably, some people in the How Team had quite strong views on the ‘What’ and started to question the technical science information that they were peer reviewing for clarity and nuance. The ‘How’ and the ‘What’ started to get blurred. It transpired that this was justified, because the modelling on which the flooding [of South New Brighton and Southshore] was being based on was not clear. On further examination we found that the science modelling was being based on having no stop banks (even though stop banks are in place) and used the climate change ‘RCP 8.5’ high emissions ‘worst case’ future. This was the scenario recommended by the Ministry for the Environment guidance to councils for climate adaptation planning at the time. For a fuller explanation of climate scenario modelling, see here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp8-5-global-warming-scenario/
This highlighted an important lesson of engagement on such a sensitive topic – the need for openness and transparency about the assumptions the science is based on. The better way to go, and one we understand is now being used by CCC, is to have an interactive map, with a range of climate scenarios and possible futures, where it is obvious what the scenario modelling is based on, and which allows people to look at a range of possibilities, rather than just the worst case scenario.
Then what happened: how did it all end?
Sadly, it got very messy and political. Paul Zaanen has diplomatically described the situation in his kōrero on this website. From the community side, essentially some governance members of the community board and council weren’t comfortable with the pending conversations, as they had issues with the baseline information and the impact it might have on the community, in regard to wellbeing, mental health and property prices, especially with the trauma of the earthquakes still present for some people.
We have written an evaluation report (How Team Evaluation Report) (Implementation of How Team Plan) about this part of the project as well. It is probably easier to read that, than for me to describe it at great length! I think the engagement plan itself was relatively straightforward. It was the implementation of it that became tricky, as politics came to the fore. At the agency government level, politics was also at play regarding changes at Regenerate Christchurch which we weren’t privy to. I don't know that it was entirely visible to anyone; people just left. It was a very uncomfortable, strange and difficult time and hard to comprehend exactly what had transpired. We had this great face to the community, made all these promises and then suddenly everything went quiet. It seems new people came into Regenerate Christchurch, and they were asking why are we having a conversation about climate change? (noting Regenerate was set up to deal with earthquake legacy issues).
In the end, the project was passed from Regenerate Christchurch to the Christchurch City Council to run, with a reduced scope, focusing just on earthquake legacy issues. So, the whole climate change thing fell away. Staff worked hard to try and run as good an engagement process as they could, but as the Council elections were looming, there was a very short amount of time, and as we know, good engagement requires time. Interestingly, there was also some political interference regarding the final Council decisions. The staff recommendations, which reflected the majority community feedback, were changed at the last minute in the Council meeting. I suspect very few people in the community are aware of that.
How do you assess the outcomes of the How Team project?
The initial outcome – the joint preparation of a community-led and community-centric engagement plan – was very positive. The evaluation reports we did at the time speak to that (How Team Evaluation Report) (Implementation of How Team Plan). In the implementation of the engagement plan phase, the outcomes weren’t achieved, as the plan wasn’t able to be implemented, due to the politics explained previously. We learnt a lot of lessons – and while that was very difficult and a lot of trust was lost between the community and the council again, I feel that the council has taken on a lot of those lessons in its current work on climate adaptation, thankfully due to the consistency in some of the core staff.
One of the tangible positive outcomes that did come out of the project, which many people may not be aware of, was the engagement work we did with the local primary school. I managed to get a small amount of funding and employed Sian Carvell, an ex-teacher and environmental educational specialist, to put together a school programme for climate change. We had assumed there would be a lot of resources already available. This was the end of 2018, and she found there wasn't actually anything nationwide that had been done, which we found very surprising. In a very short period, she put together an eight-week school programme, and alongside that, being conscious of the impact of the depressing facts of climate change on well-being, we also employed a psychologist to do a well-being guide to sit alongside the school programme. Sian then ran the programme with the Year 7-8 kids at the school, with the support of the teachers. It went really well.
After the project was wound up, being conscious that there wasn’t a resource available at the national level, Sian and I went knocking on doors to find funding to adapt the work into what became the national school climate change programme (latest iteration of the programme can be found here: https://www.nzaee.org.nz/resources/climate-change-learning-programme).
It became the school resource that James Shaw [then Minister of Climate Change] launched the following year. It’s exciting that out of our South Brighton school project, this national school curriculum was created. Since then, Sian (trading as Future Curious) has worked collaboratively with climate scientists and communication experts to improve and update the resource, which includes a Te Ao Māori and Pasifika lens across it, and an improved wellbeing guide. Recently, thanks to the work of Jane Morgan at the Christchurch City Council, working with Sian’s resource, and in collaboration with the University of Canterbury, it has been turned into an education resource for the wider community to use – it is being launched in April this year (2026) which is very exciting, as that was a gap we identified early on in our project – the need for accessible educational resources for the adult community. So that work has had a really positive outcome.
In terms of the issues that the How Team was set up to try and address, they still exist. I firmly believe our community needs to work collaboratively with the council to work through the issues and come up with solutions that are appropriate – as per our original Theory of Change and engagement plan. We’re in this together and I believe the council has a role to empower the community, so that we can all get on the same playing field and make wise decisions together. Importantly, this needs to include consideration about how we are going to fund the solutions that we come up with. Without that critical element, we are likely to end up with solutions that aren’t feasible, which will be a big waste of time and resources for everyone, plus undermine any trust that may have been built through the process. How we are going to address these difficult problems is primarily a community concern, and not only for our councils to figure out.
The good thing about the delay to the challenging conversations we need to have about climate adaptation is that we can also learn from others around the country about what works. Personally, I like the citizens assembly type process for working through the wicked problem of climate adaptation. This provides for a representative group that is not politicised, to work with the Council to figure out the best ways forward. There is a very positive example of this engagement model happening now in Porirua, which also addresses te Tiriti issues I spoke of earlier, as it is mana whenua led. South Dunedin is also running a positive community-centric process.
Other helpful resources out there that focus on community engagement include Wendy Saunders and Margaret Kilvington’s work for Bay of Plenty Regional Council called I Can Live With This. This is a useful report as it is very upfront about the methodology and how they talk with people about risk in their communities and whether people “can live with this”. More recently, ResOrgs has also developed resources called Let's Talk About Risk to support councils in their work with communities. I also really value the evaluation techniques that Will Allen developed with us, to focus on measuring good engagement (e.g. clarity of process, clarity in the community, inclusion, accessibility and equity, timeliness and responsiveness, empathy, well-being and capacity resourcing). In an ideal world, you'd be using such evaluations every month or so as part of the process with your project team and the community, to learn as you go. I look forward to our community working constructively with the council, arm-in-arm, to address these wicked issues.
Based on an interview with Eric Pawson, 29 October 2025, in Addington