This thesis focuses on the role of legal preparedness for managing large-scale urban disasters in Aotearoa New Zealand. It uses the Auckland Volcanic Field as a case study to answer the question: ‘is New Zealand’s current legal framework prepared to respond to and recover from a large-scale urban disaster?’. The Auckland Volcanic Field was chosen as the main case study because a future eruption is a low likelihood, high-impact event that New Zealand is going to have to manage in the future. Case studies are a key feature of this thesis as both New Zealand based and overseas examples are used to explore the role of legal preparedness by identifying and investigating a range of legal issues that need to be addressed in advance of a future Auckland Volcanic Field eruption. Of particular interest is the impact of legal preparedness for the recovery phase. The New Zealand case studies include; Canterbury earthquake sequence 2010-2011, the Kaikōura earthquake 2016, the Auckland flooding 2018, and the North Island Severe Weather event 2023, which encompasses both the Auckland Anniversary weekend flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle. As New Zealand has not experienced a large-scale urban volcanic eruption, overseas examples are explored to provide insights into the legal issues that are volcano specific. The overseas volcanic case studies cover eruptions in Heimaey (Iceland), the Soufrière Hills (Montserrat and the Grenadines), La Soufrière (St Vincent) and Tungurahua (Ecuador). New Zealand’s past experiences highlight a trend for introducing post-event legal frameworks to manage recovery. Consequently, the current disaster management system is not prioritising legal preparedness and instead is choosing to rely on exceptional powers. Unsurprisingly, the introduction of new post-event recovery frameworks has repercussions. In New Zealand, new post-event legal frameworks are introduced swiftly under urgency, they contain broad unstructured decision-making powers, and are often flawed. As these exceptional new frameworks sit outside the ‘normal’ legal frameworks, they in effect create a parallel “shadow system”. Based on the evidence explored in this thesis it does not appear that Auckland’s current disaster management framework is prepared to deal with a large-scale urban event caused by an Auckland Volcanic Field eruption. Following this conclusion, it is the submission of this thesis that New Zealand’s current legal framework is not prepared to respond to and recover from a large-scale urban disaster. To become legally prepared, New Zealand needs to consider the legal tools required to manage large-scale urban disasters in advance. This will prevent the creation of a legal vacuum in the aftermath of disasters and the need for new recovery frameworks. Adopting a new attitude will require a change in approach towards legal preparedness which prioritises it, rather than sidelining it. This may also require changes within New Zealand’s disaster management system including the introduction of a formal monitoring mechanism, which will support and prioritise legal preparedness. This thesis has shown that not legally preparing for future disasters is a choice which carries significant consequences. None of these consequences are inevitable when managing large-scale disasters, however they are inevitable when frameworks are not legally prepared in advance. To not legally prepare, is to prepare to fail and thus create a disaster by choice.
This thesis focuses attention on the ongoing effects of the earthquakes on children in Christchurch. It identifies the learning and behavioural difficulties evident in an increasing number of students and cautions the use of the word 'resilient' to describe children who may be just managing. This assumption has a significant impact on the wellbeing of many Christchurch children who, disaster literature warns, are likely to be under-served. This thesis suggests that, because of the scale of need, schools are the best place to introduce practices that will foster wellbeing. Mindfulness practices are identified as a potential tool for ameliorating the vulnerabilities experienced by children, while at the same time working to increase their capabilities. This thesis argues that, through mindful practices, children can learn to be more reflective of their emotions and respond in more considered ways to different situations. They can become more relational, having a greater understanding of others through a deeper understanding of themselves, and they can build resilience by developing the protective factors that promote more adaptive functioning. This thesis identifies the strong links between mindfulness and the holistic wellbeing concept of Te Whare Tapa Whã and a Mãori worldview. Strong links are also identified with the vision, values and key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum and 21st Century learners. Both short and long term recommendations are made for the introduction of mindfulness practices in schools to enhance the wellbeing of children.
INTRODUCTION: After the 2011 Canterbury earthquake, the provision of school social work was extended into a larger number of schools in the greater Christchurch region to support discussions of their practice priorities and responses in post-earthquake schools. FINDINGS: Two main interpretations of need are reflected in the school social workers’ accounts of their work with children and families. Firstly, hardship-focused need, which represented children as adversely influenced by their home circumstances; the interventions were primarily with parents. These families were mainly from schools in low socioeconomic areas. Secondly, anxiety-based need, a newer practice response, which emphasised children who were considered particularly susceptible to the impacts of the disaster event. This article considers how these practitioners conceptualised and responded to the needs of the children and their families in this context. METHOD: A qualitative study examining recovery policy and school social work practice following the earthquakes including 12 semi-structured interviews with school social workers. This article provides a Foucauldian analysis of the social worker participants’ perspectives on emotional and psychological issues for children, particularly those from middle-class families; the main interventions were direct therapeutic work with children themselves. Embedded within these practice accounts are moments in which the social workers contested the predominant, individualising conceptualisations of need to enable more open-ended, negotiable, interconnected relationships in post-earthquake schools. IMPLICATIONS: In the aftermath of disasters, school social workers can reflect on their preferred practice responses and institutional influences in schools to offer children and families opportunities to reject the prevalent norms of risk and vulnerability.
INTRODUCTION: Connections between environmental factors and mental health issues have been postulated in many different countries around the world. Previously undertaken research has shown many possible connections between these fields, especially in relation to air quality and extreme weather events. However, research on this subject is lacking in New Zealand, which is difficult to analyse as an overall nation due to its many micro-climates and regional differences.OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study and subsequent analysis is to explore the associations between environmental factors and poor mental health outcomes in New Zealand by region and predict the number of people with mental health-related illnesses corresponding to the environmental influence.METHODS: Data are collected from various public-available sources, e.g., Stats NZ and Coronial services of New Zealand, which comprised four environmental factors of our interest and two mental health indicators data ranging from 2016 up until 2020. The four environmental factors are air pollution, earthquakes, rainfall and temperature. Two mental health indicators include the number of people seen by District Health Boards (DHBs) for mental health reasons and the statistics on suicide deaths. The initial analysis is carried out on which regions were most affected by the chosen environmental factors. Further analysis using Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average(ARIMA) creates a model based on time series of environmental data to generate estimation for the next two years and mental health projected from the ridge regression.RESULTS: In our initial analysis, the environmental data was graphed along with mental health outcomes in regional charts to identify possible associations. Different regions of New Zealand demonstrate quite different relationships between the environmental data and mental health outcomes. The result of later analysis predicts that the suicide rate and DHB mental health visits may increase in Wellington, drop-in Hawke's Bay and slightly increase in Canterbury for the year 2021 and 2022 with different environmental factors considered.CONCLUSION: It is evident that the relationship between environmental and mental health factors is regional and not national due to the many micro-climates that exist around the nation. However, it was observed that not all factors displayed a good relationship between the regions. We conclude that our hypotheses were partially correct, in that increased air pollution was found to correlate to increased mental health-related DHB visits. Rainfall was also highly correlated to some mental health outcomes. Higher levels of rainfall reduced DHB visits and suicide rates in some areas of the country.
