Disastrous futures? Confronting the scale, urgency andcomplexity of our crises: Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

When then-Climate Change Commissioner James Renwick first saw footage of Auckland's Anniversary Weekend floods (2023), he mistook the images for Bangladesh. ‘“Oh it's Auckland?!” My mouth fell open. I just haven't seen those sorts of images in this country before’ he told a New Zealand Geographic journalist (quoted in Woulfe Citation2023). Worse soon followed. Cyclone Gabrielle hit parts of the country shortly afterwards. Gabrielle has been called ‘an unprecedented weather event’ (McAnulty quoted in McClure Citation2023), the country's ‘largest climate event to date’ (Asia Insurance Review Citation2023). Early indications are that it will be as expensive as the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (Guinto Citation2023), which, at the time, ‘was the second costliest insurance event of 2010 and the third costliest earthquake in history’ (Bevere et al. Citation2011, p. 6). Arguably these events are but preludes to our disaster-laden future.