OUR PROCESS
Research and Resources
CLIMATE CHANGE & youth wellbeing
Youth Wellbeing in Uncertain Times:
The Voices of Rangatahi from Flood-Effected Tairāwhiti Gisborne
Community Sport in Uncertain Times:
Learnings from Sports Clubs and Organizations from Flood-Effected Tairāwhiti Gisborne
Project 1:
Youth Wellbeing in Uncertain Times: The Voices of Rangatahi from Flood-Effected Tairāwhiti Gisborne
After collaborating on a Ministry of Health project focused on the health and wellbeing impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle, and leading the research within the Tairāwhiti region, it was clear that more research was needed that focuses on the experiences of rangatahi (youth) in a changing climate.
Throughout 2024 and early 2025, Professor Holly Thorpe and the research team set out to understand how recent flooding events are impacting the wellbeing of rangatahi young people (16-24 years) living in Tairāwhiti Gisborne. This project was co-funded by Te Punaha Matatini and the University of Waikato.
Using the qualitative methods of focus groups and photographic co-creation, this project examines how local youth are making meaning of recent extreme weather events, the impact on their families and community, and their hopes and concerns for the future.
Working with various community groups and organizations, the study will identify how climate change-related events in isolated communities are impacting young people’s thinking and decision-making about their current and future education, employment, and what is important in their lives.
This research aims to provide tangible insights so that education, health, and community providers can better support young people as they make meaning of their climate-change effected communities and uncertain futures.
A community exhibition and a national symposium are two initiatives that seek to provide further opportunities for youth to be heard and for engagement with the research findings.
Research Team
Professor Holly Thorpe, Associate Dean Research, Division of Health, University of Waikato
Josie McClutchie, Project Manager and Photographer
Associate Professor Daniel Hikuroa, Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland
Dr Mihi Nemani, Senior Lecturer, Division of Health, University of Waikato
Research assistants: Haley Maxwell, Renee Blazey, Holly Williams
Research questions:
This project sets out to explore the following research questions:
How are climate-change related events impacting young people’s experiences and understandings of wellbeing (physical, social, emotional, spiritual, financial) and connections to place?
How are recent climate-change related events (flooding in Tairāwhiti) impacting youths’ feelings about ‘home’ (as a place of safety or fear, anxiety, stress), and their hopes, concerns, and actions towards their own and others’ futures (i.e., education, employment, choices as to where and how to live, what to prioritise in their lives)?
What can education, health and community providers do to better support young people as they make meaning of their climate-change effected communities and uncertain futures?
Research methods
With ethical approval from the University of Waikato, focus groups (group interviews) were conducted with a total of 95 rangatahi (13-25 years). The sample is intentionally diverse and representative of the community.
Focus groups were recorded and professionally transcribed. A reflexive thematic analysis process is currently underway, and key findings will be shared back with the community and available on this website in due course.
Here we offer a selection of quotes that highlight the depth, complexity and nuance in young people’s experiences of repeated adverse weather events:
Emotional landscapes
“I feel like everything is just so tainted with this darkness here now. There hasn’t been much light because even when something good happens, there’s still that underlying damage and things that are going to take years and years and years to restore, if they can even be restored. Because things like the land and all the erosion, that can’t be restored. I think since the cyclone as well, Gisborne’s economy wasn’t doing very well in the first place and that really damaged the economy even further. Lots of businesses have shut down, jobs are gone. I couldn’t get a job here; I left. ”
“It really badly impacted my mental health because it destroyed a lot of my things. It flooded a lot of my family photos and family history and things. And it was just really bad cleaning up around the farm, around the garage, around the house as well. The backyard was completely covered in silt. Whenever there’s any amount of rain, I can’t sleep. I felt kind of closed off from my friends for a while because I was just so heavily impacted. It impacted my schooling too. It was kind of surreal doing chemistry homework while my backyard’s covered in silt. You know? It just didn’t feel right.”
“I feel all the weather events just make Gisborne so run down. It just doesn’t feel a happy place, sometimes. Like it’s so worn down. It’s kind of in the air. It’s kind of sick. It’s quite depressing. Seeing all the effects on my town and stuff, it feels really depressing.”
Whanau
worries
“I see my parents getting stressed out, especially because my stepdad works in forestry. After the recent flooding he couldn’t get up to work for two weeks and obviously that’s a big impact, and then with Gabrielle, he wasn’t up for weeks and weeks. … it’s just constantly worrying about everyone else and this all affects the mood in the house.”
“It makes me nervous to leave in case help is needed. Because going away to uni next year, I’m not going to be here. But if my family needs help in another weather crisis, I’m not here and I can’t help them. With the weather crises, it makes me scared to leave. ”
“I was also trying to get to Tolaga every day because of all my family and my marae is there, and I had no idea about if they were okay. So we were at the border every day waiting to see if she was there, and if she was okay. And all my marae got flooded, like the wharekai was all gone and we couldn’t use any of our stoves or anything. That was big.”
Hopes and
dreams
“You want to achieve things and there’s stuff getting in the way, getting in your way of doing what you want to do, that you can’t control. That’s when it gets frustrating, because it’s something you can’t change. Something you can’t make better or just get rid of. It’s just something you can’t control.”
“I feel like it breaks your routine and people just think it’s normal not to come to school when it’s raining. Just if it rains, people are like, nah, I’ll stay home today. Might get worse, can’t be bothered … You know, I feel like it sets your whole mood”
“When I got to the marae, it was really upsetting… it was really disheartening to see my childhood or my heritage just be wiped away so easily. It’s still there, but the remnants of who we are is all gone, like all our carving were all flooded and flooded our marae up to the carvings. So all of those were gone and we have to redo everything. Disheartening, but yeah. It’s all right, we’ll rebuild, as a community.”
“It kind of drove home the fact that climate change is happening. Also I want kids but it also has made me have second thoughts about that, which I think is probably very common.”
“My whole life, ever since I was in primary school, I’ve always wanted to work on the farm for the rest of my life as a job, and go into at least the farming industry if not staying on the family farm for all my life. But I’m having a complete 180, second thoughts about going into the farming industry because of how bad the... ... because it’s kind of on the front lines in the country. You know, 12 years of my schooling has always been focused on that one thing, but now it’s shifting. I don’t want to leave my land but…”
TairAwhiti
AS HOME:
“I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like we’re all excited to get out of here and go to uni or something. Go somewhere that’s not always raining. Not always flooding.”
“I can’t wait to leave. I don’t feel like there are any opportunities here for me. But I’d only come back for my marae and my whānau, and all my whakapapa who were buried here in the cemetery. And my mum’s leaving after I leave.”
“I feel like it’s also just so frustrating knowing that it’s been a year or two of this and how bad it already is. It’s kind of like how bad is it going to be in five years. It just makes you want to go somewhere like Australia. just because there’s so much uncertainty.”
“It makes me angry about all of the things that not necessarily Gisborne’s responsible for, but Gisborne has been experiencing the consequences of. But it also it makes me really sad because I don’t want to leave, I love Gisborne, but if it’s going to become unliveable, I might have to leave. Even through all this stuff, it’s still my home, and I feel like I’ll always come back.”
“I hope Gisborne builds up its economy and the landscape so then people do want to come back and visit. I think it’d be really good for people to enjoy Gisborne’s beaches to their full potential, or the farms and the land. We don’t want people to view Gisborne as a bad place or a scary place. I want it to be known as a safe place where people are happy and not scared.”
Anger, apathy
and action
“Any time there’s bad weather here, and it’s a lot, any time that happens, the pipes will overflow, and they just let the sewage out into the ocean, and I just think that is very, very, very silly. It’s ruining our water. I think it’s so important that the higher up people need to really get a move on with it… They suck so bad.”
“I feel like I used to feel really motivated to change but then over time I just kind of gave up because you look at leaders and even at other countries around the world and you’re just like, what’s the point, what difference am I going to make? Yeah, it just feels kind of impossible, I guess.”
“… you see everyone protesting about climate change and in reality, I’m not being negative but are we ever going to get everyone in the world on board with trying to fix it, but the reality is that probably you’re not going to get everyone on board, there’s still going to be countries that are going to be polluting… So even if we try and fix it, as New Zealand, is that going to help?”
“Prone areas need to be planted up. It’s essential to prevent this happening again. I want to do more planting up the hills and the river banks, but it’s hard to do when you’re doing everything else to clean up. But it makes me more mad about other people not doing things. Because they don’t have to have to live with the consequences, therefore they don’t have incentive to change anything. And that makes me so mad, because why am I doing these changes if they’re not?”
“It makes me way more proactive because climate change is here. It makes me realise that there’s so many different parts of things you can work on and change, like there’s society, and then there’s political ... yeah, there’s just lots of areas where if people are affected, you can change. We organized school strike for climate. We’re in the process of a lot of other things like in Conservation Week, we do things around flooding and everything. And we did the tree planting, the catchment.”
“Because all the banks at my house, they all basically got flooded and just washed away, so we did some planting and that to try to stop the erosion. It’s good that we’re being proactive about it and doing something to try and help.”
Project 2:
Community Sport in Uncertain Times: Learnings from Sports Clubs and Organizations from Flood-Effected Tairāwhiti Gisborne
As the above project progressed, we frequently heard about the importance of sport and physical activity in rangatahi lives; how their sport participation was impacted, and the value of sport in helping youth find strength, support, connection and hope in challenging times.
Responding to this strong theme, we set out to explore the role of sport in young peoples’ lives in the context of climate change, and also understand how sports clubs and organizations have responded to repeated adverse weather events.
We have conducted interviews and focus groups with 45 rangatahi (young people) aged 13-25 years old, and 22 coaches, managers, leaders and parent volunteers from a range of community sports clubs, including rowing, swimming, surf life saving, surfing, skateboarding, kayaking, rugby, and waka ama.
The repeated rain events have significantly impacted the running of community sports clubs, particularly for those involved in water-based sports such as surfing, surf lifesaving, rowing, kayaking and waka ama, because every time it rains heavily, the rivers (awa) and oceans (moana) are filled with large woody debris (log waste from forestry), silt and untreated sewage that makes participation hazardous.
Talking to community sports clubs has revealed the power of community sporting spaces (i.e., club rooms and facilities) for people to come together—to grieve, support and celebrate each other—and to give people reasons to refocus. Many parents are working as volunteers behind the scenes, fundraising, to repair clubrooms and facilities, damaged and destroyed equipment, and to provide financial support for youth to attend competitions out of town. This is often on top of busy lives impacted by weather events.
Overwhelmingly though, we heard of the power of sport to help communities (and young people) refocus, manage grief and trauma, and in supporting each other through long processes of recovery and rebuilding.
The findings from this project will be shared across the community, and via publications linked on this website.
Photographic Co-Creation with Rangatahi
Young athletes and participants youth told us how repeated weather events have impacted the places they participate in sport, and in-turn, their own motivation and opportunities to train, compete, socialize, and support one another.
Many saw their some of friends and peers dropping out, but those who continue to participate are highly motivated, focused and find much joy and connection through their sporting participation.
Through their interactions with flood-effected sporting environments, many young athletes and sporting participants have developed highly astute observations of the impacts of climate change on the places and spaces they love. They spoke passionately about the damage to rivers, beaches and the ocean, and how this affected not only their sporting participation, but overall health and wellbeing.
To explore these themes further, participants were invited to work with local professional photographer (Josie) to co-produce an image (or series of images) they feel reflect their experiences of their (past, present, future) understandings of Tairāwhiti as ‘home’.
The mobile exhibition “Into the Darkness”: An exhibition of youth perspectives on Tairāwhiti in a changing climate amplifies the voices of rangatahi through the lens of sport.
This exhibition is a creative research output, our way of sharing key insights from the research back with the community, and sparking dialogue and new ways of thinking about the connections between sport, climate change, and youth wellbeing.
“ We never used to paddle in brown water but it's brown, just brown all the time now. Smells like poo. I just try not to swallow any water or fall in. It's just how it is now, it’s the norm. It just makes it so much more unmotivating, turning up and it looks like that, it's like, I don't want to paddle ”.
“ When we could come back to the pool,to training, it’s our happy place. You're just in a different mindset, in a different space that's not home,that's not school. Just somewhere else. A different mindset ”.
“ Going down to the rowing sheds for the first time and seeing all the silt just everywhere, up to pretty much the roof, really. Boats destroyed. Shovelling all the mud was not fun. We have to do that every time it rains, we have to re-shovel it all out. Even once it stops raining, you can't go in [to the river] because of the sewage, and because the river has changed, there's trees fallen down so you've got to be careful or you’ll smash your rudder. Sometimes you can't paddle on it still because it's surging. The silt is so built up that you can barely paddle at low tide ”.
