An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released earlier this week claimed global emissions would increase to a catastrophic 3.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Only severe emission cuts across all sectors could turn things around, the report said.

In an interview with Newshub Live, former Chief Science Advisor Sir Peter Gluckman observed that the building sector was one of the biggest contributors to global emissions.

"We still build houses which are not energy efficient,” he said. “The [IPCC] report points out that 16% of emissions are related to building – that's an awful lot of buildings [not] thinking about being energy-efficient buildings."

In the same interview, Insurance Council CEO Tim Grafton agreed that New Zealand needed to look at housing stock and where New Zealanders were building.

"In all the places we are experiencing frequent flooding events, everybody has seen the damage done to Westport over the last several months with repeat events,” Grafton said. “East Coast and North Island as well and the rather low-lying places as well, Thames estuary – there are settlements in that area too. There are pockets around New Zealand where climate change will definitely have an impact unless we start to plan ahead about that to reduce the risk.”

In a separate interview with RNZ, Grafton pointed out that the most recent Australian budget had assigned a significant $162m to flood mitigation and planning.

"Our counterparts over in Australia are calling on that kind of funding – even up to about $200 million Australian a year – to be regularly invested into climate change adaptation risk reduction measures."

Grafton said New Zealand needed to do the same.