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- Date published:
12:41 am, March 29th, 2026 - 13 comments
Categories: 2026 oil crisis, energy -
Tags: community action, community mutual aid, wise response, Wise Response Society
This guide from Wise Response was originally published the 20th March.
At the time of writing, New Zealand has roughly 20 to 27 days of physical onshore fuel stocks. We import 100% of our refined fuel. The Strait of Hormuz crisis has already triggered Force Majeure declarations from Gulf and Asian suppliers, and the late March escalation has destroyed refining infrastructure that will take years to rebuild, if it is rebuilt at all.
Government will do what government does: triage. Hospitals, police, essential freight corridors. That is appropriate. But it means communities are largely on their own for everything else – food distribution, transport, heating, health access, economic survival. Civil Defence is built for earthquakes and floods, not for a slow-onset nationwide supply chain collapse with no clear end date.
So we wrote a guide.
When the Trucks Stop: Mutual Aid Arrangements for a Fuel-Constrained New Zealand is a practical briefing covering ten areas where communities can organise now to meet basic needs if fuel imports fall to zero or near-zero for weeks or months. It covers food production and distribution, water, energy, transport, health, economic alternatives like timebanking and local currencies, communication, governance, and the specific needs of vulnerable populations.
It is not theory. It draws on real precedents – Cuba’s Special Period, the Lyttelton TimeBank after the Christchurch earthquake, Puerto Rico’s community microgrids after Hurricane Maria, Ukraine’s rapid urban farming response. These are places where people faced severe fuel or supply disruption and found ways through it. Not comfortably. Not without suffering. But they made it work, and the common thread in every case was community-level organisation that was already in place, or was built fast, before the worst hit.
The document plans for the worst case whilst hoping for a better outcome. The arrangements it describes cost almost nothing to establish and strengthen communities regardless of whether severe disruption eventuates. If it does, they could prove decisive.
This is a living document and we want your input. The Google Doc version is open for comments. If you know of resources, models, organisations, or practical experience that should be included, please add a comment or get in touch. We will edit contributions into the guide as they come in. This is a community document for community use. It is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence – share it, adapt it, translate it, print it out and pin it to the noticeboard at your local dairy.
What you can do this week:
The time for preparation is before you need it. That time is now.
Read and contribute to the full guide
Download current version as PDF
Since 2013, we have operated as Aotearoa New Zealand’s coalition of “adults in the room.” Founded under the patronage of Sir Alan Mark and Sir Geoffrey Palmer , we are a collective of scientists, engineers, legal experts, and thinkers who refuse to ignore the elephant in the room: Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
For over a decade, we have fought this battle in the Environment Court, in Select Committees, and in technical submissions to the Productivity and Infrastructure Commissions. We have done the hard work of calculating Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and exposing the biophysical impossibility of “decoupling” GDP from environmental damage.
Is this a fragment of a quote from somewhere (unassigned and unclosed)?
Desperate times, sure, but The Standard has standards 🙂
it's from the document in the cross-post.
The guide is very detailed and I haven't read all of it yet.
But, so far, with respect to the looming possible fuel, food & transport crisis in a city like Auckland: some of the ideas in the guide are doable, but a lot of it requires longer term planning, development, and building of sustainable social networks.
eg, for those of us living in apartment blocks, community gardens across the network of city locations requires more than just individual communities coming together & sorting themselves out. As the guide said, it worked in Cuba overtime to develop mutual aid and community gardens but it's population is smaller than in NZ cities.
It seems to me for the near future, there needs to be more govt direction and planning than the guide seems to indicate. It says the role of govt would be the health system, law enforcement, and transport.
In Auckland, if there is a massive run on supermarkets, as some are predicting could happen, law enforcement would be a major issue re- the community and backyard gardens that do exist. I can see some people resorting to going into neighbourhoods and helping themselves from other people's gardens.
At the least there would also be an extensive need for an active co-ordination role being lead by local boards and councils.
But if the transport & food distribution system is severely impact in the next month or so, as some are predicting, then there won't be time for organising and planting community/neighbourhood gardens.
Havana is probably similar in size to Auckland.
Re government, I don't think central government would get involved at the community level, but I agree they should be leading. They could for instance set up teams within government departments to help communities organise food growing.
The time to organise and plant is now. Anyone and everyone who can grow food should be and those with established gardens should be putting in excess produce. It's hard to say this without panicking people but if things go very badly what we do this week and next is what will make the difference.
Some parts of the country can grow more over the next 6 months than others. The South Island will be relying on the NI if it comes down to it. We can't really grow high calorie food for winter (but we can and should be growing for spring and early summer).
If I lived in an apartment I'd be looking at easy to grow food like mung bean sprouts and high nutrient plants in pots. NZ might manage calories but not manage fresh produce with vitamins etc. Anything we can do now will help if it comes to it.
Lots of people in cities have been thinking about these things for a long time and already know how to grow food, and they're often community minded. Other people are just gardeners and often need help eg older people. Helping neighbours grow food is viable if no community gardens are around.
The idea that people will raid gardens is a very strong motivator for making sure people don't get left behind.
People who know what to look for and have practised foraging will benefit from having thought ahead, as will their nearest and dearest. Gather your acorns now. Take care with mushrooms. Many seaweeds are edible (not the "Wellington" varieties) If only, if only someone had thought ahead and spread foragables throughout their community "waste spaces" 🙂
If only, if only someone had thought ahead and spread foragables throughout their community "waste spaces"
Indeed. but we are far away from that being a widespread attitude, especially in our current govt.
When I was walking around my local area today, I was thinking how that would be possible with the right kind of mentality.
My small apartment is in a small block of apartments that is pretty modestly priced amongst some very wealth houses on quarter acre sections. In the last decade, within walking distance, there's been a bit of mid density intensification.
There are a fair amount of 2 storey apartment blocks, plus some fairly new blocks of town and terraced housing. There's also a few bigger apartment complexes, especially getting towards the city side and Eden Terrace: some fairly big complexes of 4-6 storey apartments, plus a couple of aged care/ 'independent living' apartment complexes of 2-3 storeys, and a limited amount of outdoor space.
I don't think growing food in public park spaces in the area would cater to everyone living here, especially as the area is within walking or e-scooter distance for able-bodied, healthy people living in those big apartment blocks in the central city.
However, more could also be done to grow food on the quarter acre sections – some are mostly cemented over. But others, where they do have gardens, they grow flowers and small bushes, as well as having lawned areas.
But, it also occurred to me, with the right kind of mentality, all the roadside berms could also be used to grow food – if people were prepared to leave it for whoever wanted to take it. And if the Seymour-voting residents were welcoming to whoever needed to come into their streets and take what they needed.
Yesterday, 1News had an article about what's happening in Christchurch right now with the rising food costs, and limited govt initiatives to ensure everyone can get food.
'Food pantry break-in highlights rising strain as food costs climb'
The article also mentioned that some in the pantry were cultivating a community garden:
"…all the roadside berms could also be used to grow food…"
And we won't have to worry about exhaust-fumes contaminating the vegetables 🙂
Oh. Hadn't thought of that.
Mind you, isn't that true of other city food growing to some extent. eg backyards, small public reserves, etc?
And if transport was all electric, walking and non-electric cycling?
Janice Lee is the new Labour candidate for Invercargill.
This is very good news.
"Janice Lee’s ultimate goal is to build a resilient, inclusive community where elders and people with disabilities achieve independence and wellbeing through sustainable food sovereignty, empowerment, and supportive living environments."
https://www.wao.co.nz/speakers/janice-lee
Weka:
The time to organise and plant is now. Anyone and everyone who can grow food should be and those with established gardens should be putting in excess produce. It's hard to say this without panicking people but if things go very badly what we do this week and next is what will make the difference.
Well, yes, but it is more likely to be mostly by and of benefit to the middle and upper classes, while we still have a strong streak of individualistic 'let the market decide' mentality. And when the market decides, those on low incomes suffer the most. So it will still require major government led initiatives in the next few months to ensure that everyone is adequately housed, fed and cared for.
I live in the heart of one of the major centres for that mentality: Mt Eden, in the Epsom electorate. And the media and social media continue to spin that ideology. So there needs to be a major campaign the change attitudes, which I doubt we'll get from the current govt.
Havana is a similar population to Auckland, but spread out over a wider area. And they shifted to more community growing systems when the economic crunch came. By that time that had already had a strong and quite powerful socialist mentality among many.
Once the Mt Edenites feel the pinch of an empty stomach, their ideological blinkers will drop to the ground and they'll notice the soil.
The fuel situation and resulting panic highlights how dependant we have become on 'others' to provide our food and how distanced we are from the source of food and health being grounded in the earth. Councils enable developers to purchase residential properties for apartment blocks with no provision for community or individual gardens.Councils could encourage co housing with spaces for growing food by supporting financially the purchase of. land by groups willing to develop community living spaces for residents.