Climate adaptation in Aotearoa New Zealand is already part of day-to-day work for many of us. Across the country, communities, councils, iwi and hapū, and sector groups are dealing with changing rainfall patterns, more frequent flooding and drought, coastal exposure, and ongoing pressures on freshwater and biodiversity. Productive landscapes are also feeling the effects, with increasing variability shaping land use decisions and long-term planning.
At the same time, the institutional landscape remains in flux. Responsibilities for adaptation sit across central and local government, resource management processes, iwi and hapū, and a wide range of sector and community actors. Roles are not always clear, and expectations continue to evolve. Much of the work involves navigating across mandates, timeframes, and ways of working that do not always line up neatly.
Obligations under te Tiriti o Waitangi are central in this space. In many places, iwi and hapū are leading adaptation thinking and action, particularly where climate impacts intersect with whenua, mahinga kai, and coastal settlements.
This page brings together a set of open-access resources that are useful in this context. It is intended as a practical entry point for those already working in, or alongside, adaptation processes in Aotearoa, particularly where work is place-based and involves multiple organisations and perspectives.
It sits alongside the broader /climate-adaptation/ page, which focuses more on facilitation, monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), and process design across different adaptation settings.
Working in Aotearoa contexts
In practice, how we work often matters as much as the technical content of adaptation itself.
Mātauranga Māori and iwi-led processes bring their own frameworks, values, and governance. These are not simply inputs into existing processes, but shape how work is framed and carried out. This page does not attempt to interpret those approaches. Instead, it points to resources that can support working respectfully across knowledge systems. A broader set of material is available on the indigenous knowledge page on this site.
Experience across co-design processes with tangata whenua highlights the importance of long-term relationships, shared leadership, and taking the time to work kanohi ki te kanohi. Short-term or transactional approaches tend to struggle, particularly where trust and history are part of the context.
At the same time, adaptation work in Aotearoa typically involves a wider mix of perspectives and forms of knowledge. These may include farming and land management experience, community and local knowledge, sector and industry perspectives, and in some contexts values held within faith-based or cultural communities. Each brings different ways of understanding change, risk, and what matters in a particular place.
Working across these perspectives is not straightforward. It involves making space for different ways of knowing, recognising where perspectives align or diverge, and building shared understanding over time. In practice, much of the work sits in these conversations, as much as in the technical aspects of adaptation.
How to use this page
You can dip into the sections below depending on where you are in your work.
- if you need a clearer sense of the current policy landscape, start with the first section
- if you are looking for practical tools and data to support climate adaptation in New Zealand, the second section may be more useful
- if you want to step back and reflect on approaches and examples from practice, the third section points to a small set of research and learning resources
The intention is not to be comprehensive, but to highlight material that is useful in practice.
Policy and institutional landscape
The following resources provide context on how adaptation is currently structured and assessed nationally.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s first National Adaptation Plan (2022)
This sets out the current programme of government action (2022–28), including work on risk-informed decision-making, climate-resilient development, managed retreat, and embedding resilience. It also includes actions relating to Māori climate priorities and participation in policy processes.
National Adaptation Framework – Ministry for the Environment
This outlines how adaptation is intended to be coordinated across agencies and sectors, including roles, responsibilities, and approaches to investment and cost-sharing. It is useful context when working across organisational boundaries.
He Pou a Rangi – Climate Change Commission: Assessing Adaptation Progress (NAPPA 2024)
This is the first independent assessment of how adaptation is progressing nationally. It highlights gaps in data, tools, and coordination, and is particularly relevant for those involved in monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
Practical tools and open-access data
These resources support planning, analysis, and ongoing monitoring for climate adaptation work in New Zealand contexts.
NIWA Climate Change Adaptation Toolbox
A practical, step-by-step framework based on pathways thinking, designed to support staged decision-making under uncertainty.
ClimateWise – Climate Connect Aotearoa
A platform to support organisations in assessing climate risk and planning responses, with tools and guidance developed for New Zealand contexts.
LAWA – Land, Air, Water Aotearoa
An open-access data platform covering rivers, lakes, groundwater, air quality, and land use. It is widely used for establishing baselines and tracking environmental change over time.
Effective indicators for place-based initiatives 
A practical, downloadable guide to developing and using indicators in collaborative, multi-actor settings. It outlines a six-step process and connects indicators to system understanding, programme design, learning and decision-making.
Research and learning resources
These publications provide a way to step back and reflect on how adaptation is being approached in Aotearoa. Alongside broader reviews, they include examples drawn from practice, particularly where co-design and place-based processes are central.
Climate change adaptation through an integrative lens in Aotearoa New Zealand
This paper reviews adaptation across different contexts, including ecosystems, indigenous communities, productive land use, and the built environment. It identifies key gaps and enabling conditions for more integrated approaches.
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)
The AR6 Working Group II report provides the wider evidence base on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, including material relevant to Aotearoa.
Balancing future land use decisions: Embracing co-design in the Pohewa Pae Tawhiti research programme
This open-access pre-print (2026) reflects on the co-design process behind the Pohewa Pae Tawhiti research programme, led by Te Arawa Arataua. The work focuses on supporting Māori land trustees to make long-term land-use decisions in complex and changing conditions. It highlights patterns that emerged through shared leadership, iterative reflection, and culturally grounded facilitation, and offers insights relevant to other place-based initiatives working across knowledge systems.
A note on practice and ongoing work
Adaptation work here often involves working across different mandates, timeframes, and ways of knowing, while also responding to changing environmental conditions. In that context, one recurring challenge is how to develop indicators that are meaningful and usable over time.
This is particularly the case where outcomes are shared across organisations, unfold over long periods, and include both environmental and social dimensions. In many situations, the difficulty is not a lack of data, but how to connect what is being measured to the decisions that need to be made.
I am currently working on a short guide that draws together patterns from practice in this area, including work in freshwater, biosecurity, and other place-based programmes. It focuses on how indicators can support shared understanding, coordinated action, and ongoing learning in complex settings. A link will be added here once it is available.
This page will be updated as new resources emerge. If you are aware of useful open-access material that could be included, you are welcome to get in touch.
For broader frameworks and approaches to climate adaptation, including facilitation, monitoring, evaluation and learning, see the main climate adaptation page. For those working on how to track and interpret change in adaptation contexts, the pages on developing indicators and metrics and climate adaptation metrics bring together practical resources and reflections on how indicators support learning, judgement, and decision-making in complex settings. For approaches that support collaborative adaptation in practice, see the page on adaptive management which outlines iterative cycles of planning, action, reflection, and adjustment.