Back to blog
Climate Adaptation 24 June 2026
The Climate Change Commission Just Told Us What We Already Know. The Question Is What We Do Next.
Dr. Taniora Maxwell
climate changeMāori communitiesmaraeTe Tiritigovernance
This month the Climate Change Commission released its 2026 National Climate Change Risk Assessment. It is the most comprehensive analysis of climate risk New Zealand has produced, and for the first time it treats the risks facing Māori as a standalone category alongside economic, environmental, and social risk.
That matters. Not because we needed a government report to tell us our marae are vulnerable, our urupā are eroding, and our coastal communities are on the front line. We know that. We have known it for generations. What matters is that the evidence is now documented in a form that policy makers, funders, and decision makers cannot ignore.
What the assessment actually says
The Commission identifies direct risks to Māori health, access to taonga species, Māori owned infrastructure, primary industries, tikanga, hapū and iwi identity, and Indigenous knowledge systems. NIWA data confirms what many of our whānau already experience: Māori communities are disproportionately located in areas exposed to sea level rise and coastal erosion. That means homes, marae, urupā, and wāhi tapu are not equally at risk across the population. They are more at risk, and less resourced to respond.
Think about what happened during Cyclone Gabrielle. Marae in Te Tai Rāwhiti and Hawke's Bay became emergency shelters, food distribution centres, coordination hubs, and places of healing. They did the work that formal civil defence systems could not. They did it because they have always done it. And they did it with almost no dedicated climate resilience funding.
The Commission recommends that the Government work in genuine partnership with iwi and Māori to embed Te Tiriti o Waitangi across all climate adaptation planning. The Government has agreed in principle. Principles, however, do not build flood defences. They do not relocate vulnerable infrastructure. They do not fund the marae that will be called on again when the next event hits.
Why this matters beyond the obvious
Te Hiringa Mahara, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, has made the connection that too many planners miss: climate events do not only destroy physical things. They fracture the social fabric that communities depend on. When a marae floods, it is not just a building that is damaged. It is the place where tangihanga are held, where rangatahi learn who they are, where kaumātua gather, where community decisions are made. Losing that, even temporarily, creates harm that no insurance policy covers.
This is why treating marae as community infrastructure, not cultural heritage, changes the conversation. A marae is a functioning community asset. It delivers social services, emergency response, governance, and wellbeing outcomes. It should be funded, maintained, and climate proofed accordingly.
What you should do
If you sit on a trust board, a rūnanga, or a Māori organisation of any kind, read the 2026 assessment. Then put it next to your strategic plan and ask a simple question: does our plan account for what this assessment describes?
If the answer is no, that is not a failure. It is a starting point. Climate adaptation is not a separate workstream. It is a lens that should sit across every decision you make about land, infrastructure, investment, and community development.
At T.I.I.N.A. we work alongside iwi and Māori organisations to integrate climate risk into governance, planning, and infrastructure decisions. Not as a theoretical exercise, but as practical work that protects communities and strengthens long term resilience.
The Commission has laid out the evidence. The question now is whether we wait for someone else to act on it, or whether we lead that response ourselves. For T.I.I.N.A., the answer has always been the same.