Government report: Ngā mea hirahira o te ao Māori – Climate Change Risks to the Māori Domain, NCCRA 2026
- May 31
- 1 min read
Published in May 2026 as a companion report to the 2026 National Climate Change Risk Assessment, Ngā mea hirahira o te ao Māori ("things of importance in the Māori world") is an independent kaupapa Māori assessment of climate-related risks to iwi and Māori. It was prepared by Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research and the University of Waikato for He Pou a Rangi – Climate Change Commission, and its findings were formally adopted into the Commission's national advice.
The report assesses seven interrelated risks: loss of access to taonga species; damage to Māori infrastructure including marae, urupā and papakāinga; economic losses in Māori primary industries; disruption to tikanga and hapū/iwi identity; loss of indigenous knowledge systems; legal exclusion and governance failures; and increased health vulnerabilities. All seven risks are rated at high severity in the present day and are projected to reach extreme severity under high-emissions scenarios by 2090. Policy readiness is assessed as either insufficient or presenting significant gaps across every risk — meaning that even full implementation of current policy would leave Māori communities facing disproportionately high residual risk.
The report's findings sit directly alongside the work of Project Kāinga. The risks it documents — to marae, papakāinga, kaimoana, mātauranga, and hapū governance — are the same risks our partner communities in Te Tai Tokerau are navigating now. Its central argument, that Māori-led, place-based, mana motuhake-affirming adaptation is both necessary and currently unsupported by the policy system, is precisely what the kāinga planning process has been built to address.
