The climate fight we’ve avoided

Sunday, 26 April 2026

Luke Malpass is politics, business and economics editor.

OPINION: Resilience. The word rolls easily off the tongue. Politicians invoke it often. The New Zealand state is keen to build more of it. Climate change demands it.

And yet.

The devastating floods in Wellington this week were another reminder of how climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather.

The problem is not a lack of awareness. It is that the politics of climate change - how much New Zealand should cut emissions, and how that fits into global efforts - has crowded out something more immediate: planning for the consequences.

At the central government level, that planning has been patchy. Local government has often done better on identifying risks, but has lacked the resources to respond at scale.

Climate policy has effectively split in two. On one side sits emissions reduction—politically charged, highly visible, and often ideological. It is where the culture wars play out. It matters, and New Zealand should do its part. But its impact is ultimately limited by what the rest of the world does.

On the other side is adaptation - less visible, less politically rewarding, but far more within New Zealand’s control.

That is where the hardest decisions lie.

The Government’s work on a national flood map is a useful step, bringing together data to show where risks are most acute. The National Adaptation Plan exists. But these efforts have yet to translate into the scale of action required.

Because at its core, this is not an abstract environmental issue. It is about where people can live safely.

Some parts of New Zealand will, over time, become uninhabitable. Coastal areas will face increasing limits on development. Other communities will require significant investment in flood protection to remain viable.

Those choices will be expensive, politically fraught, and, in many cases, deeply unpopular.

They also come at a time of mounting pressure on the public purse - from an ageing population to rising defence spending in a world of geostrategic competition.

In the meantime, the market is moving. Insurers are pricing risk more sharply. Banks are signalling that some properties may become unmortgageable. The direction of travel is clear, even if the politics is not.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, despite a difficult week, has been relatively consistent in acknowledging the scale of the adaptation challenge. He quite genuinely believes some of these things need to be bipartisan and has probably spent as much time on the issue that political incentives and government finances allow.

Work led by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (a department that since the early 1990s has been underpowered and underfunded) on resilience and the new National Resilience System is a sign the issue is being taken seriously within government.

But policy seriousness needs to translate into political candour and committed resources.

If fiscal conditions were easier, a nation-building programme of flood protection and climate resilience would be an obvious political winner. Regardless of that, however, in reality, choices will have to be made about who and what is protected - and who and what is not.

There are a lot of people doing a lot of climate change work up and down the country and doing some serious thinking about it. But it really now requires political leadership. Kiwis deserve to be levelled with about the changes that might be coming down the line.

No politician relishes delivering that kind of news. But whether it comes in the form of managed retreat, higher rates, new taxes, or a letter from a bank or insurer, it is coming.

The floods in the capital should serve as a warning.

Resilience is not a slogan. It is a set of decisions. And the longer those decisions are delayed, the harder they will become.

What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz. Please include your full name and address.