In Aotearoa New Zealand, record-breaking storms and flooding are impacting Māori land, health, and culture. And, according to a new national climate report, colonization has intensified those risks. The 2026 National Climate Change Risk Assessment is composed of four reports, including a companion document focused on Māori communities. That report argues that climate change is likely to deepen existing inequities shaped by colonization, exclusion from decision-making, and chronic underinvestment. To mitigate the impacts of climate change, the assessment points to Māori-led adaptation as uniquely effective. It calls for policy grounded in Māori customs and knowledge, Indigenous data sovereignty, and stronger Māori authority in climate decision-making. ‘For more than 150 years Māori have been pushed to the margins, literally, by an aggressive colonization process,’ said Paora Tapsell, who is Ngāti Whakaue and Ngāti Raukawa, and the director of the Kāika Institute of Climate Resilience at Lincoln University. The assessment, released earlier this month, adds to a growing body of national reports that highlight the harmful impacts of colonial policies on Indigenous peoples and the environment. In 2023, the United States’ Fifth National Climate Assessment found that land theft and colonization had exacerbated climate change’s impact. The year before, Australia’s State of the Environment report was prepared with an Indigenous lead author for the first time; it found that Indigenous peoples were more likely to be impacted by extreme weather events like fires. It too called for incorporating Indigenous knowledge into climate policies. Despite these findings, Indigenous leaders around the world say national governments are still not listening to them. Aotearoa New Zealand recently experienced one of its most active severe weather seasons on record, with multiple declared states of emergency across the nation’s two islands. It also found that the country’s Indigenous peoples are essential in responding to such disasters. ‘The report accurately acknowledges that many kāinga [Māori settlements], despite their relative impoverishment, are still willing first responders on the frontline of increasingly severe climate events,’ Shaun Awatere, who is Ngāti Porou and lead author of the companion report, said. The assessment’s seven interconnected risk areas span environmental, cultural, and economic domains. It says the loss of protected endemic species is not only a biodiversity issue, but also affects food gathering places, the Māori lunar calendar, traditional customs, and intergenerational knowledge systems. According to the report, some species could face near-irreversible decline in parts of the country under high-emissions scenarios by 2090. Read Next Indigenous peoples bear the brunt of climate change — and get almost none of the money to fight it Anita Hofschneider Across Māori lands, climate-driven extreme weather events have had a destructive impact on infrastructure. But the report outlines how flooding, erosion, storms, and wildfires also present cultural risks by threatening tribal meeting places, burial sites, and communal homes. It warns that repeated damage and displacement could lead to long-term cultural fragmentation and disconnection from ancestral land. Climate impacts may also be felt economically. Māori-owned forestry, farming, aquaculture, and horticulture enterprises face rising pressure from climate hazards, costs, and underinvestment in adaptation. Without structural reform and targeted support, the assessment says that economic vulnerability will increase. Awatere says the findings confirm what tribes have been saying for years. ‘Climate events do not arrive one at a time,’ he said. ‘A storm floods a road, damages a marae [tribal meeting place], erodes whenua [land], disrupts access to mahinga kai [food gathering places], and overwhelms health and welfare systems that were already stretched, all at once. Each of those harms compounds the next.’ The assessment also said climate-driven displacement and ecological degradation could disrupt the transmission of language, customary practices, lineage relationships, and Indigenous knowledge systems between generations. Awatere highlighted ongoing structural exclusion of Māori from climate planning and adaptation systems, despite the government’s obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi, which is the country’s founding document. The report describes legal exclusion and governance failure as a major risk multiplier, compounding climate impacts across all domains. Awatere says the central question is whether adaptation plans will reflect that evidence, or whether Māori communities will continue to carry a disproportionate risk of harm. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Māori climate risk worsened by colonization, report finds on May 19, 2026.