Call for evidence: National Climate Change Risk Assessment (NCCRA) 2026

Wherever possible, please provide evidence using this online form. This will help us manage and analyse your evidence.

The questions and information in this online form are available as downloads for offline reference:

• Offline information pack [PDF – 591 KB]
• Offline information pack [Microsoft Word – 319 KB]

If you are unable to use online form, you can provide your evidence by email:

• Download and complete this consent form (Microsoft Word – 158.7 KB)
• Email haveyoursay@climatecommission.govt.nz, attaching your evidence, your supporting information and your completed consent form

To provide your evidence by post, download and complete the consent form, and send it with your evidence and your supporting information to:

Call for evidence: NCCRA

Climate Change Commission

PO Box 24448

Wellington 6142

Please note: Email and postal submissions must include a completed consent form. Submissions without a consent form will not be accepted.

A core part of the Commission's role is to independently assess the risks that Aotearoa New Zealand faces from the current and future effects of climate change.

These include impacts related to sea level rise and heavy rainfall, cyclones and extreme weather events, erosion and landslides, warmer temperatures and heatwaves, and droughts, dry spells and wildfires.

The national climate change risk assessment will identify the most significant risks to Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy, society, environment, and ecology. We will assess the nature of the risks, their severity, and the need for co-ordinated actions to respond to them.

The first risk assessment was produced by the Ministry for the Environment in August 2020. The second assessment is due to be delivered to the Minister of Climate Change no later than 3 August 2026. We are calling for evidence now to ensure we have sufficient time to carefully consider a wide range of information and insights.

More information about this project is available on our website.

We're looking for high-quality and credible evidence – including mātauranga Māori – to help us understand what climate risks our nation faces, what the consequences of those risks are over time, and what actions can and are being taken to address those risks.

We are seeking evidence on:

• Climate risks that Aotearoa New Zealand faces: This includes evidence on particular risks now and under different future scenarios; hazard, exposure and vulnerability related to these risks; the potential consequences and flow on effects of these risks (or cascading risks); tipping points and thresholds that may elevate the severity of the risk; physical science, climate observations and projections; mātauranga Māori and traditional knowledge and observations.
• Actions to address risks: This includes evidence about what actions can and are being taken to address risks, the measurable impact of actions on risk, and shortfalls in planned adaptation.

We are particularly interested in new evidence generated since the first National Climate Change Risk Assessment was released in 2020, and evidence that was not included in the first assessment.

Evidence can take a range of forms, including academic journal articles, organisational reports, information about community-led adaptation processes, and people’s lived experience observing and adapting to the changing climate.

We are not looking for views or opinions at this stage – we will consider these later when we identify and prioritise the most significant risks.

If you have already submitted evidence as part of consultation run by government agencies that you think we should know about, please direct us to those submissions.

Please note the key information or material that relates to our call for evidence, and tag the evidence with our prompts so we can manage and analyse it accurately.

We will use this information to inform the national climate change risk assessment, and add it to the evidence base the Commission draws upon.

We will also ask your permission to publish your submission on this site (in part or in full).

Different communities, sectors and ecosystems will experience different impacts from climate change.

Assessing the risks they face involves looking at three elements: the types of hazards, and their exposure and vulnerability to those hazards.

• Climate hazards can be gradual changes (such as sea level rise, warming temperatures and changing seasonal weather patterns) or extreme events (such as cyclones, droughts and wildfires). While extreme events are not necessarily caused by climate change, it makes them more frequent and more severe.
• Exposure is the presence of people or things of value in areas at risk from a hazard. For example, buildings and infrastructure located in a low-lying area on a floodplain are exposed to flooding. 
• Vulnerability relates to factors that influence how much a hazard may impact a community or things of value This includes factors that affect the degree of impact (sensitivity) and the abililty to cope and change (adaptive capacity). For example, in a flood, a community with an older population is likely to be more vulnerable than one with more working age people.

The changing climate impacts many aspects of New Zealander’s lives and livelihoods and the environment.

For example, the changing trends and more extreme weather affect people’s homes and communities; marae and urupā; infrastructure like roads and water services; businesses and supply chains; people who make a living off the land; and the natural environment.

In carrying out the risk assessment, we are grouping risks into seven domains (interconnected topics):

• Natural environment – coastal, freshwater, marine and land-based biodiversity and environments.
• People, health and communities – people's identity, health, sense of community and social norms, and cultural values and traditions.
• Ngā mea hirahira o te ao Māori (things of importance in te ao Māori) – Māori interests and investments, health and wellbeing, culture and practices.
• Sectors relying on the natural environment – primary sectors, tourism and energy generation.
• Built environment – buildings, urban spaces and infrastructure.
• Economy and financial system – production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services, economic costs, and finance and insurance markets.
• Governance – governing architecture and processes of interaction and decision-making that exist in and between governments, economic and social institutions.

We acknowledge these seven domains are somewhat arbitrary, as risks can span multiple topics and may be interconnected – that is, risks from one domain will flow through to risks in other domains.