Two major reports released in recent weeks help illustrate the scale of New Zealand’s climate adaptation challenge – and some of the biggest barriers to tackling it.
The Climate Change Commission has found the country’s adaptation efforts are still not keeping pace with growing climate risks, with progress uneven and some areas slipping further behind.
It cited the potential for working more with nature to reduce those risks, but found this was being hampered by a lack of action, supportive policy and funding.
Meanwhile, an analysis from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment highlights a parallel obstacle: that information needed to make good environmental decisions is often fragmented, inaccessible or difficult to combine.
In our warming world, both reports reflect the need for a more strategic approach that nature-based solutions can help provide. Rather than relying solely on engineered defences, these solutions use natural systems to help manage climate impacts.
Protecting a community from flooding, for example, might involve restoring an upstream wetland, giving a river more room to move or strategically revegetating parts of a catchment – potentially reducing the need for ever-larger stopbanks.
But knowing which of these approaches will work – and where – depends on having the right information, along with the right system to support it.
Turning information into action
For all their promise, nature-based solutions won’t work equally well everywhere.
A wetland might reduce flooding in one part of a catchment but make little difference elsewhere. Similarly, re-vegetating an erosion-prone slope may deliver far greater benefits than planting already stable farmland.
Nor does every restoration project necessarily qualify as a nature-based solution.
Such interventions need to address a defined problem, work at an appropriate ecological scale and produce measurable benefits once implemented. International standards also require these projects to be practical, well governed and monitored over time to ensure they are working.
In recent research, we argued that strategic native re-vegetation needs to work at three levels: national priorities, ecological processes across landscapes, and decisions made on individual farms and other whenua (land).
The landscape, such as a river catchment, is where these ecological processes come together, while individual farms and properties are where action typically happens.
A federated environmental data system proposed by the parliamentary commissioner could provide an important foundation for this kind of strategic thinking. But better-organised data alone won’t be enough.
What’s missing is what we call a “landscape intelligence” system. This would bring together information about ecosystems, hazards, land use and communities, alongside the tools needed to turn that information into practical decisions.
New Zealand already has many working examples to show both the potential of using better information for climate adaptation – and its limitations. Our own work in Doubtless Bay, Te Tai Tokerau, is one of them.
The catchment faces a range of climate-related risks, alongside declining freshwater and coastal habitats. Through the Department of Conservation’s Ng? Awa programme, restoration ecologist Adam Forbes and I worked with hap? and other community members to explore how revegetation could support climate adaptation.
We combined local knowledge with spatial data to identify potential nature-based solutions and to map environmental vulnerabilities across the catchment. This showed where problems such as erosion, poor water quality and flooding overlap – and where revegetation or wetland restoration could deliver several benefits at once.
But maps can only take us so far. They can’t tell us whether a landowner can afford the recommended work, how restoration costs should be shared among those who benefit, or whether nature-based solutions, engineering or a combination of the two would work best.
Making those decisions requires more than good environmental information. It also requires modelling and economic analysis, Te Tiriti-informed governance and credible ways of financing the work.
The cost of waiting
The costs of climate change are already being felt by communities across New Zealand. Yet 97% of government spending on natural hazards since 2010 has gone towards response and recovery, compared with just 3% for risk reduction and resilience.
The longer New Zealand delays investing in climate adaptation, the greater those costs are likely to become. All the while, catchment groups, hap?, landowners and volunteers are developing local plans, gathering environmental information and putting nature-based solutions and restoration projects into practice.
Much of this work is being done with limited support, with no clear pathway for turning local priorities into sustained public investment.
That is not a durable national adaptation strategy. Communities cannot be expected to build long-term responses to climate change around volunteer labour, fragmented information and temporary grants.
New approaches to nature finance, such as those being developed by the digital platform Toha Network, could help share the costs of nature-based solutions across the public and private sectors.
When carefully designed and put in the right places, these solutions can reduce risks from flooding, erosion and water scarcity, while delivering wider ecological and social benefits.
New Zealand already has capable scientists and communities ready to act. What it lacks is a national system that makes effective nature-based solutions easier to identify, fund, deliver and evaluate.
Bringing these pieces together will be crucial if “working with nature” is to move from an attractive policy aspiration to a practical part of adapting to climate change.
Bradley Case has received research funding from the Department of Conservation.
Since H5 bird flu arrived in Portland, Victoria, the situation has been “pretty grim” with many dead and suffering birds on the beach, and the dilemma of how to dispose of the carcasses, according to local resident Lynn Murrell.
But since the first confirmed case in a fur seal on Sunday at Beachport, South Australia – a two-hour trip over the border – people have been worried for their local “pet seal”, known as Sammy.
Murujuga is a sacred cultural landscape of land and sea Country across the Burrup Peninsula and Dampier Archipelago, in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
It contains an estimated 1 million to 2 million petroglyphs, or rock engravings, that tell the story of the relationship between Ngarda-Ngarli Traditional Owners and this landscape over at least 50,000 years. These petroglyphs hold deep meaning for Ngarda-Ngarli, embodying cultural, spiritual, ancestral and environmental knowledge.
In July 2025, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in recognition of its outstanding cultural and spiritual significance. This brought renewed attention to Murujuga, which exists alongside longstanding industrial complexes that process commodities such as liquefied natural gas (LNG). Concerns have been raised that industrial pollution is degrading the rock art.
At the heart of our work is a question: how can this extraordinary place, and the rock art it contains, be protected into the future?
Today we released the third annual peer-reviewed report of the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program (MRAMP). This government-funded research effort doesn’t resolve every question – understanding a system as complex as Murujuga takes time. The research is undertaken by a team of more than 30 multidisciplinary researchers, and independently peer reviewed by a range of international experts. It is solely written by the researchers.
This work gives us a clearer picture than ever before of what’s driving changes observed in the rock surfaces.
MRAMP rangers change samplers at an air quality monitoring station.Ben Mullins
A shift in the evidence
Last year we found some rock surfaces near industrial areas showed increased surface porosity, meaning there were measurable structural differences compared with rocks further away. These rocks have weathered or deteriorated more, and may be at greater risk of fading or flaking if this continues.
This year, we used an expanded dataset to build a more complete snapshot of porosity across Murujuga. Importantly, both datasets told the same story: there is a statistically significant porosity pattern across the peninsula, with higher porosity being found closer to industrial sites. Put simply, rocks closer to industrial sites are more porous than those further away.
Earlier monitoring pointed to nitrogen dioxide, the most abundant air pollutant gas at Murujuga, as a possible cause. But our data at the time couldn’t clearly separate its effects from other air-borne pollutants, particularly sulphur dioxide.
This year’s results change that picture. Several lines of evidence – atmospheric chemistry, rainfall pH and laboratory testing – now point to historic levels of sulphur dioxide from a range of industry and shipping, and the acid rain it can produce, as the most relevant factor.
The chemistry behind this is well understood: sulphur dioxide reacts in the atmosphere or on the rock surface to form sulphuric acid. This can dissolve the manganese and iron oxide minerals that give the rock varnish its dark colour, to create porosity.
Historic emissions the problem
These findings are significant, because sulphur dioxide emissions have fallen sharply since the 1980s, both at Murujuga and globally. Our evidence suggests it was historic peaks in sulphur dioxide, rather than current emissions, that made these rocks more porous.
It’s likely this process acted in conjunction with microbial activity on the rock surface.
Working out how those factors interact is a key task for our fourth and final report, out next year. Experiments to date suggest ammonia may influence some of the chemical and biological processes occurring on rock surfaces. However, current evidence suggests industrial ammonia emissions are too recent to explain the long-term porosity pattern observed across Murujuga. Historic sulphur dioxide remains the strongest explanation supported by the available evidence.
This conclusion rests on a large body of evidence. Across three years, we’ve measured rock surface condition 186,000 times. And these results have been backed by air quality monitoring across the peninsula, continuous rainfall chemistry sampling, and more than 5,500 laboratory tests on rock samples.
Together, they point to the same conclusion: the elevated rock porosity is most consistent with historic sulphur dioxide emissions, rather than current air pollution.
Rock art of terrestrial and marine fauna at Murujuga.Ken Mulvaney
What about current air pollution?
This is the question we’re asked most often. It deserves a careful answer.
During monitoring, we did not observe acid rain. Air quality has generally remained below environmental thresholds developed through our program. We have not found measurable acceleration of rock deterioration linked to current pollution. However, this is different from proving that no effect, however small, could ever occur.
All rock weathers naturally over time, and monitoring can only rule out effects large enough for current methods to detect. Other researchers, working with different experimental methods and smaller sample numbers have reached different conclusions.
Our research is built on three years of continuous, multidisciplinary monitoring, rather than a single study.
What happens now?
Damage to landscapes such as Murujuga rarely have a single cause. We’re tracking how many factors interact, sometimes over decades.
The fourth and final year of this research will focus on the interplay of air quality, rock surfaces and microbial communities. We will also complete the environmental criteria to protect Murujuga in the long term, with a focus on ammonia and ozone, in addition to sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. However, ongoing monitoring will continue to ensure the protection of the rock art.
Murujuga has been cared for by Ngarda-Ngarli for more than 50,000 years. Our hope is this evidence continues to support that stewardship, and helps protect this extraordinary cultural landscape for many generations to come.
The Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program is funded by the WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation.
Ben Mullins receives funding from the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (Government of Western Australia) as part of the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Project.
Belinda Churnside serves as a director of Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC). She is also employed by MAC as the cultural advisor, a role within the Murujuga Land and Sea Unit (MLSU). This position is funded by industries operating within the Burrup and Maitland Industrial Estate Agreement (BMIEA) area.
MAC receives funding support from both state and federal government departments, as well as from industry partners operating within the BMIEA area. The Department of Water and Environmental Regulation provides operational and strategic support for the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program. All funding sources and expenditures are reported in MAC’s annual financial report.
Katy Evans receives funding from the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation as part of the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Project.
Nicola Armstrong receives funding from the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation as part of the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Project.
A poultry market founder says bird flu fears could drive a spike in demand for backyard chooks to rival that seen during the COVID-19 pandemic if supermarket eggs become scarce.
