Territorial authorities will soon be required to plan ahead for climate change-related hazards. But the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill (Bill), introduced earlier this week, is silent on who pays for the implementation of those plans.

The Bill proposes a range of amendments to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 (CCRA) including amendments to the Emissions Trading Scheme and changes that deliver on the Government’s commitment in the National Adaptation Framework (which we discussed here). The most significant is to require councils with district functions to prepare adaptation plans for high-priority areas.

The adaptation plans are to “provide strategic planning and coordination of the actions and investment needed to manage climate-related natural hazard risks in a cost-effective way” at least 30 years into the future. The Bill covers how priority areas for adaptation plans will be identified, how adaptation plans interact with other parts of the planning regime under the new Planning Bill, and required content. What the Bill does not do, is give certainty about how those adaptation measures will be funded - an essential element of effective adaptation.

The Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport has indicated that the Bill is expected to be referred to the Select Committee process. We will continue to follow the Bill’s progress through Select Committee.

Key takeaways

• Territorial authorities will need to prepare 30-year climate change and hazard risk adaptation plans for priority locations identified in regional spatial plans.

• The plans must cover risk management objectives, response options, triggers, and indicative cost estimates and funding sources.

• Existing or substantially complete adaptation plans can be transitioned into the new framework.

• The Bill is silent on how adaptation measures will be funded, enforced and how they will interact with the wider planning regime.

How the adaptation plans work

The framework for adaptation plans is built around the concept of a “priority location”, which is an area identified by a spatial planning committee in a regional spatial plan (RSP) as requiring an adaptation plan. RSPs are the new regional planning instruments to be prepared under the Planning Bill (assuming it is passed into law).

Read more about RSPs and how they fit into the new resource management system’s architecture here.

The Bill distinguishes between “priority group 1” and “priority group 2 locations” in an RSP, though the criteria for assigning locations to one priority group or the other are not set out in the Bill itself. Nor is there any guidance on this in the RSP-related provisions of the Planning Bill (as at first reading).

Territorial authorities may also choose to adopt adaptation plans for areas not identified as priority locations. All adaptation plans must use the special consultative procedure. The Bill does not set any criteria for when a non-priority location may require an adaptation plan.

Once a priority location is identified, the timeframes for developing an adaptation plan run from when an RSP is notified as having been adopted for the relevant region:

Where a priority location spans more than one district, the affected territorial authorities must either each prepare an adaptation plan for their portion or jointly prepare a single plan. The Bill is silent on what happens if those councils cannot agree.

Territorial authorities that already have coastal or flood hazard adaptation plans have a two-year window from the Bill’s commencement date to have these plans approved and treated as adaptation plans under the CCRA. There is also a pathway for “substantially completed” plans to be treated as adaptation plans under the new framework.

Adaptation plans must be reviewed every ten years.

Content of adaptation plans

Adaptation plans must:

• have a minimum 30-year horizon;

• include objectives for managing climate-related natural hazard risk;

• identify the response options chosen, with reasons;

• specify triggers or thresholds for responses, including responses following a natural hazard (natural hazard including the effects of climate change);

• include indicative cost estimates and how the costs are intended to be met;

• include an implementation plan;

• set out monitoring, review and reporting arrangements; and

• include any other matters prescribed by regulations under the CCRA.

Interaction with the wider planning system

In developing adaptation plans, territorial authorities must have regard to:

• the national adaptation plan;

• any relevant:

  • spatial, land use or natural environment plan prepared under the Planning or Natural Environment Acts (assuming these are passed into law);

  • civil defence emergency management group plan prepared under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002;

  • planning document recognised by an iwi authority;

  • plan prepared under the Local Government Act 2002;

  • water services strategy and stormwater network risk management plan adopted under the Local Government (Water Services) Act 2025.

The list reflects the web of planning instruments that adaptation plans must sit alongside, and the complexity of the regulatory considerations for councils.

Importantly, the requirement for adaptation plans potentially creates a tension between the regulatory relief provisions in the Planning Bill which (if enacted as introduced) would give landowners a right to claim relief for impacts on the reasonable use of land. Adaptation plans are likely to generate options that would give rise to claims for regulatory relief, such as restrictions on the use of land or requirements to take measures to build the resilience of the land against natural disaster. Clarity will be needed on how these tensions are to be resolved and, importantly, how local authorities are to resolve the competing obligations between regulatory relief and climate change adaptation measures.

The missing pieces - funding and requirement to act?

The Bill requires adaptation plans to ’include the indicative high-level cost estimates of response options, and how the costs are intended to be met’. One of the purposes of adaptation plans is ‘communicate how those risks are intended to be managed by local authorities’, so it is implied that local authorities play a role in their management. It is not clear if the costs of adaptation must be met by councils however, and there is no signal that any additional funding (whether in the form of co-funding, levies or other revenue tools) will be made available to the already financially constrained local government sector for that purpose.

While the Bill states that it is intended to ‘support the strategic co-ordination of adaptation actions and investments’, it is also not clear that anyone is legally required to take adaptation action or investment in response to an adaptation plan.

As we explored in our earlier article on the National Adaptation Framework, funding remains the central unresolved challenge. Without clear funding pathways, the risk is that adaptation planning becomes a CCRA compliance exercise rather than a catalyst for effective resilience. This risks situations where an adaptation option is flagged in an adaptation plan, but there is no funding for implementation, creating false expectations for landowners and risk for councils.

The changes also do not include any additional powers for local government to implement any adaptation measures, including taking land. It remains to be seen in the next version of the Planning Bill (due to be reported back from the Select Committee next week) - what the planning implications of ‘priority area’ identification might be (ie, whether regional spatial or land use plans could reflect the identified hazard risk through restrictions on use/development).

For background on the broader National Adaptation Framework and the key questions that remain, see our earlier article: Flood maps and funding gaps: The reality of NZ’s National Adaptation Plan.

We note that this Bill is separate from changes to the CCRA proposed by the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill to prevent liability in tort for climate change, as discussed in this article: Simpson Grierson - Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Bill: the detail has arrived.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about these changes or would like advice on the submission process, please get in touch with one of our experts listed below.

Special thanks to Tanmeet Singh and Rachael Berry for their help in preparing this article.