Climate adaptation justice as lived experience: insights from Aotearoa New Zealand

• First empirical study of climate adaptation justice in Aotearoa New Zealand. • Adaptation is a relational process connecting people, place, and ecosystems. • Multiple justice principles are interdependent for fair climate adaptation. • Māori and multispecies perspectives are central to demands for fair adaptation. • A new framework shows justice and resilience are prerequisites for effective policy. Climate adaptation raises profound questions of fairness: Who bears the greatest risks and costs, and who decides how to respond? This study explores how communities in Aotearoa New Zealand perceive “just” climate adaptation, grounding climate justice in lived experience. We draw on 64 in-depth interviews with people who have endured floods, storms, or droughts, alongside an analysis of public submissions to national adaptation policy processes. The findings reveal that climate adaptation is widely viewed as a deeply relational process connecting people, place, and more-than-human beings. Abstract justice principles – distributive, procedural, recognitional, intergenerational, corrective, epistemic, and multispecies justice – emerge as interdependent in participants’ accounts of fair adaptation. Communities actively audit adaptation fairness through expectations of collaboration, mutual care, and government accountability. Notably, Indigenous Māori perspectives (honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi /the Treaty of Waitangi partnership obligations) and the rights of ecosystems (legal personhood for rivers and forests) are seen as integral to just outcomes. These insights challenge universal notions of climate justice by demonstrating that what constitutes “just adaptation” is context-specific and grounded in the relationships between individuals and communities. We propose a relational framework for just adaptation that bridges theory and practice, concluding that equitable climate resilience hinges on transforming the social and ecological relationships that underlie vulnerability. Our study highlights that climate justice is not a peripheral ideal, but a crucial prerequisite for effective adaptation policy and action.