Advancing Indigenous climate justice: Māori perspectives on managed retreat and climate adaptation policy in Aotearoa New Zealand

As climate risks intensify globally, managed retreat is increasingly proposed as a necessary response to community displacement. Yet without explicit attention to equity and justice, such initiatives risk perpetuating historical and contemporary injustices. Drawing on Māori submissions to government policy-making processes regarding Aotearoa New Zealand's National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and the Inquiry into Community-based Retreat and Climate Adaptation as well as interviews with Māori involved in adaptation policy or projects, this paper examines how Māori frame climate adaptation through an Indigenous Climate Justice (ICJ) lens. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), our analysis identifies Māori demands spanning seven interconnected justice dimensions: procedural, distributive, recognitional, restorative, epistemic, multi-species, and intergenerational. Our findings reveal that Māori envision adaptation not merely as hazard management but as a profound opportunity to rectify colonial injustices, redistribute resources equitably, and embed Māori self-determination (rangatiratanga) in governance frameworks. Māori voices strongly critique conventional decision-making processes as inadequate and exclusionary, stressing the necessity of genuine partnership under Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi), integration of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems), and meaningful recognition of Indigenous authority and values. Managed retreat, in particular, is reframed as an opportunity for restorative action—returning land and governance authority, healing environments, and supporting Māori-led adaptation plans that maintain cultural continuity and intergenerational well-being. We argue that climate adaptation in settler-colonial contexts must explicitly centre Indigenous rights, knowledge systems, and worldviews to avoid reproducing colonial patterns of injustice. Māori perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand thus offer a transformative vision of climate adaptation—one grounded in restorative, collaborative models that prioritise Indigenous sovereignty, ecological integrity, and intergenerational flourishing for human and more-than-human communities alike.