Te Rimu Ahu Whenua Land Trust in the Face of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change poses an escalating global threat, with Māori—the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand—disproportionately exposed to its cumulative impacts. Increasingly frequent and severe weather events require Māori landowners to develop adaptive strategies that protect and sustain lands to which they hold enduring cultural, spiritual, and genealogical ties. Despite this urgency, limited research examines how small, rural Māori land trusts navigate climate risks while upholding tikanga, whakapapa obligations, and intergenerational responsibilities. Drawing on my doctoral research, this article examines how Te Rimu Ahu Whenua Trust, located in Te Araroa on the East Coast, is responding to these pressures. Using a whakapapa research methodology, it centres the perspectives of five trustees who discuss the changing climate, its impacts on the Trust’s whenua, and their aspirations for the future. Their reflections highlight mounting environmental concerns—particularly erosion, river instability, and ecosystem degradation—alongside the values, leadership practices, and succession needs that shape decision-making. The study provides new empirical insight into Māori climate adaptation and shows how Māori land trusts operate as critical, yet often under-recognised, sites of Indigenous climate leadership. By foregrounding place-based governance grounded in cultural values, the findings offer practical guidance for district and regional councils, government agencies, funders, Māori landowners, Māori land trusts, Māori communities, and Indigenous peoples globally who are confronting similar climate-related challenges.