The government must urgently decide how the country will pay for climate change adaptation, the Climate Change Commission says.

In a report published on Tuesday, the commission said New Zealand's progress on adaptation was "patchy" and was not keeping pace with how fast the risks were growing.

While there had been some progress since its last update in 2024, delays on crucial issues such as funding were leaving communities exposed to greater damage, disruption and costs.

"The pace and scale of the action required is growing year by year," the report said.

"Sharp efforts to reduce future climate-related risk are needed to avoid an intensifying spiral of urgent response to extreme events without time between to fully recover."

It made six urgent recommendations, saying they were not "pick and mix" but must be put in place together.

Investing in proactive adaptation would help to reduce future costs and protect communities, but there were not enough resources available at the moment to do that, the report found.

Central government must first decide what it would and would not pay for itself, to make it clear what the funding gap would be.

Then it needed to work with local councils and the private sector to find new ways to fund and finance the remaining costs.

Last month, the government introduced legislation that would require councils to make adaptation plans for high-risk areas, at least 30 years into the future.

The commission said that was an important step, and partly addressed its second recommendation to require local adaptation planning.

However, without any decisions about who would pay, the proposed changes would "increase the gap between what is required and funds available to local government".

The government has repeatedly said it will defer any decisions about cost-sharing until the next parliamentary term.

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts told RNZ last month that the government was not "head in the sand" about the potential costs, but it was the most complex and politically charged part of the adaptation challenge.

The commission said while the proposed requirements for local adpatation plans were positive, it was not clear how a high-priority location would be defined.

The report's other recommendations are that the government:

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Embed climate change into laws governing the natural and built environment and make sure they are not working at cross-purposesImprove national climate change data and make it accessible and usable for allEnsure iwi/Māori can plan for and carry out adaptationMake the next national adaptation plan - due in 2028 - a stronger driver of action,=.