The country began the year in mourning after extreme weather resulted in fatal landslips at Mount Maunganui and Welcome Bay.

Meanwhile, deadly winter storms in the US claimed numerous lives and disrupted thousands more and a global analysis revealed that 50 of the world’s 100 biggest cities now face severe water stress.

It’s a frightening time – and those were just January’s headlines.

Sarosh Mulla meets three writers whose work, across fiction and non-fiction, confront the climate emergency head-on: esteemed Indian novelist and thinker Amitav Ghosh, eco-thriller author Charlotte McConaghy (Wild Dark Shore, Migrations) and Toha Network co-founder David Hall (Kiwis in Climate).

They discuss their most pressing concerns about what lies ahead of us – and the action they hope their writing might spark.