The comments come as part of the submission's infrastructure considerations responding to the draft plan's proposal. Submissions close on June 3.
It said the infrastructure needed to be resilient to a changing climate so that it protected wellbeing for all.
This would support social infrastructure and communities.
Local infrastructure potentially affected by climate change also included roading and landfills.
"Much of the infrastructure affected by climate change is currently under the authority of local government.
"The expectation that our infrastructure is resilient to a changing climate is made without understanding the costs of achieving this for our communities," the submission said.
"The draft adaptation plan does not provide enough detail on how councils are to fund these additional costs. Regions such as Te Tai Tokerau have a significant coastline as well as being exposed to a range of climate change impacts from drought, storms and fluvial flooding.''
Extra funding and support would be needed so people across communities had equal access to climate adaptation actions.
Infrastructure connections between communities via roading and telecommunications were an important consideration.
"The connections between places ... are as important as the places themselves. These are lifelines and critical to the wellbeing of all communities.
"The committee requests that a further objective of connectivity of places ... be added (to the plan) as climate change poses a serious threat to the connectivity between places."
A Waka Kotahi NZTA climate change adaptation plan was important.
"This is critical for Te Tai Tokerau as it is a rural area with dispersed communities that are highly dependent on state highways for their mobility.''
State Highways 12 and 14 were the main thoroughfares through Kaipara, as were State Highways 1 and 15 through Whangārei.
Local government and tāngata whenua needed to be involved from the early stages of developing this plan.
The submission said NAP failed to clearly identify who would pay for climate adaptation planning and its implementation.
Local government could not fund required climate adaptation work from existing, mainly rates-derived income.
"Central government needs to investigate alternative funding avenues for local government and tāngata whenua roles and responsibilities that will not place an additional burden on ratepayers.
"The committee requests that more certainty be included in the NAP on how equity will be measured and tracked on a place by place, region by region basis.''
Te Tai Tokerau had been explicitly mentioned in the draft NAP as being subject to more frequent ex-tropical storms, more hot days, longer and more intense periods of drought and being prone to more frequent and intense wildfires. It had a low score on socio-economic indicators.
Regional anomalies facing the North needed to be accounted for in government climate change adaptation and retreat funding, to address equity issues.
Adaptation costs should be distributed across central government, local government, banks and insurers. This should be written into legislation and underwritten by central government through legislation.
"This protects private property owners while ensuring that government agencies, banks and insurers are protected from the actions of private property owners."
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