When the big stuff is overwhelming, there's comfort in taking control of something much smaller.

Christchurch political scientist Bronwyn Hayward has been grappling with probably the largest issue facing humanity – climate change.

And as solace, this expert in what makes communities tick enjoys building her own communities, dolls' houses, to be precise: "Making them is completely non-political and it is just lovely," she says.

Hayward was intimately involved, as a lead and contributing author, in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on the importance of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial temperatures. The document has major ramifications on the world's sustainable development, economic and social policy, and attempts to stamp out poverty.

A member of the University of Canterbury's (UC) political science and international relations department since 2006, Hayward, an associate professor, has spent lengthy spells overseas researching her specialist subjects of democracy, sustainability and young people.

A quick scan of her lengthy CV shows she was the inaugural joint winner of UC's Arts Conscience and Critic of Society Award in 2014 and has just been made a Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year "Local Hero".

Sitting on campus, her afternoon Earl Grey tea in a compostable cup and a cube of Christmas cake on a paper plate, Hayward's contagious effervescence is unleashed. She apologises several times for being unable to tell her story in "short, pithy" statements.

She enthusiastically explains the CYCLES (Children and Youth in Cities Lifestyle Evaluation) study, which is funded by the UK's Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity, she leads of young people in seven world cities – Christchurch; Dhaka (Bangladesh); Makhanda (South Africa); London; New Delhi; Sao Paulo; and Yokohama, and introduces her co-investigators.

For a woman who calls herself an "accidental activist", she is quietly spoken.

CZAREK SOKOLOWSKI/AP The mental toll on scientists dealing with climate change issues is higher than many might think, Dr Bronwyn Hayward says. Smoke stacks in Poland before the recent COP24 meeting.

So how has a political scientist ended up so deeply embedded in climate change work?

She says a "Eureka!" moment came at a presentation from Paris city officials after the 2003 heatwaves which killed thousands across Europe.

"The Parisian government officials hadn't realised they were in a heat crisis until morgues were practically overflowing, because it takes 11 days to register a death in France.

"I was just shocked that governance could create such a slowdown in response."

Until recently, climate change was "a problem happening in the future".

"It was happening to other people and it was going to be something expensive to fix. So all of those things meant it was something we didn't think about.

"One of the things that has been significant about the 1.5C report is the early research is showing it has had a major cut-through in changing that. Because we were only looking at a small temperature rise, it brings all the decision-making into the short and medium term.

"We're saying, actually it is already happening now, these are the changes we are needing to make now if we are to avoid a worse situation. If we don't do this it will cost us. So it has changed the way people view the risk, but that also has consequences of being overwhelming."

Hayward is relieved the recent COP24 climate change talks in Poland "didn't fall apart".

"That would have been a disaster. It's good that some agreement was made about how we will account for our carbon, but how we are going to measure that is very difficult to know.

"The real problem is the ambition is just nowhere near enough. Even in New Zealand, we are going to be struggling to meet our current very modest cuts that we'd set under the previous government.

"If we continue on this trajectory, we are adding to a 3.6C to 4C rise by the end of this century."

Hayward has been moved by the emotional and psychological effects on scientists working on climate change.

"Many of my colleagues in climate science are struggling with grief. There's frustration that people aren't listening, but you're working away on the science of it and then, all of a sudden, you stop and think about the reality of it."

She recalls seeing the high anxiety of colleagues while working in Brazil.

"There was this massive thunderstorm, huge hail smashing into the windows. And a colleague, who is a gruff, very lovely physicist, said, 'imagine this in a four-degree [rise] world'.

"I didn't quite hear him and I turned around and noticed that he was quickly brushing away tears.

"Every now and then it hits everybody. I think that's why I'm very grateful that I'm not just working on climate – that I'm also working with children and democracy, because it gives you that opportunity to listen to very hopeful, enthusiastic kids.

"We created this problem. It is going to take multiple generations to get out of this situation. But we actually have to lay the grounding and build the capacity for citizens and young citizens to lead and act."

Hayward says a lot of young mothers and grandparents have written to her, worried about climate change.

"That is one of the things that drives my work and makes me think, practically, how can we support kids? And a lot of the work I'm doing, like working in India or Ethiopia, the situations that kids are in already are extreme.

"It is quite moving to have the opportunity to work alongside local teens making small solutions that have been successful over several years. I've really come to respect doing the small things really well in communities that make a difference to children's lives now and into the future."

Hayward has concerns for global democracy. "Faced with fear, communities can react very badly – rush decisions, find community groups to scapegoat and make situations much worse. We will start eroding the fabric of our democracy and society, and strip children of their right to a democratic future as well as a sustainable one."

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/THE PRESS The army on the streets of Christchurch after the February 2011 earthquake.

The Canterbury earthquakes changed Hayward's modus operandi. She and her family had just arrived back from London on the morning of February 22, 2011.

"It was quite some homecoming.

"We had changed into the smaller plane to come to Christchurch and then the plane taxied back in and stopped and they said 'there's been an earthquake in Christchurch'. They said you could use your cellphones to 'ring your loved ones' and I thought, we don't use cellphones in planes and we don't talk about 'loved ones' unless it's really serious.

"For everyone in Canterbury, it just changed everything. The city had changed completely but the work had changed completely. I'd been thinking about climate change and how to support kids through big environmental changes like climate, but now suddenly it was, how do we support our communities here?

"I became involved with school protests in the face of threatened school closures. And I sort of became an accidental activist really, because you have to support your community."

Kirk Hargreaves Army troops arrive in Lyttelton to help after the February 2011 earthquake.

Many in the community were also concerned about the government appointing commissioners to Environment Canterbury and wanting to extend their tenure, Hayward says.

"I put in submissions and said it was a terrible thing to take people's taxation and not provide representation, and to use the earthquakes as an excuse to extend that at a time when changing climate means water becomes so important."

Iain McGregor Hekia Parata meeting Ouruhia School as part of her consultation into school closures and mergers across post-quake Christchurch. Hand-made notes from children hang from the rail while Parata talks with principal Mark Ashmore-Smith and board of trustees chair Lyn Bates.

Hayward has never felt "entirely relaxed" about the prospect of being in an ivory tower.

"I have worked outside in other jobs and I don't like the kind of university research where you come in, you shut the door, you write your papers that will get you promoted and you close off from the community because you are doing important work.

"I think we are paid by the state, and we have a duty to serve the state in the bigger sense, not in terms of the Government but the community that we are within."

Hayward and family have made changes towards a more sustainable lifestyle.

"My work requires travel, flights, and that is the thing I am most anxious about. I try and avoid travelling and, when I do travel I try to put a whole lot of things into one trip. And I would always only travel economy.

"We started dropping meat a little bit, meat and milk.You don't have to become vegan but just try to replace one or two meals a week, and now we just have meat for family occasions.

"And the big climate change conferences. Does everybody need to go? I mean, I don't need to be there. We are all thinking about this. The difficulty with New Zealand is that you're up a lot late at night on Skype and it's very tiring."

Hayward is looking forward to spending time at the family bach on Banks Peninsula over Christmas and New Year.

She also relaxes doing "a lot of crafts".

"I've outed myself as a dolls' house person, because I made some dolls' houses for Suffrage Year and did some for Cholmondeley Children's Home and raised money.

"It is just a completely ephemeral thing – like when I'm making a tiny oak table or something like that.

"It puts me in a place where I can be concentrating on something new and completely irrelevant."