New forms of policies and governance are emerging in response to climate change. Policies on adaptation decisions are made across all levels of society. It is particularly the case in the Pacific where customary forms of governance coexist with State-based formal policies. Climate policies typically use a wide range of governance mechanisms and important aspects of climate policies include local level institutions, decentralization, participatory governance, integration of local knowledge, and reduction of inequality. At the same time, growing scholarship and policy on planned relocation still commonly refers to simplistic understanding of this notion. The Pacific region provides interesting grounds to address this oversight through a more nuanced approach by observing and analyzing multilevel governance in the context of planned relocation as adaptation strategy to climate change and the role that local and traditional entities hold in this process. For that purpose, the concept of “pluralism” in the context of plural governance systems in the Pacific has been explored. Legal pluralism can have varied impacts on governance outcomes, depending on the nature of the relationship between the governance systems involved. The literature of such legal pluralist relationships will be explored to discuss and critically engage with “hybridity”. This theoretical approach allowed us to shed light on some conceptual observations in the context of a planned relocation case study in Fiji that nuance understanding and framing of planned relocation governance in contexts where customary and state-based forms of land governance prevail.