Jacinda Ardern, who shocked the world in January when she announced her surprise resignation as prime minister of New Zealand, on Wednesday bade farewell to politics in her home country.

“The reasons I came here, they never left me,” she told lawmakers in a half-hour valedictory speech in Parliament that cited climate change, child poverty and inequality. She added: “I am, after all, a conviction-based politician. And I’ve always believed this to be a place where you can make a difference. I leave knowing that to be true.”

In a nod to the incremental approach that won her supporters across the political aisle, she said, “Politics has never been a tick list for me. It’s all about progress.”

Ms. Ardern, 42, relinquished the role of prime minister days after announcing her departure on Jan. 18 but had retained her position as the Parliament member for Mount Albert, a seat in Auckland that she has held since 2017. She will formally leave that position next week.

In her speech, she thanked friends, family and supporters, as well as fellow lawmakers, and urged politicians to take action on the climate.

“When I came here 15 years ago, we spoke about climate change as if it was a hypothetical. But in the intervening years, we have seen firsthand the reality of our changing environment,” she said, adding, “Climate change is a crisis. The one thing I ask of this house is: Please, take the politics out of climate change.”

Following her resignation, Ms. Ardern had been vague about her next steps. But on Tuesday, her successor, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, announced that she would work on the Christchurch Call, an initiative she spearheaded to eliminate extremist material online. That group was set up after 51 people were killed in terrorist attacks on mosques in Christchurch in 2019.

“Jacinda Ardern’s commitment to stopping violent extremist content like we saw that day is key to why she should carry on this work,” Mr. Hipkins told reporters on Tuesday. She had declined a salary for the position, he said.

Ms. Ardern has also been appointed a trustee of the Earthshot Prize, an environmental award established by Prince William, the Prince of Wales. Announcing the appointment this week, Prince William cited her “lifelong commitment to supporting sustainable and environmental solutions.” He had sought her advice four years ago, “before the Earthshot Prize even had a name,” he said.

Ms. Ardern, the daughter of a police officer and a cafeteria worker who grew up in the rural New Zealand town of Morrinsville, joined the center-left Labour Party when she was 17, and was first elected to Parliament at 28, in 2008. In 2017, she was unanimously elected the party’s deputy leader, before unexpectedly taking the top job five months later, less than two months before an election.

With her party flagging in the polls, many expected the center-right National Party to form a government. But an alliance with a smaller party catapulted Ms. Ardern to the premiership, eventually making her one of the most popular leaders in New Zealand history.

Ms. Ardern has often cited as a personal hero the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, who had little success in actually exploring Antarctica, but who is often described as an outstanding leader in a crisis.

He was a fitting North Star for her own five years in office, during which her cool head, easy communication style and compassionate manner together helped her to navigate nimbly through one disaster after another: the terrorist attacks in Christchurch; a volcano explosion on the island of Whakaari, in which 22 people died; and the coronavirus pandemic.

Those experiences, particularly with the Muslim community in the wake of the attacks, “humbled me beyond words,” she told lawmakers in Wellington on Wednesday. Her responses also earned her international stardom, and she appeared on the covers of fashion magazines and in glowing profiles in the foreign press. Following Donald J. Trump’s ascent to power in the United States, and as concerns rose about the erosion of norms of political civility, she was cited by many as a dazzling liberal alternative, championing a politics of kindness.

In 2020, buoyed by New Zealand’s success in clamping down on the coronavirus, Ms. Ardern steered her party to a rare outright electoral victory.

But as the pandemic wore on, frustrations with the slow rollback of coronavirus restrictions, mounting concerns about the economy and what was widely perceived as inaction on domestic issues such as poverty, health care and housing, saw the Labour Party plunge in the polls. That change in fortunes forced Ms. Ardern’s resignation. Since then, her party has edged out in front of the opposition.

Speaking on Wednesday, Ms. Ardern described herself as a “worrier” who had always taken criticism to heart.

“I cannot determine what will define my time in this place,” she told lawmakers. “But I do hope I’ve demonstrated something else entirely — that you can be anxious, sensitive, kind and wear your heart on your sleeve. You can be a mother, or not. You can be an ex-Mormon, or not. You can be a nerd, a crier, a hugger — you can be all of these things. And not only can you be here, you can lead, just like me.”

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