Source: Radio New Zealand
World leaders gather for the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Belem, Para State, Brazil. AFP / LUDOVIC MARIN
Climate scientists and advocates say the government needs to come clean on how New Zealand plans to meet its first international climate target.
A decade on from the Paris Agreement, and as a New Zealand delegation heads to the annual UN COP climate summit, the government says its climate ambition has not changed.
But it is yet to commit any funding, or announce detailed agreements, to purchase the estimated billions of dollars of offshore carbon credits it needs to meet New Zealand’s Paris obligations by the 2030 deadline.
Failing to act could soon start to jeopardise free trade agreements and leave New Zealand vulnerable to an international legal challenge, climate experts say.
The previous government pledged to slash net greenhouse gas emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030, as New Zealand’s contribution to the Paris Agreement.
The overarching goal of the agreement is to limit warming to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and well below 2°C, and countries are required to present their pledges – known as nationally determined contributions – every five years.
The current government has confirmed it would continue to pursue New Zealand’s first nationally determined contribution.
It will also present its update contribution at this year’s COP30 summit, which starts today in Belém in the Brazilian Amazon.
New Zealand will put forward an updated target of a 51-55 percent reduction in overall emissions by 2035 – criticised as “shockingly unambitious” when it was first announced at the start of this year.
But first the 2030 target must be met – and climate experts say the government is rapidly running out of time to say how it will be achieved.
When it was first announced, then-Climate Change minister James Shaw said domestic emissions would not be enough to meet the target and New Zealand would have to purchase offshore credits to make up the shortfall, at a cost of about $1 billion a year.
An official tracking report submitted by New Zealand last year found the gap had narrowed, but still projected a shortfall of 84 million tonnes of emissions, taking into account all planned domestic reductions.
The amount is roughly equivalent to a full year’s emissions.
Former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arrives at the COP30 UN climate conference in Belem, Para State, Brazil. AFP / MAURO PIMENTEL
Lawyers for Climate Action executive director Jessica Palairet said successive governments had failed to act on offshore mitigation and it was time to commit.
“For the government to just remain in a state of indecision, she’ll be right, we’ll work it out nearer the time, my view is that is contrary to international law.”
An International Court of Justice opinion released earlier this year made it “very clear that we have to make best efforts to use all means at its disposal to achieve our [targets]”.
“Save some extraordinary technological advance that no one sees coming having effect by 2030, I think avoiding offshore mitigation is next to impossible.”
By insisting it was committed, but not explaining how it would actually meet the target, the government was “dancing on the head of the pin”, Palairet said.
Climate change minister Simon Watts and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon have both affirmed New Zealand’s international target.
However, their coalition partners are opposed to offshore mitigation, and they also face opposition around the Cabinet table: forestry and agriculture minister Todd McClay told Morning Report last year that the concept was not “palatable” to New Zealanders.
Watts confirmed to RNZ that that there was no current Cabinet decision or agreement to purchase offshore credits and the focus was on domestic emission reductions.
“When we came in, the gap was 149 [million tonnes] or so, it’s now down to 84,” he said.
“Our emissions reduction plan does highlight that there is a gap and that is a significant challenge for us as a country, but the point that we’re optimistic around … is that, particularly in agriculture, there’s quite a lot of work underway that does have a material impact on [domestic] emissions reduction.”
The shortfall was continuously monitored and the government would keep re-assessing the situation, Watts said.
“It’s not cross your fingers and hope.
“We’ve got to do everything we can domestically … and as time evolves, as it will, more things are coming on to the plate.”
But independent climate change and carbon market expert Christina Hood said the government should be laying out a “really clear plan” right now for how it would meet the Paris target.
“These [offshore] emission reductions have to occur by 2030 in order to be able to count, so we really need to get our skates on. The key issue is that the government is not committing any real money to do this.”
Despite pushing for international carbon markets at successive COPs, New Zealand had done very little beyond signing a handful of “very high level agreements around just a general willingness to cooperate”, Dr Hood said.
“Other countries that are going to be needing international cooperation to meet their targets, like Japan, like Switzerland, have been really active for a number of years already, not just setting up partnerships, but they’re actually been establishing projects and getting emission reductions happening.”
Watts said there were no agreements at all in place when he came to office, and the cooperation agreements signed since then had been on his watch.
In February, Watts told a meeting of farmers that there was no financial liability on the government’s books if it failed to meet the target.
“No one sends you an invoice,” Farmers Weekly reported him saying.
Jessica Palairet said although that was true, there were plenty of other consequences.
“One is that we have free trade agreements with the European Union [and] with the United Kingdom that require us to effectively implement the Paris Agreement. So if we are seen to fall foul of that, it opens New Zealand up to the possibility of trade sanctions.”
That was not far-fetched, she said.
“Internationally, New Zealand is actually getting some pretty bad headlines for its backsliding on climate and you could see countries wanting to make an example of us.
“We know that the EU likes to … try to use their influence to shape international law and international trade norms.”
New Zealand could also face international legal challenges if it was perceived to not be genuine about trying to meet its targets, Palairet said.
“The International Court of Justice also opens the door to the possibility of one state bringing legal proceedings against another state if it is seen to be breaching its international obligations.
“You could imagine some of our Pacific partners, for example, looking at decisions being made in New Zealand and being really quite unhappy with those.”
There were wider reputational consequences to consider, too, she said.
“What side of history do we want to be on as a country?”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
