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A new report by the Auditor-General’s office finds gaps in New Zealand’s policy response to climate change, in areas ranging from emissions goals to adaptation.
A separate analysis by the Climate Change Commission says the Government can find much of the emissions reductions for its next Paris Agreement pledge at home – but needs to start work now.
Both reports come ahead of next week’s UN climate summit in Azerbaijan.
Days out from this year’s UN climate summit, a new report card has given New Zealand a “must-try-harder” grading across several crucial policy areas.
Auditor-General John Ryan today released New Zealand’s first assessment under the global ClimateScanner initiative, which rates more than 100 countries’ climate policy responses.
It found that, while the country had made legislative strides, it still faced big challenges in tracking climate-related spending, planning cohesive policies and meeting targets to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
New Zealand may have set an ambitious target of cutting its net emissions to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030, but the analysis found its progress varied across different sectors.
For our biggest-emitting sector, agriculture, mitigation efforts were still focused on research and development, “and we cannot yet see a clear pathway between these plans and actual emissions reduction”.
The Government has touted a “technology first” approach for shrinking farming’s climate footprint, while reversing policy that would have pulled the sector into the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as early as next year (it still plans on pricing agricultural emissions by 2030).
The report also noted key actions in the energy sector, which make up about 40% of total emissions, were similarly at “an early stage and lack detail about how they will lead to reductions in emissions”.
In governance, it pointed to a need for the Government to better engage with groups such as councils, which have repeatedly been calling for more support and direction on climate adaptation.
There was also uneven progress on the country’s two-year-old National Adaptation Plan and some challenges for areas such as disaster management hadn’t yet been fully identified, despite a slew of costly recent weather events.
While New Zealand has pledged $1.3 billion in climate finance for 2022-25 – most of which was new funding to help developing countries in their climate efforts – there was no clear alignment at home between finance commitments and national climate goals.
Auditor-General John Ryan says responding to climate change is “complex and challenging”.
On top of that, the report raised concerns about the design and effectiveness of the ETS – still our main policy lever for bringing down domestic emissions.
Ryan acknowledged that responding to climate change was “complex and challenging”, and that there was much more work to do.
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said he was encouraged to see New Zealand rated highly in a number of other assessed areas, including transparency.
“The report also highlights some opportunities to strengthen our approach to tackling climate change,” he said.
“These insights are welcomed, and we will take them on board as we continue to develop the Government’s climate policy.”
The findings, to be tabled among preliminary results at next week’s UN climate conference in Azerbaijan, come after the coalition Government has faced criticism for a series of cuts and new policies estimated to add millions more tonnes of emissions out to 2050.
The Climate Change Commission today released a separate report showing how at-home emissions reductions could make a big contribution to New Zealand’s updated Paris Agreement pledge.
“But only if there’s investment and further action in the next six years, for example to decarbonise energy, industry and transport,” said the commission’s chairman Dr Rodd Carr.
The one-off report looked at three scenarios for reducing emissions, ranging from a high-ambition path with fast technology adoption and behaviour shifts (such as increased public transport and forest restoration) to a slower, more gradual approach, with a balanced middle path in between.
All scenarios aimed to help the country reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, except for biogenic methane.
The high-ambition scenario would see emissions reduced faster, thanks to accelerated shifts in technology and systems, yet each pathway required action starting now to make significant progress by 2031-2035.
Carr said reductions set out in the report were feasible but they don’t form explicit recommendations for the Government’s next pledge, which is due by February.
“Our recent emissions monitoring report showed that Aotearoa New Zealand is making progress but could still fall short of meeting the country’s future emissions budgets,” Carr said.
“We need to increase the momentum with rapid and achievable action to get the country on track.”
Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.
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