The political activist suing major New Zealand emitters over climate change damage says a law change blocking his case and others like it is “an affront to democracy”.

The government announced yesterday it would amend climate laws to prevent companies from being sued over damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The change will prevent findings of liability in torts — a type of civil case where one person or entity claims another has caused them harm.

• READ MORE: Other climate change law reports

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said it would apply to current and future cases — stopping a landmark case against Fonterra and five other major emitters in its tracks.

In 2024, iwi leader and activist Mike Smith was granted permission by the Supreme Court to sue Fonterra and other major dairy and fossil fuel companies.

He argued the companies, which collectively contributed about a third of New Zealand’s emissions, had a legal duty to him and others in communities that are being damaged by the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

The hearing, which was sent back to the High Court, was due to start in April next year.

‘Creating uncertainty’
Dr Goldsmith said Smith’s case was “creating uncertainty in business confidence and investments that the government must address”.

The law change would “remove the possible development of a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted to respond to climate change”.

New Zealand already had a legal framework to manage emissions, through the Climate Change Response Act and the Emissions Trading Scheme, he said.

“Our response to climate change is best managed by the government at a national level and not through piecemeal litigation in the courts.”

Smith told RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme the government’s decision was unprecedented and outrageous.

“It’s an affront to democracy,” he said.

“If Parliament can cancel a live court case, then no legal claim is secure at all, once it becomes politically inconvenient.”

‘Public interest case’
The legal case was asking the court to decide whether the companies involved could be held responsible for their emissions, he said.

He said they were not seeking costs or damages and it was instead a “public interest case” to establish that the companies were liable. They hoped to prompt the companies to take action to reduce greenhouse emissions.

“These companies are not fools. They’ve got some of the best science available to them … All we’re asking is that they act responsibly, and if they can’t decide that themselves then they need to be nudged along.”

He countered Dr Goldsmith’s claims that the case was undermining business confidence.

“Real business confidence comes from predictable law — not from government intervention in active court cases.”

What the big emitters should really worry about were the effects of climate change itself, Smith said.

“If the farmers are feeling nervous about [the case] and lobbying the government to have these cases struck out, if I were them I’d be more nervous about the the droughts that are pending… That’s the real threat to their model.”

‘Shocking abuse of power’
Greenpeace labelled the change a “shocking abuse of power” that would protect climate polluters from paying for the damage they had caused.

Greenpeace executive director Russel Norman, told RNZ Midday Report, it was “outrageous” and he believed it was being done to protect large corporations.

“People will have their right to go to court removed.

“They intervened mid-case. It is an outrageous overreach.”

Lawyers for Climate Action president Jenny Cooper KC said the decision was shortsighted.

“What it looks like is a kneejerk reaction to legislate over the top of the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Smith and Fonterra before that’s gone to trial.”

That would leave New Zealanders with no avenue to claim damages or compensation against emitters in future, she said.

“It’s really hard to understand why we would want to legislate now to say we could never bring claims against emitters for the harms and losses we’ve suffered.

“If they are not responsible for paying then who does? Well, everybody, basically.”

Climate ‘wrecking ball’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the goverment was using its “dying breaths” to remove New Zealanders’ right to hold emitters accountable.

“They’ve spent two and a half years taking a wrecking ball to climate laws and, at the 11th hour, they’re now ripping away New Zealanders’ and the courts’ ability to do what this government lacks the spine to do.”

The minister’s claims that common law could cut across the government’s climate change framework made no sense, she said.

“The Climate Change Response Act and the ETS do not deal with this issue at all — there is no framework or mechanism for any type of compensation for climate related harm.”

Instead, the change “appears to be cutting off the only potential mechanism we have at the moment before we are anywhere near having legislation that would address these issues.”

The law change would not alter the government’s responsibilities under the Act, and businesses that had obligations under the ETS would still be required to meet them, Dr Goldsmith said.

Another landmark climate case, taken against Climate Change Minister Simon Watts over the government’s plan to tackle climate change, is also unaffected.

That case was heard in March and a reserved decision is expected later this year.

The case against Watts was taken jointly by the Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) and Lawyers for Climate Action.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Two Extinction Rebellion activists joined the speakers today at an Auckland protest over Israel’s genocide and ecocide in Gaza and occupied Palestine, condemning the “apocalyptic” assault on both people and their living environment.

Caril Cowan, a de facto coordinator of Extinction Rebellion Tāmaki Makaurau, spoke of the climate crisis this month in Aotearoa New Zealand to provide an insight into the Gaza emergency.

“One of our climate scientists, says this is normal — get used to it. We are going to have killing storms over, and over, and over …

• READ MORE: In Gaza, Trump’s Board of Peace met with deep scepticism, little hope
• UN begins clearing of massive waste dump in Gaza
• Freedom Flotilla journalists speak out on Israeli ill-treatment
• Other Gaza reports

“As we are saying, ‘We are all Palestine’, I just think of the people of South America, I think of the people of Africa, I think of Europe, where people are dying now because of the climate.

“They are dying of heat exhaustion, they are dying from floods, they are dying from landslides, like we have been having, not just a few. It’s happening. It is here now.”

After the rally, the protesters marched around the corner from Te Komititanga Square to the US Consulate in Auckland for a “Blood on your hands “ protest over the US role in funding and enabling Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

Cowan was among those protesters who symbolically raised blood on their hands over the “shameful” US role under President Donald Trump and previous presidents.

US pays part UN dues
This week in Washington, a UN spokesperson said the United States had paid about US$160 million (NZ$268 million) of the more than US$4 billion it owes to the UN, just as Trump hosted the first meeting of his so-called “Board of Peace” initiative over Gaza that critics say could undermine the United Nations.

The US is the biggest contributor to the UN budget, but under the Trump administration it has refused to make mandatory payments to regular and peacekeeping budgets, and slashed voluntary funding to UN agencies with their own budgets.

Washington has also withdrawn from dozens of UN agencies.

Another speaker at today’s rally, Adam Jordan, from both Extinction Rebellion and the Palestinian movement, talked about the “connection” between the Gaza genocide and anthropogenic climate breakdown.

“As is so often the case with colonialism, and the capitalist system more generally, ecological destruction has always been inherent to the Zionist, settler-colonial project,” Jordan said.

“From contaminated soil and groundwater to decimated farmland and burning down centuries old olive groves that had been lovingly tended by countless generations of Palestinians.

“Rather than ‘making the desert bloom’ as they often claim, the colonisers are engaged in a process of ‘desertification’ — transforming once fertile and active farmland into an area devoid of both vegetation and biodiversity.”

Damage visible from space
Jordan said that destruction of both people and the land itself in Gaza had reached such “apocalyptic proportions that the damage is visible from space”.

“The people who have not yet been killed by the bunker buster bombs, the forced starvation, disease, sniper fire and autonomous killer drones live in a wasteland of undrinkable water, unexploded munitions, overflowing landfills, contaminated soil and toxic debris, with orchards and fields reduced to dust in which life itself is being rendered impossible for the long term,” he said.

Gaza pollution environmental threats                Video: Al Jazeera

“Ecocide here fuses with genocide in a manner never seen before.”

But where was the real connection between Palestine and the climate crisis?

“Despite all the rhetoric from governments and corporations about how they’re taking climate change seriously, the 2020s have so far seen an accelerated expansion of fossil fuel production, just when it had to be reined in and inverted into a sustained dismantling — for the world to avoid a warming of more than 2°C, and ideally no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial baseline.

“Currently we’re at 1.6°C above that baseline, and this is already proving to be absolutely catastrophic. In fact it’s proving again and again to be deadly,” Jordan said.

“The destruction of Gaza is of course executed by tanks and fighter jets, sending their projectiles that turn everything into rubble — but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right path.

“All these military vehicles run on oil. As do the supply flights from the US, UK and Germany.”

Emissions burden
One study had estimated that from October 2023 to January 2025 the emission burden of the Gaza genocide by Israel and the West to be 32 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

“That’s more than the annual emissions of many countries,” Jordan said.

“It has generated more than 36 million metric tonnes of debris from buildings being either severely damaged or completely destroyed. It would take as long as four decades to remove and process all of this debris.”

Jordan said what was happening in Gaza was not just a transnational effort, but “a stain on the so called ‘international law’ that cannot be washed clean”.

“For over two years now we have watched as the corrupt corporate media has dehumanised the victims and attempted to humanise those committing this genocide,” he said.

“We have watched as academic institutions, politicians and governments all over the world have denied or justified the unspeakable horrors taking place in Gaza, just as they deny the severity and the consequences of the climate crisis and justify the continuation of business as usual, no matter how destructive it is to our environmental life support systems.

“But this is just business, this is just how the capitalist system works. Both people and the environment are seen as expendable, here only for the purposes of wealth extraction by the ultra wealthy ruling class — or as I prefer to call them, ‘The Epstein class’.”

New flotilla plans
Among other speakers, Rana Hamida spoke about the new Global Sumud Flotilla plans to break the military siege of Gaza in April.

The flotilla has announced plans to send more than 100 boats carrying up 1000 activists, including medics and war crimes investigators, to the besieged enclave.

Hamida appealed for more volunteers from New Zealand to join the fleet.

“Political and ego manoeuvring” is happening behind the scenes at COP30 in Brazil, as Australia and Türkiye wrestle to host the United Nations climate event next year.

Pacific Islands Forum’s climate adviser Karlos Lee Moresi, who is at the talks in Belém, said the negotiations for who would host COP31 was tough.

“We have Australia with the Pacific very adamant that we need — not only do we want — we need to have a COP in the Pacific. The Türkiye position is they’re not giving up,” Moresi said.

• READ MORE: ‘Our land is not for sale’: Indigenous people protest at COP30 in Brazil
• Other COP30 reports

“In all honesty, there’s a bit of political and ego manoeuvring happening behind the scenes.”

Moresi said he thought Türkiye was trying to influence European countries to host the event.

He said as a last resort, and if COP is hosted in Türkiye, the Pacific would want something from Türkiye in response.

“It is not something that we’re really entertaining actively as an option to put forward on the table for now.”

10 years since Paris
COP30 began in Belém on Monday. It has been 10 years since the landmark Paris Agreement was signed.

In his opening speech at the conference, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary Simon Stiell said the science is clear, temperatures can be brought back down to 1.5C after any temporary overshoot.

“The emissions curve has been bent downwards because of what was agreed in halls like this, with governments legislating and markets responding, but I’m not sugarcoating it, we have so much more to go.”

The Pacific’s position throughout each COP — “1.5C to stay alive” — has not changed, along with improving access to climate finance.

Unique to this year’s summit is that it is the first time the world’s top court, the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, can be used as a negotiating tool.

The advisory opinion found failing to protect people from the effects of climate change could violate international law.

“In the context of the phrase ‘everyone has an opinion’, but is it an informed opinion, what we are saying is the ICJ that’s in the highest court is the most informed opinion on this issue.”

Solutions for children
Save the Children New Zealand youth engagement coordinator Vira Paky said she wants to see different parties working together on solutions designed for children and young people.

“We know that children and young people are disproportionately affected by climate change and we want to be on the frontlines to advocate for children and youth voices to be considered.”

Faiesea Ah Chee, one of the youth delegates with Save the Children, wants climate finance to be more accessible for the Pacific.

“I’ve seen how severe weather impact has impacted us and how there’s a lack of funding to help with adaptation and mitigation projects back home in the islands. So, hoping to get a clear vision and understanding of where we can get access to all this climate finance,” Chee, who grew up in Samoa, said.

While world leaders are meeting, rescue workers in Papua New Guinea are scrambling to relocate about 300 people living on unstable earth.

Papua New Guinea’s Wabag MP office spokesperson Geno Muspak said they live around the site of a deadly landslide that flattened houses while people slept inside.

He said it is clear to him the climate crisis is to blame.

“As times are changing the weather is not good for us, especially for people who are living in the remote places,” Muspak said.

The pointy end of COP 30 is still a while off, with the conference running until the end of next week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Palestinian supporters and protesters against the 21 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza marched after a rally in downtown Auckland today across the Viaduct to the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior — and met a display of solidarity.

Several people on board the campaign ship, which has been holding open days over last weekend and this weekend, held up Palestinian flags and displayed a large banner declaring “Sanction Israel — Stop the genocide”.

About 300 people were in the vibrant rally and Greenpeace Aotearoa oceans campaigner Juan Parada came out on Halsey Wharf to speak to the protesters in solidarity over Gaza.

• READ MORE: At least 70 killed as Israel targets food aid sites in Gaza again
• Other Rainbow Warrior protest reports, videos
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

“Greenpeace stands for peace and justice, and environmental justice, not only for the environmental damage, but for the lives of the people,” said Parada, a former media practitioner.

Global environmental campaigners have stepped up their condemnation of the devastation in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories as well as the protests over the genocide, which has so far killed almost 59,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Department, although some researchers say the actual death toll is far higher.

Gaza war emissions condemned
New research recently revealed that the carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza would be greater than the annual planet-warming emissions of 100 individual countries, worsening the global climate emergency on top of the huge civilian death toll.

The report cited by The Guardian indicated that Israel’s relentless bombardment, blockade and refusal to comply with international court rulings had “underscored the asymmetry of each side’s war machine, as well as almost unconditional military, energy and diplomatic support Israel enjoys from allies, including the US and UK”.

The Israeli war machine has been primarily blamed.

The report, titled “War on the Climate: A Multitemporal Study of Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Israel-Gaza Conflict” and published by the Social Science Research Network, is part of a growing movement to hold states and businesses accountable for the climate and environmental costs of war and occupation.

Greenpeace open letter
Greenpeace Aotearoa recently came out with strong statements about the genocidal war on Gaza with executive director Russel Norman earlier this month writing an open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, expressing his grave concerns about the “ongoing genocide in Gaza being carried out by Israeli forces” — and the ongoing failure of the New Zealand Government to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel.

He referred to the mounting death toll of starving Palestinians being deliberately shot at the notorious Israeli-US backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) food distribution sites.

Norman also cited an Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz report that Israeli soldiers had been ordered to deliberately shoot unarmed Palestinians seeking aid, quoting one Israeli soldier saying: “It’s a killing field.”

Today’s rally featured many Palestinians wearing thobe costumes in advance of Palestinian Traditional Dress Day on July 25.

This is a day to showcase and celebrate the rich Palestinian cultural heritage through traditional clothing that is intricately embroidered.

Traditional thobes are a symbol of Palestinian resilience.

New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister Simon Watts is going to the global climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan next week, where he will be co-leading talks on international carbon trading.

But the government has been unable to commit to using the trading mechanism he is leading high-level discussions about, and critics say he is also vulnerable over New Zealand’s backsliding on fossil fuels.

New Zealand has consistently pushed for two things in international climate diplomacy — one is ending government subsidies for fossil fuels globally, and the other is allowing carbon trading across international borders, so one country can pay for, say, switching off a coal plant in another country.

• READ MORE: COP29: UN chief warns world is in ‘final countdown’ to limit global warming to 1.5C
• Trump win, 1.5C warming breach weigh on UN climate ‘finance COP’
• COP29: Pacific countries cannot be conveniently pigeonholed
• COP29 Azerbaijan: What’s at stake at the 2024 global climate summit?
• Rising Tide climate crisis ‘Protestival’ to go ahead despite court ruling
• Other COP29 climate reports

Nailing down the rules for making sure these carbon savings are real will be an area of focus for leaders at the COP29 summit, starting on 11 November.

But as Watts gets ready to attend the talks, critics say his government is vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy on both fronts.

In a bid to bring back fossil fuel exploration, the government wants to lower financial security requirements on oil and gas companies requiring them to set aside money for the costs of decommissioning and cleaning up spills.

The coalition says the current requirements — brought in after taxpayers had to pay to deal with a defunct oil field — are so onerous they are stopping companies wanting to look for fossil fuels.

Billion dollar clean-ups
At a recent hearing, Parliament’s independent environment watchdog warned going too far at relaxing requirements could leave taxpayers footing bills of billions of dollars if a clean-up is needed.

The commission’s Geoff Simmons spoke on behalf of Commissioner Simon Upton.

“The commissioner was really clear in his submission that he wants to place on record that he doesn’t think it is appropriate for any government, present or future, to offer any subsidies, implicit or explicit, to underwrite the cost of exploration.”

The watchdog said that would tilt the playing field away from renewable energy in favour of fossil fuels.

Energy Minister Shane Jones says the government’s Bill doesn’t lower the liability for fixing damage or decommissioning oil and gas wells, which remain the responsibility of the fossil fuel company in perpetuity.

But climate activist Adam Currie says that only works if the company stays in business.

“The watering down of those key financial safeguards increases the risk of the taxpaper having to yet again pay to decommission a failed oil field.

“Simon Watts is about to go to COP and urge other countries to end fossil fuel subsidies while at home they are handing an open cheque to fossil fuels  .. This is a classic case of do as a say, not as I do.”

Getting flack not feared
Watts says he does not fear getting flack for the fossil-friendlier changes when he is in Baku, citing the government’s goal of doubling renewable energy.

“No I’m not worried about flak, New Zealand is transitioning away from fossil fuels . . . gas [from fossil fields] is going to need to be a means by which we need to transition.”

Nor does he see an issue with the fact he is jointly leading negotiations on a trading mechanism his own government seems unable to commit to using.

Watts is leading talks to nail down rules on international carbon trading with Singaporean Environment Minister Grace Fu. Her country has struck a deal to invest in carbon savings in Rwanda.

New Zealand also needs international help to meet its 2030 target, but the coalition government has not let officials pursue any deals. NZ First refuses to say if it would back this.

Watts says his leadership role is independent of domestic politics and ministers around the world are keen to nail down the rules, as is the Azerbaijan presidency.

“Our primary focus is to ensure that we get an outcome form those negotiators, our domestic considerations are not relevant.”

Paris target discussions
He said discussions on meeting New Zealand’s Paris target were still underway.

His next challenge at home is getting Cabinet agreement on how much to promise to cut emissions from 2030-2035, the second commitment period under the Paris Agreement.

Countries are being urged to hustle, with the United Nations saying current pledges have the planet on track for what it calls a “catastrophic” 2.5 to 2.9 degrees of heating.

A new pledge is due for 2030-2035 in February.

A major goal for host Azerbaijan is making progress on a deal for climate finance.

Currently OECD countries committed to pay $100 billion a year in finance to poorer countries to adapt to and prevent the impacts of climate change.

Not all the money has been paid as grants, with a large proportion given as loans.

Countries are looking to agree on a replacement for the finance mechanism when it runs out in 2025.

Watts said New Zealand would be among the nations arguing for the liability to pay to be shared more widely than the traditional list of OECD nations, bringing in other countries that can also afford to contribute.

Oil states such as UAE have already promised specific funding despite not being part of the original climate finance deal.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

By David Whyte and Samira Homerang Saunders

Many in the international community are finally coming to accept that the earth’s ecosystem can no longer bear the weight of military occupation.

Most have reached this inevitable conclusion, clearly articulated in the environmental movement’s latest slogan “No Climate Justice on Occupied Land”, in light of the horrors we have witnessed in Gaza since October 7.

While the correlation between military occupation and climate sustainability may be a recent discovery for those living their lives in relative peace and security, people living under occupation, and thus constant threat of military violence, have always known any guided missile strike or aerial bombardment campaign by an occupying military is not only an attack on those being targeted but also their land’s ability to sustain life.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza reports
• Other West Papua reports

A recent hearing on “State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” under the jurisdiction of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), for example, heard that Indonesia’s military occupation, spanning more than seven decades, has facilitated a “slow genocide” of the Papuan people through not only political repression and violence, but also the gradual decimation of the forest area — one of the largest and most biodiverse on the planet — that sustains them.

West Papua hosts one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, is the site of a major BP liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, and is the fastest-expanding area of palm oil and biofuel plantation in Indonesia.

All of these industries leave ecological dead zones in their wake, and every single one of them is secured by military occupation.

At the PPT hearing, prominent Papuan lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy spoke of the connection between human suffering in West Papua and the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.

Shot and wounded
Just one week later, he was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant. The PPT Secretariat noted that the attack came after the lawyer depicted “the past and current violence committed against the defenceless civil population and the environment in the region”.

What happened to Warinussy reinforced yet again the indivisibility of military occupation and environmental violence.

I’m stand in solidarity with West Papuans rising up against colonialism, racism, state violence, sexual violence, and environmental destruction.

West Papua’s “special autonomy” is another euphemism for control and exploitation pic.twitter.com/cvP7fp2Ml0

— K.Diallo ☭ (@nyeusi_waasi) May 19, 2021

In total, militaries around the world account for almost 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually — more than the aviation and shipping industries combined.

Our colleagues at Queen Mary University of London recently concluded that emissions from the first 120 days of this latest round of slaughter in Gaza alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries; emissions from rebuilding Gaza will be higher than the annual emissions of more than 135 countries, equating them to those of Sweden and Portugal.

But even these shocking statistics fail to shed sufficient light on the deep connection between military violence and environmental violence. War and occupation’s impact on the climate is not merely a side effect or unfortunate consequence.

We must not reduce our analysis of what is going on in Gaza, for example, to a dualism of consequences: the killing of people on one side and the effect on “the environment” on the other.

Inseparable from impact on nature
In reality, the impact on the people is inseparable from the impact on nature. The genocide in Gaza is also an ecocide — as is almost always the case with military campaigns.

In the Vietnam War, the use of toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, was part of a deliberate strategy to eliminate any capacity for agricultural production, and thus force the people off their land and into “strategic hamlets”.

Forests, used by the Vietcong as cover, were also cut by the US military to reduce the population’s capacity for resistance. The anti-war activist and international lawyer Richard Falk coined the phrase “ecocide” to describe this.

In different ways, this is what all military operations do: they tactically reduce or completely eliminate the capacity of the “enemy” population to live sustainably and to retain autonomy over its own water and food supplies.

Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and other essential infrastructure by the Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by chemical warfare, with herbicides aerially sprayed by the Israeli military destroying entire swaths of arable land in Gaza.

In other words, Gaza has been subjected to an “ecocide” strategy almost identical to the one used in Vietnam since long before October 7.

The occupying military force has been working to reduce, and eventually completely eliminate, the Palestinian population’s capacity to live sustainably in Gaza for many years. Since October 7, it has been waging a war to make Gaza completely unliveable.

50% of Gaza farms wiped out
As researchers at Forensic Architecture have concluded, at least 50 percent of farmland and orchards in Gaza are now completely wiped out. Many ancient olive groves have also been destroyed. Fields of crops have been uprooted using tanks, tractors and other vehicles.

Widespread aerial bombardment reduced the Gaza Strip’s greenhouse production facilities to rubble. All this was done not by mistake, but in a deliberate effort to leave the land unable to sustain life.

The wholesale destruction of the water supply and sanitation facilities and the ongoing threat of starvation across the Gaza Strip are also not unwanted consequences, but deliberate tactics of war. The Israeli military has weaponised food and water access in its unrelenting assault on the population of Gaza.

Of course, none of this is new to Palestinians there, or indeed in the West Bank. Israel has been using these same tactics to sustain its occupation, pressure Palestinians into leaving their lands, and expand its illegal settlement enterprise for many years.

Since October 7, it has merely intensified its efforts. It is now working with unprecedented urgency to eradicate the little capacity the occupied Palestinian territory has left in it to sustain Palestinian life.

Just as is the case with the occupation of Papua, environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect but a primary objective of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The immediate damage military occupation inflicts on the affected population is never separate from the long-term damage it inflicts on the planet.

For this reason, it would be a mistake to try and separate the genocide from the ecocide in Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter.

Anyone interested in putting an end to human suffering now, and preventing climate catastrophe in the future, should oppose all wars of occupation, and all forms of militarism that help fuel them.

David Whyte is professor of climate justice at Queen Mary University of London and director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice. Samira Homerang Saunders is research officer at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, Queen Mary University.

While attention is focused on economists finding a $500 million-a-year hole in National’s tax plans, a similar-sized hole in climate costings is hiding in plain sight — and it applies to Labour, too.

National appears to have the bigger gap, however.

The gulf was highlighted in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) — Treasury’s official word on the state of the government’s books — which explicitly excluded the cost of meeting New Zealand’s international climate target under the Paris Agreement.

• READ MORE: Other NZ election 2023 climate crisis reports

Asked how they would pay this week, politicians gave unclear answers. But the obligation was still very real.

Both Labour and National have said they are committed to meeting the country’s international climate target, known as an NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions).

Under the Paris Agreement, which covers almost every nation on the planet, New Zealand has promised to cut emissions by 41 percent off 2005 levels by 2030. Exporters and carbon market experts say failing to meet that pledge could jeopardise international trade — nevermind the fact that following the Paris Agreement is humanity’s best hope for avoiding more expensive and deadly heating.

New Zealand plans to meet its target in two ways. First, it will do as much as it can inside the country by meeting a set of “emissions budgets”.

No way to meet target
But when the Climate Change Commission ran the numbers, it concluded there was no way to meet the whole target with action at home. Because New Zealand started slow at tackling emissions, cutting transport, industry, farming and electricity emissions that quickly would cause too much economic pain, it concluded.

So there is also a second part to the target: buying carbon credits from overseas. Typically, economists assume this is cheaper than making cuts in emissions at home, though it depends on the project.

While no purchases will be made until after the election, the kinds of things that could qualify include retiring coal boilers in developing countries, or planting forests.

This is where the gap in the books comes in. Treasury had previously put the cost of buying these credits from overseas — and an estimated 100 million tonnes of them will be needed, at last count — at between $3.3 billion and more than $23 billion between now and 2030.

Even at the lower end of projections, it could work out at around $500 million a year.

Whichever way the government decides to do it, PREFU said the costs would be “significant” and will start biting “within the current fiscal forecast period”.

As things stand, according to Climate Change Minister James Shaw, one or possibly two rounds of purchases could be made in the next four years, with a third and final “washup” at the end of the decade.

Election may change timing
The election could change the timing, but whoever is in government will be expected to start showing progress towards meeting their Paris target well before the end of the decade, said carbon market expert Christina Hood from Compass Climate.

“There’s this common misconception that whoever the finance minister is in 2032 is going to have to get their chequebook out and square up by however much we missed by. It doesn’t work that way at all.

“Every emission (saving) we count has to actually occur during those years (before 2030), so we need to get on with funding that.”

Yet despite starting to fall due within the next four years, the costs did not appear as a liability on the government’s books. Nor do the major parties seem to be clear on how much to budget for them.

Bold claims, few details
This week, neither National nor Labour answered clearly how much they had planned to set aside for these costs nor how they intended to pay them. They instead focused their answers on wanting to cut planet-heating emissions more deeply inside New Zealand’s borders.

At times, politicians seemed to confuse domestic emissions budgets with the $3 billion-plus added cost of buying offsets to meet the Paris target, or they made heroic statements about how much they could do onshore, without supplying the figures behind them.

A quick reminder: the 100-odd million tonnes in overseas offsets that it was estimated we would need were on top of meeting New Zealand’s domestic emissions budgets, not instead of it. Only a truly incredible effort could meet the entire amount inside the country, requiring deep and fast climate action on a scale neither party has hinted at.

Currently, New Zealand is not even on track to meet its domestic emissions budgets, as Climate Change Commission chief executive Jo Hendy told a business and climate conference in Auckland this week.

“Latest projections show we are not on track in every single sector, so we are going to have to do more,” she said. “We are particularly reliant on pushing the dial in transport and in process heat.”

Yet when RNZ asked about the $3 billion-plus cost on the campaign trail, politicians appeared to be planning to overperform on those budgets, sometimes by impressive amounts. Their answers suggested they may not need to worry too much about that $3 billion-plus.

Here’s what Labour leader Chris Hipkins said, when asked if he had costed for meeting Paris: “We still have a way to go before we have to make a final decision on how best to meet our commitments there. We’re on track to meet our first emissions budget.

Working harder
“We’ve still got the second and third emissions reduction budgets to go. If we don’t meet our targets there is a period of time when we can figure out how best to remedy that, and that includes working harder in the second period to compensate for that.

“But we’re confident that with the stuff we’ve got in place at the moment, we’re on track to meet our first target.”

Hipkins did not address paying for offshore credits, which were required even if the country met all three domestic budgets. As prime minister, he rolled back a biofuel policy and, like National, has focused his transport promises mainly on building new roads rather than a strong shift to lower-emissions modes.

He has also promised help for home insulation and solar, but it was not clear if his new promises compensated for the cuts.

Asked the same question, National leader Christopher Luxon took aim at the government for undermining the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), saying the scheme should do more of the “heavy lifting”.

He, too, skirted the question of paying for offsets.

For context, the ETS made polluters pay for around half the country’s domestic climate pollution (the other half was from agriculture) and was already factored into projections of needing 100 million-odd tonnes of extra ‘top up’ help from overseas.

The scheme could do more, particularly if carbon prices went higher (taking petrol prices with them), or if farming was included, or if there were no limits on planting land in cheap pine trees, but Luxon did not detail how National would navigate these kinds of changes.

Cutting domestic emissions
Meanwhile, other party spokespeople talked-up cutting domestic emissions.

Labour environment spokesperson David Parker told the conference in Auckland he wanted to look at claims that native afforestation could meet the entire Paris target (without overseas help).

National’s climate spokesperson Simon Watts told the same gathering — the annual Climate Change and Business Conference — that National believed it could meet 70-75 percent of the 2030 target inside these shores, a figure considerably higher than previous estimates by the Climate Change Commission.

Watts did not supply details on how that would be achieved, though he discussed lightening regulation on wind and solar energy.

His party has said it would scrap Labour’s Clean Car Discount and major grants to companies to switch off coal boilers, and it would also delay pricing farming emissions a further five years, until 2030. There were questions about how it would meet even the current domestic emissions budgets.

The cost of waiting
Hood had a spot of good news on the cost front. She told RNZ that based on recent purchases by Switzerland, the cost of overseas carbon offsets was likely to be towards the lower end of Treasury’s range.

Even if the government winded up buying 100 million tonnes of savings offshore, that was still only around half the quantity the John Key-led government expected it might have to stump up for when it made its first Paris Agreement pledge, despite the first pledge being weaker on climate than the current one, she noted.

But getting offsets at the lower end of the cost range relies on the government getting moving on lining them up and buying them, she says.

Shaw told RNZ that environmental integrity would be a bottom line after New Zealand was burned for buying valueless “hot air” credits from Russia and Ukraine in the early years of carbon trading.

As well as Switzerland, Singapore and others had already started striking deals to buy the offsets they needed.

While the New Zealand Government has been scoping out prospective sellers overseas, it has refused to reveal who it is talking to, citing commercial sensitivity.

The ministries for Foreign Affairs and the Environment were working on advice to Cabinet on how to make these purchases and ensure the carbon saved was real. But that advice will not land until after the election.

Most expensive time to buy
One thing is clear. 2030 will be the most expensive time to buy, Hood said, because many countries will be panic-buying from overseas projects to meet their missed domestic commitments. Shaw agreed.

“A whole bunch of countries will be going, ‘Oh crap, I’ve missed my target,’ and scrambling around trying to find ways to fill the gap.”

Shaw wanted Paris costs to go into PREFU, making it clear to the government that any money spent on domestic action on climate change was also a cost saving in terms of buying fewer offshore credits.

“This is one of the things that worries me about what some of the other parties are saying, is that they aren’t really accounting for [Paris] in their fiscal plans.”

Shaw called the huge variance in Treasury ‘s $3 billion-23 billion estimate “unhelpful”.

“It’s such a wide variance it’s hard to trust it. At the moment… people are putting their fingers in their ears and saying ‘lalalala”.”

But asked how much the Green Party had costed for meeting New Zealand’s offshore climate commitments, Shaw would not be drawn on naming a more accurate number.

Treasury estimate best
“The best estimate I’ve got is the Treasury estimate. The Ministry for the Environment and MFAT (Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade) are doing a lot of work on this at the moment, but they’re not going to have a report back until just before Christmas. If I was to give you a number I would be pulling it out of thin air.”

As for how to pay for it, Shaw said ETS proceeds from polluters could do a lot of it.

“In a good year that’s a billion dollars, so if there’s seven years for us to do that it’s $7 billion.”

But Shaw also acknowledged there were a lot of other calls on that money — including for adapting to climate change, paying for domestic carbon savings, and helping low-income families weather the costs of higher emissions prices, which boost fuel and electricity costs.

National has said it would use ETS proceeds to help fund its tax cuts, meaning it will need to pay for the Paris target (both the offshore and onshore parts) some other way.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand will provide $15 million to support Samoa with its climate change priorities.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement in Apia today at a joint press conference with Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa.

“This funding will help build Samoa’s resilience to the impacts of climate change and its transition to a low emissions economy,” Ardern said.

• READ MORE: Samoa and NZ mark unique relationship, PM Fiame Naomi Mata’afa says
• Other NZ and Samoa reports

New Zealand will work with the Samoan government to determine where the funding will go — governance arrangements and opportunities for future investments.

The government is also pledging $12 million to rebuild Apia’s Savalalo Market, a historic market which was destroyed by a fire in 2016.

“The market was renowned as a hub for local crafts and food, run primarily by women small business owners. It is at the heart of Apia’s community and economic life, as well as formerly being a major tourist attraction,” Ardern said.

“We are proud to support the government of Samoa re-establish it.”

Rebuilding the partnership
The request for the money came from Samoa’s government, which will fund the rebuild in partnership with New Zealand. Both Ardern and Fiame have indentified climate change as a key joint issue.

Jacinda Ardern is in Samoa to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship between New Zealand and Samoa.

Following an ‘ava ceremony and reception on Monday, she attended a flag raising and guard of honour inspection today.

She said at the bilateral a number of issues were discussed in addition to climate change, such as economic resilience, and covid-19.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

WATCH LIVE – The prime ministers of New Zealand and Samoa, Jacinda Ardern and Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, are speaking to media after bilateral talks today. https://t.co/NtRK7U9EL7

— RNZ Pacific (@RNZPacific) August 1, 2022

Climate change remains the single greatest existential threat facing the Blue Pacific, as leaders concluded the biggest diplomatic regional meeting in Suva last week with a plea for the world to take urgent action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

While renewed commitments by Australia to reduce its carbon footprint by 43 percent come 2030 and a legislated net zero emission by 2050 were welcomed initiatives, Pacific leaders reiterated calls for rapid, deep and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, adding the region was facing a climate emergency that threatened the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of its people and ecosystems, backed by the latest science and the daily lived realities in Pacific communities.

PIF chairman and Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said the need was for “more ambitious climate commitments” — actions that would require the world to align its efforts to achieving the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree temperature threshold.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Islands Forum reports
• Wansolwara News reports

“We simply cannot settle for anything less than the survival of every Pacific Island country –– and that requires that all high emitting economies implement science-based plans to decisively reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree temperature threshold,” he told journalists at the PIF Secretariat.

“That requires that we halve global emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by no later than 2050. Most urgently, it requires that we end our fossil fuel addiction, including coal,” he said.

“That is our ask of Australia. That is our ask of New Zealand, the USA, India, the European Union, China and every other high-emitting country.

“It is also what Fiji asks of ourselves, though our emissions are negligible.”

Crisis felt in Fiji, Pacific
Bainimarama said the world faced a global energy crisis that was felt in the Pacific and Fiji.

While he understood the political realities that existed, planetary realities must take precedence.

“It will take courage and surely extract some political capital. But if Pacific Island countries can respond to and rebuild after some of the worst storms to ever make landfall in history, advanced economies can surely make the transition to renewables.

“The benefits will be remarkable. Our region has the potential to become a clean energy superpower if we summon the will to make it happen. That path is no doubt the surest way to an open, resilient, independent, and prosperous Blue Pacific.”

Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna told Wansolwara ahead of PIF51 that issues such as climate change, oceans, economic development, technology and connectivity as well as people-centered development were key priorities on the talanoa agenda for leaders from PIF’s 18-member countries, including Australia and New Zealand.

These priorities and the way forward to achieving it are incorporated in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, a collective ambitious long-term plan to address global and regional geopolitical and development challenges in light of existing and emerging vulnerabilities and constraints.

Cook Islands is expected to host the next PIF Leaders and related meetings in 2023, the Kingdom of Tonga in 2024 and Solomon Islands in 2025.

Geraldine Panapasa is editor-in-chief of the University of the South Pacific journalism programme newspaper and website Wansolwara. The USP team is a partner of Asia Pacific Report.

When it comes to the world’s two biggest emitters, we are caught between a secretive autocracy and an oversharing corrupted democracy.

Most media attention is focused on the latter. The United States this week raised hopes of a compromise climate spending bill and quashed it again before you could say “Joe Manchin is a bad-faith actor”.

Having somebody to blame does not make it any easier to address a system rigged in favour of fossil fuel interests.

• READ MORE: As Xi Jinping seeks more power, the world’s window into China’s climate action narrows
• Other climate crisis reports

At Climate Home, we bypassed that news cycle (come back to us when you’ve achieved something, America!) and took a longer look at the former.

Because the fact that so little climate journalism comes out of China at a certain point becomes newsworthy in itself. And once Chloé Farand started asking around, we knew this story’s time had come.

It has never been easy for journalists and civil society to operate in Xi Jinping’s China. As he looks to secure a third term as president over the coming months, it is harder than ever.

Beijing’s zero-covid policy is, most sources said, no longer just about public health, but a tool of control at a politically sensitive time. Conferences are cancelled indefinitely and travel restricted. Officials up and down the hierarchy are afraid to speak to the media.

Out of six China-based climate reporters who spoke to Climate Home for the article, four had left or were preparing to leave the country.

This is a problem. Not just for the international community, which has an interest in holding China to account for its emissions performance, but for China. In the vacuum, misinformation and Sinophobia flourish.

From the slivers of news that do emerge, we can see that Chinese experts have much to teach the rest of the world. Ok, so they might want to keep their advantage in mass producing solar panels, but when it comes to smart deployment policy, they have every incentive to share tips.

Perhaps they could give US climate campaigners, who are in despair right now, some fresh ideas.

• Other Climate Home News reports

Critics of New Zealand’s new $4.5 billion global warming plan to help New Zealanders into electric vehicles and hybrids say a significant cheque for the Clean Car programme is sending the wrong message about the role cars play in the country’s future.

Victoria University of Wellington’s environmental studies Professor Ralph Chapman said — electric or not — cars were still heavy on the wallet and on the environment.

“The sheer carbon emissions associated with running cars, the life cycle of a car and all the infrastructure that goes with it — like highways and more spread-out infrastructure for water and waste water … when you start to add it all up, cars are pretty much a disaster.”

• READ MORE: NZ’s first Emissions Reduction Plan spends $2.9b from Emergency Response Fund
• Government plan to tackle climate change to be revealed
• NZ Herald environment writer Simon Wilson: ‘It’s a massive step. But not enough.’
• Other reports on NZ’s climate action

Professor Chapman said there were still carbon emissions that went into making EVs and the like, as well as the emissions involved in importing them to New Zealand.

“The whole model has to change, rather than just encouraging people to go to a slightly more efficient car.”

Professor Chapman said the alternative option of scrapping an old car in return for money towards buying a bike or using public transport was a good move.

Free Fares lobby disappointed
Free Fares, which is lobbying the government to make all public transport free, is also disappointed in the scheme.

A spokesperson for the group said the wider Emissions Reduction Plan was “a continuation of an individualised culture and a focus on car ownership” rather than public transport, “which is what we need”.

Low-income families who scrap their old car will get funding to buy a low-emitting vehicle in a $569 million scheme, one of the big-ticket items in the government’s first Emissions Reductions Plan.

The money will not just be for electric vehicles – it could also help buy an e-bike or could be in the form of public transport vouchers.

But there was very little detail released about the scheme, such as who exactly will be eligible and – critically – how much financial help they would get.

New Zealand’s first Emissions Reduction Plan. Video: RNZ News

A pilot will be rolled out for 2500 households first, before an expansion of the scheme in about two years’ time.

Climate Change Minister James Shaw yesterday said it would follow a similar scheme which was introduced in California.

Those who took part in one scheme there got about $NZ15,000 off the price of a new or second hand EV.

“Notoriously challenging” says MIA
But even if a similar discount was offered here, it would still be costly, and “notoriously challenging”, the Motor Industry Association (MIA) said.

Chief executive David Crawford said the cost of new EV imports started at $40,000 and went upwards of $80,000, whereas used models started at about $20,000.

“If it is a new EV, their prices are quite high; would [eligible people] be able to afford debt servicing the difference? The price gap for a new EV can still be big,” Crawford said.

New Zealand has many old cars still being driven around; they pollute more and aren’t as safe so the MIA said it was supportive of moves to get more of them off the road.

The Motor Trade Association (MTA), which represents mechanics and repair shops, wants the government to go further than the $569m scheme, and roll out a scrappage model for everyone.

Its energy and environment manager Ian Baggott said it would be a challenge for the government to determine the criteria for scrappage.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Deeper and and more rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit the worst effects of global warming, a climate scientist has warned.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report that global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Without shrinking energy demand, reducing emissions rapidly by the end of this decade to keep warming below 1.5C will be almost impossible, the key UN body’s report said.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘If we don’t achieve deep and rapid reductions during this decade… then limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach’ – IPCC vice chair Dr Andy Reisinger
• ‘We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world – James Shaw
• ‘It’s a huge challenge and we’ve got to do it so quickly’ – Professor Ralph Sims
• ‘The window is almost closed … we need to take action immediately’- Professor James Renwick
• READ MORE: Climate change: IPCC scientists say it’s ‘now or never’ to limit warming

Even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.

At this point, only severe emissions cuts in this decade across all sectors, from agriculture and transport to energy and buildings, can turn things around, the report said.

IPCC vice-chair Dr Andy Reisinger told RNZ Morning Report the world was “pretty much out of time” to limit warming to 1.5C as agreed in Paris in 2015 and subsequently.

“What our report shows is that the emissions over the last decade were at the highest level ever in human history.

“But on the positive side, that level of emissions growth has slowed and globally we’ve seen a revolution in prices for some renewable energy technologies.” That had led to a rapid uptake of solar and wind energy technologies, he said.

“Also policies have grown. About half of global greenhouse gas emissions that we looked at in our report are now covered by some sort of laws that address climate change.”

The report said the world would need “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) technologies – ranging from planting trees that soak up carbon to grow, to costly and energy-intensive technologies to suck carbon dioxide directly from the air.

Governments had historically seen these technologies as a “cop out” but they were needed alongside reducing emissions,” Reisinger said.

“The time has now run out. If we don’t achieve deep and rapid reductions during this decade, much more so than we’re currently planning to collectively, then limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach.

“And the world collectively has the tools to reduce emissions by about a half by 2030.”

NZ has ‘squandered 30 years’, says Shaw
Climate Change Minister James Shaw says Aotearoa New Zealand has the political will to tackle climate change but it would have been a lot easier if it had begun decades ago.

“We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world on a per-capita basis and what that means is we’re now in a situation where having essentially fluffed around for three decades the cuts that we need to make over are now far steeper than they would have been.”

“Our country has squandered the past 30 years,” Shaw told Morning Report.

He said the Emissions Reduction Plan to be published next month would set out how the country would reduce emissions across every sector of the economy.

“I think what’s different about the plan that we’re putting out in May is that it’s a statutory instrument”, he said, and was required under the Zero Carbon Act. It would have targets to reduce emissions to the year 2025, 2030 and 2035.

Shaw said measures like the clean car discount scheme were working.

New Zealand’s agricultural emissions had not reduced, he said. This was the year when final decisions would be made on whether agriculture was brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme, and the whole sector was involved in the process.

There were farms up and down the country doing a terrific job on emissions but like every sector there was a “noisy group” which was dragging the chain.

“I think the charge that Groundswell are laying that we are not listening to farmers is ‘total bollocks’, he said.

Shaw noted the IPCC report said 83 percent of net growth in greenhouse gases since 2010 had occurred in Asia and the Pacific — and that New Zealand, Australia and Japan, as a group, had some of the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in 2019.

Cut consumer demand
While past IPCC reports on mitigating carbon emissions tended to focus on the promise of sustainable fuel alternatives, the new report highlights a need to cut consumer demand.

Massey University emeritus professor Ralph Sims, a review editor of the IPCC report, said one of the overarching messages is that people needed to change behaviours.

Despite New Zealanders having an attitude that our impact was small, in fact the country had some of the highest carbon emissions per capita, he said.

“We need people to look at their lifestyles, look at their carbon footprints and consider how they may reduce them.”

One of the easiest for the individual was to avoid food waste, he said.

Sims was involved in the transport chapter and said it was a key area for New Zealand.

“It’s the highest growing sector, and makes up for 20 percent of the country’s emissions.”

Faster electric vehicles change
He did not believe the country was transitioning fast enough to electric vehicles, and government assistance needed to be ramped up.

Electric vehicle prices would also reduce over time and a second hand market would make them more affordable, he said.

Sims said New Zealand needed to “get out of coal” and some companies were already reducing their coal demand.

Though New Zealand’s coal industry was small, exploration was still on the table and just last year the Southland District Council granted exploration at Ohai, he said.

Methane emissions need to reduce by a third by 2030, which Sims said is “a major challenge, and highly unlikely” to be achieved in New Zealand.

Victoria University of Wellington professor of physical geography James Renwick said curbing greenhouse gas emissions was still possible, with immediate action.

“The advice from the Climate Change Commission does show that we can peak emissions in the next few years and reduce and get down to zero carbon dioxide hopefully well in advance of 2050,” he said.

“It’s impossible to overstate the dangerous threat we face from climate change and yet politicians and policy makers and businesses still don’t act when everything’s at stake. I haven’t really seen the political will yet but we really need to see action.”

Technologies available at present to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere were not able to operate at the scale needed to make a difference to the climate system, he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The year is 2040 and Aotearoa New Zealand has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the commitment to keep global heating below 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

The economy, society, local government, transport, housing and urban design, energy, land use, food production and water systems have all changed significantly. Fossil fuels have been mostly phased out internationally and import taxes are imposed on high emissions goods.

New Zealand is now a world leader in natural infrastructure, clean hydrogen energy, engineered wood and high quality low emissions food. Despite ongoing challenges, with a prosperous economy, most people think the transition was worth it.

• READ MORE: When climate change and other emergencies threaten where we live, how will we manage our retreat?
• 2020 hindsight: can New Zealand apply the political lessons of covid-19 in the year ahead?

Cities are more pleasant places to live, air and water are cleaner, nature is more abundant.

Following the emissions budgets stipulated by the Zero Carbon Act in late 2021, emissions are now properly priced into all economic decisions. The Emissions Trading Scheme has been reinforced and the price of emitting carbon has stabilised at $300 per tonne, after hitting $75 in 2022 and $200 by 2030.

In 2026, New Zealand signed the International Treaty to Phase out Fossil Fuels, which prohibits fossil fuel extraction, phases out use and requires international cooperation on renewable energy.

Carbon import taxes mean many high emissions commercial activities are no longer economically viable. Trade unions have played a major role in the industrial strategy underpinning the transition to a lower emissions economy.

Māori economy bigger than any other sector
The Māori economy is bigger than any other sector and has benefited from wider international recognition of the long term value of climate and biodiversity work.

New Zealand’s economy is based on productive activity that stays within planetary boundaries – including emissions and pollution of land and water – while respecting social requirements, such as a decent standard of living for all.

Building on their successful response to the covid pandemic, marae-based organisations are prominent as centres of excellence for climate and economic strategy, health and social services, managed retreat from coastal areas and natural infrastructure development.

Public financing was radically rebalanced in the 2020s, delivering more for local government and a greater partnership between councils, government and Māori organisations. This has enabled far better delivery of local services and much more meaningful connections within communities.

Councils and council organisations laid the groundwork for the climate transition, helping address the unequal impacts of climate change on different groups. Councils and mana whenua collectively administer substantial funds for regional development.

Fast, frequent rail

The government’s 2022 Climate Budget provided the massive injection of funds required to redesign our cities, which are now organised around mass transit, safe and segregated routes for cycling and vibrant pedestrian areas. People can access fast, frequent light rail and dedicated busways with low cost fares. Less road space is required for driving, which is more accessible now for those who need it, including disabled people and service vehicles.

People travel between cities primarily via electric rail, managed by a new national passenger rail agency InterCity, which acquired the InterCity regional bus operator in 2023. Through major reforms in 2024, KiwiRail became a dedicated rail freight operator. A new government agency, OnTrack, oversees maintenance and renewal of tracks and rail infrastructure.

Passenger rail services run across the North Island main trunk line on improved electrified tracks at up to 160kph. South Island rail uses hydrogen trains fuelled by locally produced green hydrogen.

Most of the work to upgrade transport, housing and energy infrastructure has been done by a new Ministry of Green Works set up in 2025. This Ministry partners with local hapū and iwi, as well as councils through regional hubs. It is backed by the government’s expanded Green Investment Finance company.

Anger over housing for all
Anger at the divide between property owners and renters culminated in a general rent strike in 2024. The government responded with new financial rules ending the treatment of housing as an asset class. Kāinga Ora, Māori organisations and councils have undertaken a massive public housing construction effort.

Most new housing is now public infrastructure rather than private homes built to store individual wealth. Public ownership has expanded, in particular for entities that provide core services such as transport, energy and water.

In 2024, the government worked with councils to focus plans on quality universal design housing. Since the new building code was adopted in 2025, all new homes have high standards for energy efficiency and accessibility. Higher density apartments line public transport routes in the main centres, with terraced homes in smaller towns. Structural timber has replaced concrete and steel in many construction projects.

Changes to housing, transport and urban design have supported improvements in health, well-being and physical activity. Health improved dramatically after universal basic services were introduced in 2024 to cover free visits to the doctor and dentist as well as free childcare and elderly care.

Energy goes green
Electricity generation has doubled, with a mix of wind, solar and geothermal. Many more energy storage facilities exist, including pumped hydroelectricity. Distributed energy is commonplace. Many councils have helped their communities set up local solar schemes and dozens of towns are completely independent of the national grid.

Green hydrogen is produced at the converted aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point using hydroelectricity. This is used in heavy industry and transport and exported from Southport.

In 2027, after New Zealand blew its first carbon budget, the government replaced MBIE with a new Ministry for Economic Transition. The ministry oversaw the transition to green jobs via a universal job guarantee scheme.

It also supported a dramatic reduction in energy use in all parts of society and the economy. This effort had a greater impact on emissions reduction than the replacement of energy and fuel with renewable sources.

The land heals
In 2025, the government established a Natural Infrastructure Commission. The term “natural infrastructure” emerged in the 2020s as a term to include native forests, wetlands, coastal environments and other ecosystems that store and clean water, protect against drought, flooding and storms, boost biodiversity and absorb carbon.

The commission has supported massive land restoration for carbon sequestration and biodiversity purposes, with an annual budget of NZ$5 billion from emissions revenue. Among other uses, the fund compensates land owners for land use changes that reduce emissions and build up resilience.

Under the new Constitution of Aotearoa adopted in 2040, ownership of the Conservation Estate transferred from Crown ownership to its own status of legal personhood.

International carbon taxes have transformed agriculture. Dairy herds have reduced in size and New Zealand is known for organic, low emissions food and fibre. High quality meat and dairy products, as well as plant-based protein foods, supply international markets.

Seaweed and aquaculture operations have flourished. Along with regenerative agriculture, this transition has reduced pollution and emissions. With native ecosystems regenerated, tōtara and harakeke can now be sustainably harvested for timber and fibre.

In urban and industrial settings water use has dramatically reduced. Every business, home and building stores its own water. Water use is measured and charges are levied for excess water use beyond the needs of the household. No water is ever wasted.

A better place
The country feels steadier than 20 years ago. There is hope for the future in a world that was full of uncertainty after the pandemic stricken early 2020s.

Many government agencies and councils are now seen as useful and relevant, having been equipped with the money to provide housing, social services, environmental restoration and support for economic and land use change.

Moving away from high emissions exports was more successful than anyone expected, but it took strict rules to make it happen. Some in the business sector opposed more government direction and regulation, but it’s widely accepted that relying on market forces would not have delivered a successful transition.

That approach had driven the country to the brink of failure on climate, biodiversity and social cohesion. Having been leaders in milk powder and tourism, the country now leads on natural infrastructure and the future of food, timber and energy.

In 2040, Aotearoa is a better place to be.

Dr Thomas Nash is social entrepreneur in residence, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

After years of empty promises by major emitters, it’s time to deliver on climate financing.

The world is warming. The science is clear. Most large, developed countries need to take ambitious action to reduce their emissions in order not to impact us further.

If they don’t, there is dire consequence, and in turn a significant rise in adaptation cost to us, those that did not cause this problem.

• READ MORE: Other COP26 reports

Some people call it paradise, but for me and thousands of Pacific people, the beautiful pristine Pacific Island region is simply home. It is our inheritance, a blessing from our forebears and ancestors.

As custodians of these islands, we have a moral duty to protect it – for today and the unborn generations of our Pacific anau.

Sadly, we are unable to do that because of things beyond our control. The grim reality of climate change, especially for many Small Island Developing States like my beloved Cook Islands, is evidently clear.

Sea level rise is alarming. Our food security is at risk, and our way of life that we have known for generations is slowly disappearing. What were “once in a lifetime” extreme events like category 5 cyclones, marine heatwaves and the like are becoming more severe.

No longer theory
These developments are no longer theory. Despite our negligible contribution to global emissions, this is the price we pay.

We are talking about homes, lands and precious lives; many are being displaced as we speak. I am reminded about my Pacific brothers and sisters living on remote atolls including some of those in our 15 islands that make up the Cook Islands — as well as our Pacific neighbours such as Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau and many others, not just in the Pacific Ocean.

This family of small islands states is spread beyond our Pacific to across the globe.

Here in the Cook Islands, we are raising riverbanks to protect homes that for the first time in history are being reached by floodwater. We are building water storage on islands that have never before experienced levels of drought that we see now.

Over the years, the devastating impact of climate change has evolved from a mere threat to a crisis of epic proportion, now posing as the most pressing security issue to livelihoods on our island shores.

We live with undeniable evidence to back up the science. Most of you who follow the climate change discourse know our story. We have been saying this for as far as back as I can remember.

For more than 10 years of my political career, our message to the world about climate change has been loud and clear. Climate change is a matter of life and death. We need help. Urgently.

Given only empty promises
Today, I am sad to say that after all the years of highlighting this bitter truth, the discourse hasn’t progressed us far enough. All we have been given are promises and more empty promises from the world’s biggest emitters while our islands and people are heading towards a climate catastrophe where our very existence and future is at stake.

But we will not stop trying. As long as we have the strength and the opportunity to speak our truth to power, we will continue to call for urgent action. In the words of our young Pacific climate activists, “We are not drowning, we are fighting.”

As the political champion of Climate Finance for the Pacific Islands, I believe it is imperative that world leaders fast track large-scale climate finance that are easy to access for bold long-term and permanent adaptation solutions.

It is critical that COP26 begins discussions for a new quantifiable goal on climate finance. We need to do this now. Not tomorrow, next year or the next COP.

Last week when I addressed world leaders attending COP26, I urged them to consider a new global financial instrument that recognises climate-related debt, separately from national debt. We need to provide for innovative financing modalities that do not increase our debt.

We need to take climate adaptation debt off national balance sheets, especially since many Pacific countries are already heavily in debt. Why? Pacific countries contribute the least to global emissions and they should not have to pay a debt on top the consequences they are already struggling with.

Amortising adaptation debt
We need to consider amortising adaptation debt over a 100-year timeframe.

We must seek a new commitment that dedicates financing towards Loss and Damage that would assist our vulnerable communities manage the transfer of risks experienced by the irreversible impacts of climate change. We must also ensure that adaptation receives an equitable amount of financing as for mitigation.

I want to reiterate that adaptation measures by their very nature are long-term investments against climate impacts, thus we need to be talking about adaptation project lifecycles of 20 years, 50 years and 100 years, and more.

We are at a critical juncture of our journey where the fate of our beautiful, pristine homes is a stake. I call on all major emitters to take stronger climate action, especially to deliver on their funding promises.

Stop making excuses; climate change existed way before covid-19 when the promises of billions of dollars in climate financing were made.

It is time to deliver.

Mark Brown, Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, is also the Pacific Political Champion for Climate Finance at COP26. While not attending the COP this year due to covid-19 travel restrictions, Prime Minister Brown is providing support and undertaking this role remotely. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Police stopped a climate change march in Suva today and forced activists to remove their banners.

They also warned demonstrators against making social media posts about the event.

Priests, church workers and youth had gathered at My Suva Park to march as part of worldwide Day of Climate Action protests against governments failing to act more urgently at the global COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

• READ MORE: Youth activists protest against climate inaction at COP26
• Other COP26 climate reports

Organised by the Columban Society of the Roman Catholic church, the march also coincided with the church’s Season of Creation.

Marchers carried banners calling for reduced carbon emissions and an end to global warming.

The same message was delivered at COP26 by Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

Police allowed the crowd about 100 to walk to the nearby Pacific Regional Seminary, where an event was held.

However, they refused permission for a public gathering at My Suva Park and forced activists to remove their banners.

Social media criticism of police
Social media postings criticised the police action.

One poster from Auckland on the Pacific Conference of Churches Facebook page asked why the protest was stopped in Fiji, “a democratic country known for its democracy”.

“Every weekend [a] protest takes place here in Auckland by the anti-vaccine people, not in numbers but in thousands. Police are present there but [none] are arrested or told to stop and leave. It is their right and freedom to express and voice out.

“What is the danger in there. Why so much of dictatorship rule. It was a peaceful march. Marches were also staged in Glasgow during the summit, nobody were turned away.

It is [a] way for the people to express their views.”

Another poster said: “Fijian officials need to realise that Fiji will be one of the few countries in the world that will be swallowed up by the ocean due to climate change.

“Fiji needs to do these marches to show the large countries [which] are guilty of polluting our atmosphere that Fijian Lives Matter.”

The climate is changing, faster than we thought – and humans have caused it. Last night, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most comprehensive report on climate change ever – with hundreds of scientists taking part.

It says human activity is “unequivocally” driving the warming of atmosphere, ocean and land. The report projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions.

Lead author on the paper, Associate Professor Amanda Maycock of Leeds University, told RNZ Morning Report the study gave governments a range of scenarios on what the world would look like with action and without it.

• READ MORE: UN sounds ‘code red for humanity’ warning over irreversible climate impact
• Climate change has already hit. Unless we act now, a hotter, drier and more dangerous future awaits, IPCC warns
• LISTEN: ‘It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today’ – Report author Dr Amanda Maycock
• LISTEN: ‘I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can” – Climate scientist Professor James Renwick
• LISTEN: ‘They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action’ – Professor Bronwyn Hayward
• LISTEN: ‘Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years’ – Climate Change Minister James Shaw
• The full sixth IPCC report

“The new scenarios that we present in the report today span a range of different possible futures, so they range all the way from making very rapid, immediate and large-scale cuts in greenhouse gas emissions all the way up to a very pessimistic scenario where we don’t make any efforts to mitigate emissions at all.

“So we provide the government with a range of possible outcomes. Now in those five scenarios that we assess in each one of them, it’s expected that the 1.5 degree temperature threshold will either be reached or exceeded in the next 20-year period,” she said.

“However, importantly, the very low emission scenario that we assess — the one where we would reach net zero emissions by the middle of this century — it reaches 1.5 degrees, it may overshoot by a very small amount, possibly about 0.1 of a degree Celsius, but later on in the century the temperature would come back down again and it would start to fall and it would stabilise below the 1.5 degree threshold.

“So based on the scenarios that we present, there is still a route for us to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, to limit temperature (rises) to 1.5 degrees Celsius (on average).

“The publication of today’s report is extremely timely ahead of the COP 26 [climate change conference in Glasgow] meeting because it really does set out in starker terms than ever before that climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.

‘Climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.’

— Dr Amanda Maycock

“So that serves, I think, as very good motivation for the negotiations that will happen at COP 26. We’ve seen in recent years several countries making commitments in law to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, including New Zealand, and so we will see in November when the meeting takes place, how the other countries react to what the is presented in the working group one report today.

“It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today. So we’re seeing, you know, every year in different parts of the world we see record breaking heatwaves taking place.

“We see increasingly severe events that are connected to climate change. You know, high rainfall events and flooding, wildfire events, which are often associated and exacerbated by extreme heat and drought, and these are happening all around us all of the time now.

“So this was what was predicted by the IPCC over many decades, the IPCC’s been saying for a long time now that climate change is happening but the impacts will become more severe as the warming continues to increase and that is what we are now seeing today.

The New Zealand context
Climate scientist and report co-author Professor James Renwick of Victoria University told Morning Report “the so-called real time attribution science — being able to use models to look at events pretty much as they happen and work out the fingerprint of climate change — has advanced so much in the last five to 10 years now, this information is incorporated into the report.

“So yes, we know that a lot of these extreme events that have been happening lately have been made worse by the changing climate.

“We’ve had just over a degree of warming so far, and you know, we see the consequences of that. Add another half a degree or another whole degree. It’s actually hard to imagine just how bad it could get it.

“I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can.

“This report is the most definite of any of the IPCC reports. There’s no hedging around that climate change is definitely happening. Human activity is definitely the cause is driving all of the change.

“The messages in a way the same as we’ve had from the IPCC for 20 years, 30 years even and yet the action hasn’t come through at the political level – we really are at the sort of last gasp stage if we’re going to stop the warming at some kind of manageable level, we need the action now.

The best technologies for avoiding the impact of climate change were still reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by switching to renewable energy and planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide, Dr Renwick said.

“So the faster we can reduce our use of oil and coal, the better everyone is going to be and hopefully some of these new [geo-engineering] technologies will prove useful. But there’s nothing on the table right now that looks particularly promising.”

How we should respond
University of Canterbury’s Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a member of the IPCC core writing team, told Morning Report there would be “huge pressure on large and developed countries” ahead of the Glasgow climate change conference in November.

“I think the problem for New Zealand is that we are still using a climate target that was set two governments ago. It doesn’t meet the Paris Agreement,” she said.

“If the rest of the world did what we were doing, we’d be well over 3 degrees warmer. So we really just need to not wait to November to make a nice speech in Glasgow. There’s nothing stopping the government.

“They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action.

“The Climate Commission has said that we should be saying at least 36 percent cuts or much more, actually if we can, on the amount of emissions we were making back in 2005.

“But we also need a covid-like response. I think now we could really do with a popular public servant like Bloomfield to lead it, but we need a whole of government response where we are having regular reports where we’re bringing together what we’re doing on our emissions reduction and to protect people.

“So we need to see some big cuts [in emissions]. For example in transport and to be bold about this, like what would stop the government from actually supporting Auckland to provide all free public buses and congestion charging?

“I mean, make some big bold steps…

“At the moment we’re kind of keeping on treating climate as if it’s something about reducing climate through carbon changes, but it’s social actions as well, so investing in new jobs.

“So bring the thinking together, bring our Ministry of Social Development in with our Ministry for the Environment and really start thinking ‘what does a new lower carbon economy actually look like that works for people?’.

“There’s always a place for an Emissions Trading Scheme, but we have relied on that only for 30 years and we actually have to also, at the same time make real and concrete and rapid changes where we can … we need to be really planning, not just changing our market systems, but actually planning for concrete infrastructure and housing and city changes that are real on the ground and actually doing them now.

‘A catastrophe unfolding’
Minister for Climate Change and Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the key takeaway from the report was that the effects of climate change were happening now.

“It’s not something that’s going to be happening in the future somewhere else to somebody else. It is happening to us, and there’s a catastrophe that’s unfolding here in Aotearoa as well as to our nearest neighbours in Australia. And we can see that in that kind of wildfires and so on that they have every year and in the Pacific, where the rate of sea level rise is higher than just about anywhere else in the world,” he said.

“It just underscores the incredible urgency and the scale with which we need to act.

Despite the need to reduce emissions, agriculture – which contributes almost 50 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases – will not be included in the Emissions Trading Scheme until 2025.

Even then, it will be at a 95 percent discount – but Shaw said that was the “backup plan”.

“So what we’re doing is we’re building a farm level measurement management and pricing scheme for agriculture, and we’re actually the first country in the world to put in place a way of pricing agricultural emissions… you know, just because the pricing isn’t kicking in until the 1st of January 2025, people need to be reducing their emissions now.”

As for transport – which contributes 20 percent of Aotearoa’s greenhouse gas emissions – a shift to electric cars was important but so was mode shift, Shaw said.

“We need people to be able to access opportunities for walking, cycling, public transport and so on as well. And we know that our existing fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles is going to still be used for quite a long time because we hold on to our cars for a long time.

“That’s why we’re bring in a biofuels mandate to make sure that every litre of petrol sold has a biofuels component to it that will increase over time.

“But transport is the one area in our economy that has just been growing relentlessly for decades and we have to turn it around.”

“Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years. And what that means is that there is a much steeper curve that we are facing in front of us and [it is] much harder to do, given that we’ve waited so long to get started.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Australia is experiencing widespread, rapid climate change not seen for thousands of years and may warm by 4℃ or more this century, according to the highly anticipated report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The assessment, released on Monday, also warns of unprecedented increases in climate extremes such as bushfires, floods and drought. But it says deep, rapid emissions cuts could spare Australia, and the world, from the most severe warming and associated harms.

The report is the sixth produced by the IPCC since it was founded in 1988 and provides more regional information than any previous version.

• READ MORE: We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy
• This is the most sobering report card yet on climate change and Earth’s future. Here’s what you need to know
• Click here to read more of The Conversation’s coverage of the IPCC report

This gives us a clearer picture of how climate change will play out in Australia specifically.

It confirms the effects of human-caused climate change have well and truly arrived in Australia. This includes in the region of the East Australia Current, where the ocean is warming at a rate more than four times the global average.

We are climate scientists with expertise across historical climate change, climate projections, climate impacts and the carbon budget. We have been part of the international effort to produce the IPCC report over the past three years.

The report finds even under a moderate emissions scenario, the global effects of climate change will worsen significantly over the coming years and decades.

Every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the likelihood and severity of many extremes. That means every effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions matters.

Australia is, without question, warming
Australia has warmed by about 1.4℃ since 1910. The IPCC assessment concludes the extent of warming in both Australia and globally are impossible to explain without accounting for the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities.

The report introduces the concept of Climate Impact-Drivers (CIDs): 30 climate averages, extremes and events that create climate impacts. These include heat, cold, drought and flood.

The report confirms global warming is driving a significant increase in the intensity and frequency of extremely hot temperatures in Australia, as well as a decrease in almost all cold extremes. The IPCC noted with high confidence that recent extreme heat events in Australia were made more likely or more severe due to human influence.

These events include:

• the Australian summer of 2012–13, also known as the Angry Summer, when more than 70 percent of Australia experienced extreme temperatures
• the Brisbane heatwave in 2014
• extreme heat preceding the 2018 Queensland fires
• the heat leading into the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20.

The IPCC report notes very high confidence in further warming and heat extremes through the 21st century –- the extent of which depends on global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

If global average warming is limited to 1.5℃ this century, Australia would warm to between 1.4℃ to 1.8℃. If global average warming reaches 4℃ this century, Australia would warm to between 3.9℃ and 4.8℃ .

The IPCC says as the planet warms, future heatwaves in Australia – and globally – will be hotter and last longer. Conversely, cold extremes will be both less intense and frequent.

Hotter temperatures, combined with reduced rainfall, will make parts of Australia more arid. A drying climate can lead to reduced river flows, drier soils, mass tree deaths, crop damage, bushfires and drought.

The southwest of Western Australia remains a globally notable hotspot for drying attributable to human influence. The IPCC says this drying is projected to continue as emissions rise and the climate warms. In southern and eastern Australia, drying in winter and spring is also likely to continue. This phenomenon is depicted in the graphic below.

Climate extremes on the rise
Heat and drying are not the only climate extremes set to hit Australia in the coming decades. The report also notes:

• observed and projected increases in Australia’s dangerous fire weather
• a projected increase in heavy and extreme rainfall in most places in Australia, particularly in the north
• a projected increase in river flood risk almost everywhere in Australia.

Under a warmer climate, extreme rainfall in a single hour or day can become more intense or more frequent, even in areas where the average rainfall declines.

For the first time, the IPCC report provides regional projections of coastal hazards due to sea level rise, changing coastal storms and coastal erosion – changes highly relevant to beach-loving Australia.

This century, for example, sandy shorelines in places such as eastern Australia are projected to retreat by more than 100 metres, under moderate or high emissions pathways.

Hotter, more acidic oceans
The IPCC report says globally, climate change means oceans are becoming more acidic and losing oxygen. Ocean currents are becoming more variable and salinity patterns — the parts of the ocean that are saltiest and less salty — are changing.

It also means sea levels are rising and the oceans are becoming warmer. This is leading to an increase in marine heatwaves such as those which have contributed to mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in recent decades.

Notably, the region of the East Australia Current which runs south along the continent’s east coast is warming at a rate more than four times the global average.

The phenomenon is playing out in all regions with so-called “western boundary currents” – fast, narrow ocean currents found in all major ocean gyres. This pronounced warming is affecting marine ecosystems and aquaculture and is projected to continue.

Where to from here?
Like all regions of the world, Australia is already feeling the effects of a changing climate.

The IPCC confirms there is no going back from some changes in the climate system. However, the consequences can be slowed, and some effects stopped, through strong, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.

And now is the time to start adapting to climate change at a large scale, through serious planning and on-ground action.

To find out more about how climate change will affect Australia, the latest IPCC report includes an Interactive Atlas. Use it to explore past trends and future projections for different emissions scenarios, and for the world at different levels of global warming.

Click here to read more of The Conversation’s coverage of the IPCC report

By Dr Michael Grose, climate projections scientist, CSIRO; Dr Joelle Gergis, senior lecturer in climate science, Australian National University; Dr Pep Canadell, chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and executive director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO, and Dr Roshanka Ranasinghe, professor of climate change impacts and coastal risk. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Critics have hammered the Climate Change Commission’s agriculture goals in New Zealand, saying it has missed the mark on methane targets.

In a final 419-page report handed to Parliament yesterday, the commission urged the government to get tough on the way New Zealanders live, move and work, through implementing 33 recommendations.

To help keep global warming below 1.5C it said there should be no more new or used petrol or diesel cars imported, made or assembled in New Zealand by 2035.

• READ MORE: Climate Change Commission releases final report, says nearly all cars imported by 2035 must be electric
• Ināia tonu nei:a low emissions future for Aotearoa – Full report

The commission asked for substantially more government investment in cheap, accessible public transport, cycle paths and walkways, and no more coal boilers “as soon as possible”, with at least 95 percent renewable electricity used by 2030.

Greenpeace head of campaigns Amanda Larsson said it was all a bit disappointing because the report missed a major weak spot.

“Despite thousands of submissions in favour of climate action, despite huge public mandate out there for climate action, the commission has failed to really take responsibility for the industry that is causing the most climate pollution in New Zealand – and that is the dairy industry,” she said.

“There’s been no real change in its recommendations and the dairy industry still gets basically a free pass to pollute.”

Mechanism to reward farmers
The commission wants the government to decide next year on a pricing mechanism for rewarding farmers who reduce emissions.

It suggests technologies including methane inhibitors – vaccines which can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide burped by cows into the atmosphere – could reduce the country’s biogenic methane emissions by more than 50 percent.

It also sets an overall biogenic methane reduction target of 10 percent by 2030 – which Dairy NZ called “incredibly challenging” and a “big ask” for farmers, saying New Zealand milk already had the lowest carbon footprint in the world.

“We do remain concerned agriculture may be asked to do the heavy lifting if we don’t see urgent action to reduce CO2 emissions. We are all in this together and we must have a fair and balanced plan that requires our communities to contribute equally,” its chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said.

However, Larsson said there could have been strict limits on stock numbers, among other measures.

“We need to cut synthetic fertiliser and we need to cut imported feed and we need to support farmers to transition to regenerative and organic ways of farming.”

Hard-line approach in other sectors
Oxfam New Zealand campaign lead Alex Johnston said the commission was already taking more of a hard-line approach for other sectors.

“The pathways for reducing emissions in agriculture are simply not consistent with keeping to 1.5 degrees,” he said.

“Even if we go as hard as we can on transport and other sectors, if we don’t directly regulate emissions from agriculture and step up our actions in that area, then we’re not going to be able to do our fair share to contribute to this global problem.”

Forest & Bird spokesperson Geoff Keey agreed that agriculture was still getting “a bit of an easy ride” and the measures should be stricter, but he believed there was another blind spot in the report.

He wanted kelp and shellfish beds re-established on coastlines, and measures to stop wetlands drying out, to ensure more carbon did not go into the atmosphere.

“One of the big things that comes out of the report is once we start looking beyond 2030 and 2040, we’re going to need to protect our carbon stores in forests, in the sea and in wetlands. Right now the rules are not strong enough to allow that to happen,” he said.

Someone who felt more optimistic about the report was Niwa chief scientist Dr Sam Dean, who called it “a breath of fresh air”.

Traction on policies
He said there was finally traction on a more “comprehensive” range of climate policies.

“Up ’till now we’ve based our response on the emissions trading scheme, which is incentivised plantation and forestry. Moving away from that to a broader range of policies that are going to actually reduce emissions, especially carbon dioxide, is especially important. It’s something we’ve not managed to do, to date. And it’s something we’re going to have to do really quickly,” he said.

Dean said the difficult part was not writing the report – it was up to the government to rise to the challenge.

He said his plea for the government was to embrace all the recommendations with urgency and he challenged all New Zealanders to show their support and willingness to make changes.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s Climate Change Commission this week released its long-anticipated advice to the government on how to reshape the economy to meet the country’s domestic and international climate change obligations.

The document sets out three emissions budgets, covering 15 years to 2035 in five-yearly plans. It also provides advice on the direction policy should take to achieve the country’s 2050 net-zero goal.

New Zealand’s net emissions rose by 57 percent between 1990 and 2018, placing it among the poorest performers in the OECD.

• READ MORE: Climate emergency or not, New Zealand needs to start doing its fair share of climate a
• Ardern’s government and climate policy: despite a zero-carbon law, is New Zealand merely a follower rather than a leader?
  
• Climate Change Commission plan ‘big challenge’ for New Zealand

As one of New Zealand’s six climate change commissioners I have been part of the process of making a clear case to government that we must take “immediate and decisive action on climate change” across all sectors.

The commission’s priorities include a rapid shift to electric transport, accelerated renewable energy generation, climate-friendly farming practices and more permanent forests, predominantly in native trees.

It also says New Zealand must raise its pledge under the Paris Agreement, known as the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), because its current commitment is not compatible with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels.

Ambitious but realistic carbon budgets
The good news is the draft carbon budgets are achievable, with technologies that already exist.

The commission’s advice is built around 17 recommendations that cover many sectors of the economy. One of the key messages is that Aotearoa New Zealand cannot plant its way out of trouble but needs to make real cuts in emissions and eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

Most of the solutions are well known. We need to reduce emissions from transport, from energy and industry, from agriculture and from waste.

Breaking: New Zealand roadmap to net zero unveiled. Here’s what it means for you.https://t.co/5oLgapQdDC

— The Spinoff (@TheSpinoffTV) January 31, 2021

Reducing transport emissions is crucial as the sector was responsible for 36.3 percent of New Zealand’s emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases in 2018 and accounts for most of the growth in emissions over the past 30 years.

Recommendations for the transport sector include electrification of the vehicle fleet, improved public transport networks and better integration of active transport (walking and cycling).

A rapid increase in electric cars would reduce emissions from private and commercial transport, while supporting low-carbon fuels like “green” hydrogen and biofuels would help the freight sector (including heavy trucks, shipping and aircraft).

Part of the transport story is urban planning — changing how people and goods move around. The commission recommends limiting urban sprawl, making walking and cycling safer and easier and shifting more freight from road to rail or shipping.

The commission also calls for rapid decarbonisation of electricity generation, and energy generally, to phase out the use of coal. Between now and 2035, it estimates New Zealand could cut transport emissions by 47 percent and those coming from heat and electricity generation by 45 percent.

I can’t stress this enough. We’re heading for economic change, to decarbonise the country. There’ll be winners and losers. Who they are depends on decisions by govts, informed by advice out a week from today by the Climate Change Commission. Have your say! https://t.co/pAs5PLeaKo

— Eloise Gibson (@eloise_gibson) January 24, 2021

Emissions from agriculture
Methane accounts for 43.5 percent of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, and more than 80 percent of total methane comes from cud-chewing farm animals. But the short-lived nature of methane in the atmosphere means we do not need to reduce methane emissions so fast.

The Zero Carbon Act calls for a 24-47 percent reduction in methane emissions by 2050, compared to net-zero for carbon dioxide.

The commission’s advice is that biogenic methane emissions can be reduced by 19 percent by 2035 while further improving productivity in the sector through better feed, fewer but more productive animals and continued research into emission-reducing technologies.

The commission calls for real cuts in emissions rather than offsets through tree planting, but argues forestry should continue to play an important role in the long-term storage of carbon, for example if timber is used in buildings or furniture and to provide bioenergy.

It recommends a shift towards more permanent native forests to improve long-term carbon storage, biodiversity and soil retention.

Waste is another sector with significant potential to cut emissions. Per head of population, New Zealanders throw away roughly twice what an average OECD citizen does. The commission recommends moving towards a circular economy, where resources are valued and reused.

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the main issue in the waste sector is methane release from decomposing solid waste. Capturing that gas at source could reduce methane emissions by 14 percent by 2035.

Cost of a fair transition
The commission’s draft budgets recommend an overall reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions of 36 percent by 2035, starting with 2 percent by 2025 and 17 percent by 2030. It estimates the cost of achieving this is less than 1 percent of projected GDP, much lower than was initially thought.

The payoffs for public health, for our environment and biodiversity make this a good investment, let alone the huge avoided costs from unchecked climate change.

The commission’s recommendations will go through a public consultation process until March 14, and the government has until the end of the year to decide which parts of the advice it takes on board.

An important aspect of the advice is inclusiveness and support for all sectors of society as we move to a low-emissions future. The commission takes a te ao Māori (Māori world view) approach, making it clear that Aotearoa must have an equitable and fair transition.

By Dr James Renwick, professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Late on Monday night, the City of Sydney became the first state capital in Australia to officially declare a climate emergency. With climate change considered a threat to human life, Sydney councillors unanimously supported a motion put forward by Lord Mayor Clover Moore to mobilise city resources to reduce carbon emissions and minimise the impact of future change.

The decision sees Sydney join a variety of local and national governments around the world, in a movement that is increasingly gaining momentum.

In total, some 658 local governments around the world have made the same declaration, with the UK and Canada committing their national governments to the global movement in just the past two months.

An official declaration of climate emergency puts a government on a “wartime mobilisation” that places climate change at the centre of policy and planning decisions.

READ MORE: UK becomes first country to declare a ‘climate emergency’

While interpretations differ on what a “climate emergency” means in practice, governments have established a range of measures to help meet the targets set by the Paris climate agreement. Under this agreement, 197 countries have pledged to limit global temperature rise to less than 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, and ideally no more than 1.5℃.

With 2018 having brought all manner of record-breaking climate extremes, and global average temperatures projected to reach 3.2℃ above the pre-industrial average based on current national pledges and targets for greenhouse emissions, Sydney’s recognition of a national emergency is both highly appropriate and also a major turning-point for Australia.

Although a signatory to the Paris Agreement, Australia’s greenhouse emissions have risen over the past four years since the repeal of the carbon price. With Australian emissions most notably increasing around transport, the United Nations climate discussions currently being held in Bonn have raised concerns over the nation’s ability to meet its Paris commitments.

Economic impacts
With the global cost of inaction on climate change projected to reach a staggering US$23 trillion a year by the end of the century (equivalent to around five 2008 global financial crises every year), several nations are already ramping up their Paris Agreement commitments ahead of schedule. The UK recently announced its intention to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

Australia is particularly vulnerable to the future financial costs of climate change, with economic models suggesting losses of A$159 billion a year through the impact of sea level rise and drought-driven collapses in agricultural productivity. The cost for each household has been put at about A$14,000.

After Sydney’s declaration, 150 faith leaders on Tuesday signed an open letter endorsing the decision, and describing the climate issue as a moral challenge that transcends religious belief. They have called for an urgent mobilisation to reach 100 percent renewable energy by the year 2030, and for an end to the approval of any new coal and gas projects, including Adani’s controversial Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.

The recent court ruling against the proposed Rocky Hill coal mine in the New South Wales Hunter Valley – a decision made partly on climate grounds – could mark a crucial turning point in the fortunes of future mining projects.

As part of its emergency declaration, Sydney has also called on the federal government to establish a “just transition authority” to support Australians currently employed in fossil fuel industries. This is an urgent issue and a crucial part of the transition to a low-emissions economy.

A major nationwide training program will be needed to help re-skill the estimated 8,000 people who work in fossil-fuelled electricity production, and to help fill the tens of thousands of new jobs in renewable energy-related fields.

With the scale of change required to decarbonise the global economy and hopefully avoid a 2℃ warmer world, the need to support communities across Australia and overseas will likely become an increasing challenge for governments around the world. Putting ourselves on an emergency footing could help provide precisely the impetus we need.

• Dr Chris Turney is professor of earth science and climate change, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of New South Wales. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.