Government updates 'Paris' climate change commitment

Friday, 31 January 2025

All signatories to the Paris Agreement have been charged with setting out their emissions-reduction targets for the period 2031 to 2035.

A chasm has opened up over whether a new climate change goal set by the Government is sufficiently ambitious.

The Government has committed to reducing New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions to between 51% and 55% below its 2005 gross emissions by 2035.

The new commitment reflects the obligation on all signatories to the ‘Paris’ climate change agreement to set new emissions-reduction targets for the five-year period, which needed to be tougher than the targets that preceded them.

The preceding target has been to cut net emissions to 50% of 2005 gross emissions by 2030.

Pledge is ambitious but achievable, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, says.

The difference between ‘net’ and ‘gross’ emissions, is that net emissions take account of the contribution of activities that sequestrate carbon, for example planting forests.

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said meeting the new 2035 target would mean New Zealand was doing “our fair share towards reducing the impact of climate change”.

“We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious and achievable, reinforcing our commitment to the Paris Agreement and global climate action,” he said.

But Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson described the minimum one percentage point increase in promised emission-reductions “an absolute joke”.

“Not only is this target too weak to protect our kids and grandkids from a disastrous future but there is no plan to achieve even the targets we already have,” she said.

Rod Carr says it's about time Treasury built cost of buying overseas carbon credits into fiscal forecasts.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was “completely ridiculous” for the Government to suggest a 51% reduction was the best New Zealand could do given the Climate Change Commission had demonstrated reductions of more than 70% were achievable.

The new National Determined Contribution (NDC) was the closest thing the Government could do to breaking the Paris Agreement without actually doing that, she said, questioning where “his culture of ‘yes’” was for “protecting life as we know it”.

The targets are “economy wide”, covering both carbon and methane emissions, and all sectors of the economy, including agriculture.

A Government statement said the new NDC would make “a credible contribution” to restricting global warming to below 1.5 degrees.

It represented New Zealand’s “highest possible ambition, in light of our national circumstances and respective capabilities”, it said.

The target had been expressed as a range to “respond to evolving national circumstances” and reflect current uncertainties, including the impact new technology could have on agricultural emissions, it said.

Federated Farmers meat and wool chairperson Toby Williams said the commitment “signed New Zealand up for a decade more of planting pine on productive land”.

'The 2030 target of a 50% reduction in all greenhouse gas emissions in just the next five years is already completely beyond reach,“ he said.

'Even by 2035, as half of New Zealand’s emissions are from agriculture, a target of 51% to 55% is still not feasible.“

Rebecca Peer, a senior lecturer in civil and natural resources at the University of Canterbury, said shortly prior to the announcement that New Zealand would need to set a 66% reduction target for 2035 to align with the Climate Change Commission’s most ambitious scenario.

“Now is not the time to be shy about climate commitments,” she said.

“The science is clear on what happens if we continue to hurtle ourselves to a high-emissions future; increasingly severe and devastating climate hazards, transgression of planetary boundaries leading to irreversible changes, and more.”

James Renwick, professor of physical geography at Victoria University, said getting on top of climate change this decade should be “the number one focus for all governments worldwide”.

It is widely assumed the Government will need to pay billions of dollars to in effect buy carbon credits from countries that over-achieve their 2030 emissions reductions goals in order to meet New Zealand’s own 2030 Paris pledge.

The Treasury has so far resisted factoring that cost into its fiscal forecasts, despite a assessment from former climate change commissioner Rod Carr last month that it was about time for it to do so.

Senior Labour MP Megan Woods grilled Treasury officials on Wednesday on their current policy of classifying the likely liability as merely a “fiscal risk”.

Officials made clear the judgment call would be under review each time the Treasury updated its forecasts, which they will next do for the Budget in May.

The Government statement on the new 2035 NDC stated that most stakeholders the Government consulted with supported a target that was “largely achievable through domestic action, while remaining open to offshore mitigation”.