Could it be a case of when, not if, Government dumps NZ’s 2030 Paris ‘pledge’?

Monday, 10 March 2025

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ANALYSIS: Is the Government now only paying lip service to the most important emissions-reduction pledge New Zealand has made under the Paris Agreement?

That pledge is the commitment former climate change minister James Shaw made in 2021 that the country would cut its net carbon emissions to 50% of its 2005 gross emissions by 2030.

The National Party grumbled about the pledge at the time.

Its then climate change spokesperson Stuart Smith said it was “unrealistic and could cripple New Zealand’s economy”.

The party nevertheless went on to swallow it, and went into the last election promising to uphold both the Paris pledge and New Zealand’s separate legislated target of achieving “net zero” by 2050.

But recent statements have Opposition politicians and environmentalists nervous.

Because the Government does not have a plan to reduce the country’s own emissions down to that level by then, it has been widely assumed the country would need to pay many billions of dollars for overseas carbon offsets in order to fulfil the pledge.

Former climate change commissioner Rod Carr said in December that time had run out for New Zealand to achieve the target by, for example planting more trees and it was about time for the Treasury to incorporate the cost of buying offsets into its fiscal forecasts.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in Parliament last week the Government was “working incredibly hard” to meet the pledge and that it was doing “everything it could” to also achieve the 2050 ‘zero carbon’ goal.

But he repeatedly refused to say whether the 2030 Paris pledge still amounted to a commitment when questioned by Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.

At the same time, he pointedly emphasised the Government’s commitment to economic growth, which came across as conveying the message that was more important.

The exchange took place after Farmers Weekly quoted Climate Change Minister Simon Watts as saying New Zealand had no legal obligation to meet the 2030 target and describing the risk of a multibillion-dollar bill as “disinformation”.

Watts’ quoted comments appeared to hint at a view that while New Zealand couldn’t follow the United States by pulling out of the Paris Agreement, because that would breach its UK and EU free trade agreements, there might be safety in numbers in later failing to adhere.

It was “intent” that was important, other countries would miss their targets, and it was more of a case of New Zealand being “seen to do its part”, the message seemed to be.

Watts wouldn’t be the first minister to suggest there might not be a big price to be paid for failing to meet the 2030 pledge.

Minister for Agriculture and Forestry Todd McClay said in December that the Government wouldn’t be buying carbon credits overseas to meet the 2030 climate targets.

“The idea of sending billions overseas is not palatable to anybody in New Zealand,” he told RNZ.

That view due incredulity from Carr at the time.

He questioned whether McClay’s apparent backslide might just be a matter of semantics.

“You may not be buying credits in an open market,” Carr told The Post.

“You may be doing deals bilaterally with other countries, so there are many ways to meet our commitments that don't require you to go into a public market to buy credits. I'm sure he had that in mind.”

And that’s possible.

There’s a conceivable if somewhat fanciful scenario under which New Zealand might pay India a couple of billion dollars to contribute to the decarbonisation of its economy in exchange for a free trade deal and a fig leaf to cover our Paris Agreement pledge, for example.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins hypothesises that there might be an alternative explanation for Luxon declining to re-etch the 2030 pledge in stone, in Parliament.

He describes Luxon’s “dodging” as very revealing.

But he believes it’s possible that Luxon was avoiding doubling down on the commitment out of concern that doing so might make it harder for the Treasury to keep the cost of buying-in overseas carbon credits off its books.

If the Treasury did feel obliged to factor that cost into its fiscal forecasts in this year’s Budget, that could nix any suggestion that the Government had any pathway under any measure to return to its accounts to surplus by 2030.

But the simpler explanation may be that the Government is gradually shifting towards now only paying lip service to the 2030 target.

That would mean its ambition would slip to the new backstop of reducing New Zealand’s net carbon emissions to 51% of its 2005 gross emissions by 2035.

The Government in January committed to achieving that goal as its second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement, suggesting it was one the country might achieve without paid help.

Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson described the minimum one percentage point increase in promised emission-reductions five years’ later as “an absolute joke”.

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.

And, as Hipkins acknowledges, all that could leave Labour with a problem in future.

“We, right now, as of today, are 100% committed to the targets that we signed up to as a country,” he says.

“If we back away from the NDC contributions that we've committed to, then it really has implications for things like our trade agreements with the EU and the UK. And, also, they are just the right thing to do,” he says.

But he acknowledges the possibility that too little climate action now might mean that Labour is the party that might later need to concede the 2030 goal can’t be achieved.

“Of course, I'm always concerned about that. The longer you defer it, the harder it gets for the future government to actually catch up again,” Hipkins says.

“One of the things that we will have to work through very carefully over the next year, is that if they continue to say, ‘yes, we're committed to the 2030 target’, but they don't do anything to actually achieve it, by the time the 2026 election rolls around and a new government forms around the beginning of 2027, you haven't got very long at that point to practically meet the target.”

Swarbrick says she is deeply concerned, accusing Luxon of using weasel words about “the greatest existential crisis that humanity has faced”.

“Everything that I can derive is that on the international stage our diplomats continue to have a mandate, which is effectively unchanged, and also includes the phase-out of fossil fuels and fossil fuel subsidies.”

But, domestically, the Government is “completely contradicting that”, she says.

“If you can't get a prime minister to answer a straightforward question and to use strong, clear language, like ‘committed’, then it does leave space for policy to change.”

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