Climate levy proposed to help Christchurch tackle climate change
Saturday, 3 February 2024
Christchurch ratepayers say tackling climate change is the single most important issue facing the city over the next 10 years. The city council has set a goal of halving the city's emissions by 2030. How close are we to achieving this? TINA LAW reports in the first of a series looking at key issues for the South Island’s largest city.
A proposed climate levy to help Christchurch deal with the effects of climate change could be on the cards in the wake of a survey showing residents rank climate change as the top issue they want the council to focus on.
City councillor Sara Templeton, who holds the climate change portfolio, is pushing for the proposed levy to be consulted on as part of the council’s draft long term plan (LTP), its 10-year budget.
Templeton said Christchurch is unlikely to reach its first emissions reduction target.
And while the council is developing an LTP that she believes is more deliberate in its climate response than any before it, Templeton said it does not go far enough.
“It’s clear that it will not be enough to get us to halving our emissions as a city by 2030, in just six years’ time, or to get the planning for adaptation done quickly enough.”
Templeton said she appreciated the pressures residents are under with proposed rates increases, and so she wouldn’t expect a climate levy to be brought in until the projected rates increases are back into the single figures.
The council is currently predicting a 15.86% rates increase in the 2024/25 financial year and 8.2% and 4.2% in the following two years.
A levy would help toward the cost of adapting the city and its infrastructure to climate change.
“It is simply unfair to leave future generations with both the impacts of climate change and also the debt burden of adapting to it,” Templeton said.
She said the levy would contribute to a fund that would build up slowly over time and could be used for any adaptations needed, for example moving roads or community facilities to adapt to sea-level change.
“A levy would not cover the entire cost of adaptation measures needed, but it is fair for those of us who have contributed to the problem to help fund the solutions.”
During the council’s What Matters Most consultation programme last year, residents ranked climate change as the top issue they wanted the council to focus on.
“They really understand the challenges facing us and want action to mitigate and adapt,” Templeton said.
She believes residents would recognise that having a levy to go into a fund that builds up slowly over time would be much easier than having to pay a very large amount in a short amount of time when adaptations become urgent.
The council’s analysis of the What Matters Most programme said residents of different ages, ethnicities and those living in different parts of the city said climate change was a priority for them. The information was based on responses from more than 4000 residents.
Templeton said introducing a climate levy would not be just up to her, and she was hopeful residents would give feedback to help inform what a levy might look like, how much it would be, when it would be brought in and what it would be used for.
In 2019, the council became the third local body in the country to declare a climate emergency.
It followed that up a few months later with targets to halve the city’s emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2045 - five years earlier than the Government’s deadline.
Two years later the council came up with a strategy to lay out how the city will get there. But that climate resilience strategy was criticised for lacking detail and focusing too much on its long-term hopes rather than distinct actions, exact budgets and deliverable time frames.
“Progress has been frustratingly slow.”
Templeton said the council’s primary role in emissions reduction was to make necessary changes to the city that enabled residents to choose more sustainable options.
“We rely heavily on central government policy and funding for many of the initiatives, and with the recent change in direction that’s going to make meeting our targets really tough.”
The strategy clearly states the council cannot achieve these goals alone, and needs the entire city to do its bit.
“To achieve these targets, we all need to make changes to the way we travel, the waste we create, how we grow our food and the energy we use,” the strategy states.
Transport is the biggest culprit, with vehicles accounting for 53% of the city’s carbon emissions, far higher than the national average of 17%.
While the city is unlikely to meet its first 2030 target, Templeton can see a glimmer of hope.
Sales of both petrol and diesel in Ōtautahi have started falling.
Fuel sales peaked in 2017 and have been trending downwards since, Statistics NZ data shows, although not fast enough to reach the 2030 goal.
“At the same time our population has increased by around 13,000, and so I see that as a sign of hope,” Templeton said.
Exactly where the city is at in reducing its emissions is hard to tell, but new data on emissions will be available later this year.
Developing cycleways and more pedestrian-friendly streets are all part of the emissions reduction plan, but there has been push-back at almost every step.
The council first decided in 2013 to build a network of 13 on-road cycleways. It was supposed to take five years to complete, but 11 years on much work is still to be done.
Six are fully open, three are partially completed, another three are planned and one, the Wheels to Wings along Harewood Rd, appears to be in a perpetual state of design following public backlash.
The cycleways have been built amid a cloud of controversy, with businesses and residents upset at losing car parks outside their premises and homes. Some criticise the cost and others, including mayor Phil Mauger, decry: “I’m not against cycleways but…”
Mauger has always believed the city’s cycleways are gold-plated, when a painted line could have sufficed.
Yet, they have been widely supported and can be attributed to some people saying they now feel safe to get on a bike.
Council cycling figures show the number of cyclists has increased by 34% since 2017.
In September last year it looked like the cycleway programme was once again under threat. An early draft of the LTP showed $138 million worth of cycleway funding had been removed, leaving some councillors “shocked and stunned”.
Templeton said another draft now has the cycleways back in place, but they have been delayed by years.
The cycleways were supposed to be finished by 2028, but it appears some have been stretched out into the 2030s, she said.
A $40m programme to provide more safe connections to cycleways has either gone or been delayed as well.
However, a much-needed new cycleway has been added to the north east and Prestons.
Templeton is pushing for the council not to delay its cycleway programme and wants more money in the budget to help with initiatives to combat climate change and help adapt to it.
The council has a strong mandate to do this, she says.
Adaptation planning started in Whakaraupō Lyttelton Harbour in 2022. The council has identified it could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in that area alone, to move roads and infrastructure away from rising sea and storms.
Locally, sea levels have risen by about 10cm since 2005, and the council anticipates a further rise of 14cm to 23cm by 2050, and 38cm to a metre by 2100.
Adaptation work has yet to start in another six areas, covering close to 20 communities from Brooklands through to Sumner and across Banks Peninsula.
Templeton is worried the work will take too long.
There was a proposal to increase planning capacity in four years’ time, but it needed to happen earlier, she said, given the latest data showed that communities were at a greater risk than anticipated.
“We know that this LTP is a tough one and everyone is stretched, but we also know that doing the mahi now to mitigate and adapt to the climate challenge will be not only much cheaper now, but also less traumatic for our communities than responding to increasingly extreme weather events and with no plans in place.”
Political scientist and climate advocate Professor Bronwyn Hayward supported Templeton’s call for faster action on adapting to climate change. These important conversations needed to happen within five years, she said.
Hayward said tackling transport emissions and protecting residents in a changing climate was not just about cycle lanes versus car parks, it was also about how land is used and cities are developed so they do not require so much transport to get around.
Research showed 70% of the world’s emissions come from cities, where two-thirds of the population live. Cities and regional governments around the world are leading the way in reducing emissions.
More than 20 countries have been able to keep reducing their emissions for more than a decade, including the UK and the US, Hayward said.
Hayward was concerned that Christchurch Airport’s plan to build a new airport at Tarras in Central Otago risked undermining the intent and objectives of the council’s climate actions.
She said residents could start to wonder why the council, which owns 75% of Christchurch Airport, was asking them to make changes in their lifestyle when the city was investing in a large scale airport in another region.
In June last year the council formally expressed its concern about the Tarras airport project – almost three years after the plans were revealed.
The council is due to release its draft LTP late next week before adopting it for consultation following a two-day meeting in mid-February. It will be released for consultation on March 1 and a final decision on its contents will be made in late June.
Additional reporting by Mariné Lourens.