New Zealand may be excluded from Climate Leaders Summit

Marc Daalder is a Wellington-based senior political reporter covering Covid-19, climate change, energy, primary industries, technology, and the far right. Twitter: @marcdaalder.

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Climate change

New Zealand may not be invited to a meeting of high-ambition climate leaders in December over concerns about the country’s inaction on climate change, reports Marc Daalder.

New Zealand’s attendance at a summit of high-profile and ambitious world leaders on climate change is in doubt.

The Sprint to Glasgow meeting is scheduled for December 12, the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement. Hosted by the UK, it is meant to bring together the countries most determined to tackle climate change in the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow next year.

While the final roster of attendees has yet to be determined, Newsroom understands that New Zealand may be excluded over concerns that it is not doing enough to reduce emissions.

A UK High Commission spokesperson said only: “The UK shares a close partnership with New Zealand on climate change issues and we are looking forward to working together in the run-up to COP26 next year.”

Last week, British High Commissioner for New Zealand Laura Clarke told a climate change conference that she was concerned about a credibility gap between New Zealand’s rhetoric and action.

“There is also a gap, if you’ll excuse me for saying it, as a friend and as someone who has married one of their own, between ambition and reality,” she said.

“It has Scandinavian ambitions in terms of quality of life and public services, but an American attitude towards taxes. The 100% Pure New Zealand brand lulled many with a false sense of security, when the environmental reality is much more challenging.”

Despite Jacinda Ardern’s comments in 2017 promising to treat climate change as “this generation’s nuclear-weapon-free moment” and the government’s intention next week to declare a climate emergency, New Zealand has one of the worst records. climate conditions of industrialized nations.

Of the 43 Annex I countries, industrialized nations that have benefited the most from greenhouse gas emissions and therefore have the greatest obligation to reduce emissions, only 12 have seen a net increase in emissions since 1990. New Zealand is one of them.

In fact, New Zealand has seen the second largest increase in emissions (in percentage terms) among Annex I countries.

Bronwyn Hayward, a political scientist at the University of Canterbury who works for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the Newsroom she was disappointed by the news.

“I am disappointed that we are not in the first round of high ambition countries, but that is not unexpected as we have not matched our rhetoric with reality,” she said.

“I really love this country, I’m proud to be a New Zealander, but right now, working internationally, it’s getting embarrassing that we don’t have real action on the ground and real ambition that matches the rhetoric that we established.” Hayward added.

“I think New Zealand needs a serious reality check on our commitment to climate mitigation and adaptation. We are in danger of falling in love with our rhetoric and not putting any action behind it, and it is starting to show itself internationally.” “

As part of the run-up to COP26, which was scheduled for this year but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, countries were asked to come up with new, more ambitious emission reduction targets. These Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the effort to combat climate change are the yardstick by which each nation’s progress on climate will be measured under the Paris Agreement.

New Zealand, however, still has the same interim NDC that was introduced by the national government in 2015. This is not intended to reduce emissions at all, but rather to limit average annual emissions over the next decade to a 10 percent increase from levels of 2005. Despite this, we are expected to exceed our current NDC by more than 100 million tons of greenhouse gases, the equivalent of 15 million diesel cars that travel the world.

Rather than produce a new and more ambitious NDC this year, Climate Change Minister James Shaw referred the issue to the Climate Change Commission, which is due to report by May 1.

“We have relied on the Commission to set a baseline goal that we should have been able to do as a country before the Commission started because we needed a goal that would meet the agreement we signed,” Hayward said.

She believes that the Climate Commission will have to recommend “some very significant, far-reaching changes to bring us in line with the Paris Agreement.”

“But that only takes us to step one, where we should have been five years ago,” he said.

“We have fallen further and further behind. We are big on rhetoric. Next week we will declare a climate emergency. But we don’t even have a national plan to implement the very low ambition NDC that we inherited from the previous national government. We have talked about a big one. party, but now we have nothing to show. “