New Zealand’s climate pledge for 2030 falls far short of what would be a fair contribution towards meeting the 2C target, according to analysts Climate Action Tracker, who ranked the INDC “inadequate”.
New Zealand joins countries such as Canada, Japan and South Korea in producing climate plans failing to stand up to scrutiny by CAT, a joint effort among four research groups to track international climate action.
“New Zealand’s climate target shows it’s far from doing its ‘fair share,’ and is anything but ambitious. While most other governments intend cutting emissions, New Zealand appears to be increasing emissions, and hiding this through creative accounting. It may not have to take any action at all to meet either its 2020 or 2030 targets,” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics.
The NZ government last week said it would cut its GHG emissions to 11% below 1990 levels by 2030 but the CAT analysis of the plan said the INDC means overall agriculture, energy, waste and industrial GHG emissions could increase without constraint to 32% above 1990 levels.
It also questioned New Zealand’s plan to carry over its surplus units from the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
“This is something that is available to countries with commitments under the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, but not those without a commitment, like New Zealand. The legal basis upon which New Zealand is seeking to rely upon these accounting rules is therefore unclear,” it said.
According to the analysis, New Zealand’s per capita emissions will remain near the current 17 tonnes, meaning it will surpass the United States around 2025.
“New Zealand’s climate policy is projected to head in the opposite direction from the world’s biggest emitters such as China, the United States and the European Union. It has taken little or no action on climate change since 2008 – except for watering down its ETS, and we can find no evidence of any policies that would change this,” Kornelis Blok, a professor with Ecofys, said.
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
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