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Response: NDCs – Nationally Determined Contributions

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NDCs:  Nationally Determined Contributions

Summary

  • Under the Paris Agreement (Article 4, paragraph 2) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 195 countries promised to set targets for reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions. The system was called Nationally Determine Contributions or NDCs, to keep the world well below 2°C; preferably no more than 1.5°C warming. 
  • New Zealand is one of the worst-performing countries (Fig. 1)
  • New Zealand’s target is to be managed using an emissions budget that New Zealand set itself, one of the least ambitious targets on Earth, and nowhere near enough to help keep temperatures under 1.5°C.
  • The targets were supposed to include all sectors and all greenhouse gases. In reality, many sectors were given exemptions including farming, yet biogenic methane, i.e. methane from livestock, is our largest greenhouse gas emissions by sector (Fig. 2).
  • See the Climate Change Commission for more details.

New Zealand’s Paris Agreement target is inconsistent with the Government’s goal   of keeping the average temperature increase to within 1.5°C, officials have told ministers. The advice from the Ministry for the Environment was given to Climate Change Minister James Shaw in February and obtained by Stuff under the Official Information Act.. –  Stuff July 2020

95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges. “Just 13 of   the 195 parties published their new emissions-cutting plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), by the 10 February 2025 deadline…. The group has not yet analysed New Zealand’s NDC, but a climate expert within the country described it as “shockingly unambitious”. – Carbon Brief 10 Feb. 2025

Claims that failure to meet Paris commitments would cost billions are baseless, [Simon] Watts tells farmers: ‘It’s not a liability on our books, it’s intent and there   is no legal obligation in the context around that.’ – Farmers Weekly 16 Feb. 2025

Government climate strategy: Let it burn – Newsroom, November 2025

Those moves have rattled confidence in the emissions trading scheme, New Zealand’s main mechanism for driving private sector emission reductions. The price of NZU carbon credits has crashed from $88.50 in November 2022 to $39.75 at time of publication, a sign that investors doubt the government’s long-term commitment to the scheme. – The Spinoff, December 2025

  Response

Other sections

Home > Climate wiki > Response > Nationally Determined Contributions NDCs

Summary

  • Under the Paris Agreement (Article 4, paragraph 2) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 195 countries promised to set targets for reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions. The system was called Nationally Determine Contributions or NDCs, to keep the world well below 2°C; preferably no more than 1.5°C warming. 
  • New Zealand is one of the worst-performing countries (Fig. 1)
  • New Zealand’s target is to be managed using an emissions budget that New Zealand set itself, one of the least ambitious targets on Earth, and nowhere near enough to help keep temperatures under 1.5°C.
  • The targets were supposed to include all sectors and all greenhouse gases. In reality, many sectors were given exemptions including farming, yet biogenic methane, i.e. methane from livestock, is our largest greenhouse gas emissions by sector (Fig. 2).
  • See the Climate Change Commission for more details.

New Zealand’s Paris Agreement target is inconsistent with the Government’s goal   of keeping the average temperature increase to within 1.5°C, officials have told ministers. The advice from the Ministry for the Environment was given to Climate Change Minister James Shaw in February and obtained by Stuff under the Official Information Act.. –  Stuff July 2020

95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges. “Just 13 of   the 195 parties published their new emissions-cutting plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), by the 10 February 2025 deadline…. The group has not yet analysed New Zealand’s NDC, but a climate expert within the country described it as “shockingly unambitious”. – Carbon Brief 10 Feb. 2025

Claims that failure to meet Paris commitments would cost billions are baseless, [Simon] Watts tells farmers: ‘It’s not a liability on our books, it’s intent and there   is no legal obligation in the context around that.’ – Farmers Weekly 16 Feb. 2025

Government climate strategy: Let it burn – Newsroom, November 2025

Those moves have rattled confidence in the emissions trading scheme, New Zealand’s main mechanism for driving private sector emission reductions. The price of NZU carbon credits has crashed from $88.50 in November 2022 to $39.75 at time of publication, a sign that investors doubt the government’s long-term commitment to the scheme. – The Spinoff, December 2025

The Climate Change Commission 2024 emissions reduction monitoring report

This webinar shares information about the Climate Change Commission’s first annual emissions reduction monitoring report, released in July 2024.

This report provides an evidence-based, impartial view of whether the country is on course to reach its goals of reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions (spoiler: it wasn’t). It provided insight into the progress made, challenges experienced, and opportunities and risks that needed to be considered.

August 2024: Climate Commission webinar question: What would happen if New Zealand wasn’t able or didn’t comply with our nationally determined contributions (NDCs)? What are the implications for us?

Answer:

Video 1: The Climate Change Commission 2024 emissions reduction monitoring report

When the rest of the world looks at New Zealand, if we haven’t met our national determine contributions—we won’t know on the 31st of December 2030 as it takes a couple of years for inventories and count up—but when the partners that we care about look at our behaviour and go, ‘Did you do all that you said you would? Did you do all that you said you would? And did you do all the things you could have done?’ That’s going to inform whether it’s ‘that you tried hard but missed’ or ‘you didn’t try’.

So foreign countries who are in incurring very real economic costs to reduce their emissions today—and that includes the Europeans, the Brits, and the Americans (there’s half a trillion U.S. dollars of taxpayers money being made available to reduce their emissions so the idea they’re not doing anything; that’s just wrong)—so when those countries look at NZ in the early 2030s and they look back to 2020, they go, ‘Well you could have made a better effort to, for example, decarbonized ground transport there were known technologies that were available, but you just chose to buy cheap high polluting cars. You could have chosen to stop burning as much coal and fossil gas to make electricity by investing more sooner in renewables, but you chose not to.’ I think that’s going to influence what the world thinks about New Zealand ‘s behaviour more than whether we did or did hit the exact number of tonnes for this decade.

And the rest of the world looks at New Zealand and says, ‘You didn’t try. You didn’t take up the knowing technologies. You are short sighted, selfish, and reckless in your use of the climate for profit.’ I think their attitudes to us will be very different than if we had tried hard and done all we could but things didn’t turn out well. 

– Dr Rod Carr, Video, The Climate Change Commission 2024 emissions reduction monitoring report, August 2024

Fig. 1: New Zealand is also subsidising high greenhouse gas emissions industries by giving the agricultural sector a 100% discount (Image: Climate Action tracker)
Fig. 1: New Zealand is also subsidising high greenhouse gas emissions industries by giving the agricultural sector a 100% discount (Image: Climate Action tracker)
Fig. 2: (Ministry for the Environment). Agricultural emissions exceed 50%.
Fig. 2: (Ministry for the Environment). Agricultural emissions exceed 50%.
Fig. 3: (Ministry for the Environment)
Fig. 3: (Ministry for the Environment)

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