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Response: Aotearoa New Zealand policies & strategies

 

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Summary

Government climate strategy: Let it burn 

– Newsroom, November 2025

The government has backtracked on virtually every significant climate policy this term; removing the clean car rebate, restricting funding for walking and cycling projects, importing more fossil fuel, adding subsidies for new oil and gas exploration, gutting key parts of the Zero Carbon Act, cutting methane reduction targets, and falling well short of its pledge to install 9,000 public EV chargers. – The Spinoff December 2025

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. These contributions hinged on reducing emissions by placing a cost on them. This became the Emissions Trading Scheme.  Adaptation had barely been considered.

Per head of population, Aotearoa New Zealand is the worst country on Earth in cumulative emissions since 1850 (Figs. 1 & 2) having historically used more than six times our fair share of the carbon emissions budget that would have kept global temperature increases below 1.5°C.

New Zealand ranks at the top of this list because of extensive deforestation during the 19th century, when much of its native Kauri forest was cleared for its valuable timber. The country’s tiny population at the time consequently had very high annual per-capita emissions, with the cumulative total by 1900 making up around two-thirds of the total amassed by the present day. – Carbon Brief 2021

In July 2025 the Ministry for the Environment proposed a new adaptation plan best summarised in Figure 4. Following a 20-year transition period, homeowners whose houses are flooded or damaged by weather events should not expect buy-outs. The panel recommended mandatory local adaptation planning, and legal changes to reduce council liability in part to enable it to withdraw services from high-risk areas. Yet the National-led Government was about to pull the rug out from under all councils by forcing them to divert resources to plan a forced amalgamation while simultanoeusly limiting their revenue from rates. 
Meanwhile, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) which was set up in 2019 to provide impartial advice, challenge, and hold the Government to account on climate action by November 2025, had much of its advice overturned, ignored, or sidelined. 
 
Despite this, in 2026 the CCC completed the latest National Climate Change Risk Assessment, raising a blaring alarm. Of the 37 domains assessed all but 5 have ‘major’ to ‘extreme’ shortfalls in policy readiness. Of those 5, only 1 is a ‘minor’ shortfall, and that’s the stability of the finance sector (Fig. 5). This may seem counter-intuitive given the other risks but policy-readiness refers to the current, not mid-century risk severity. The risk severity (not policy readiness) increases until it becomes ‘major’ by 2090.

Overall, this is an indictment our abysmally policies. Rather than confront the problem and recognise the needs for a viable updated adaptation plan, the Government removed some of the Commission’s key roles, including the ability to seek feedback from the public.

The ACT Party wants to disestablish the New Zealand Climate Change Commission as an independent Crown entity and withdraw from the Paris Agreement. As too does the New Zealand First Party.

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Developing then ignoring an adaptation plan 

Fundamentally, it’s not possible to develop an effective and enduring adaptation plan without understanding the scale and type of risks, and the processes for updating and refining adaptation plan based on new information. Dynamic Adaptation Pathways Planning (DAPP) is being implemented at local and regional levels.

This section is specifically about the evolution and devolution of Government policies. 

Part 2 Section 7 of the 1991 Resource Management Act states:

…all persons exercising functions and powers under it, in relation to managing the use, development, and protection of natural and physical resources, shall have particular regard to: (i) the effects of climate change.

Little reference to adaptation followed until the Climate Change Response Act 2002 included a mandate (Section 7) to create a domestic adaptation strategy. But as with most developed countries the emphasis was firmly on mitigation through economic incentives to reduce emissions, which led to the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading) Amendment Act  2008. A lengthy suite of Acts and Policies dealing with specific types of emissions, reporting, and exemptions including exempting aspects of agriculture followed, but nothing specific in terms of adaptation.

Meanwhile, Te Kūwaha, NIWA’s National Centre for Māori Environmental Research were working with Rūnanga to understand the hazards and risks from ‘…climate change, and identifying actions to strengthen their resilience’. In 2014 the Government funded National Science Challenges Deep South Challenge Te Kōmata o Te Tonga commenced. While funding was not specific to adaptation, under the Vision Mātauranga research programme the process to implement adaptation were underway. For example activate community understandings of and responses to climate change is a crucial to enabling adaptation.

In 2015, the National Science Challenges Resilience to Nature’s challenges | Kia manawaroa – Ngā Ākina o Te Ao Tūroa was launched ‘…to anticipate, adapt and thrive in the face of ever-changing natural hazards.’  Hazards included climate change and with it, rising sea levels. Still, from an overarching Government policy and legislative perspective, the emphasis remained firmly fixed on emissions: reducing, pricing, and trading them, all of which ramped up following the 2015 Paris Accord despite the 15,639 unique submissions to New Zealand’s Climate Change Target rationalised the need for less emphasis on reducing emissions and more financial support for adaptation.

Extreme weather events were addressed through traditional disaster response mechanisms, including insurance. Outputs from Deep South Challenge and Resilience to Nature’s challenges research were now coming in, but leadership on adaptation from the Government remained absent.

In 2018 Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu stated:

We have no choice but to develop a response and show leadership, in the effort to reduce the impacts of climate change, and in the crucial adaptation work for the ongoing wellbeing of our people and our communities.

In 2020 the First National Risk Assessment Report findings underpinned the first 2022 National Adaptation Plan. Meanwhile, the Government declared a Climate Emergency. The 2022 IPCC WGII report: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability again emphasised the role of DAPPs and partnering with indigenous peoples. So too was consultation on a price on agricultural emissions.

In May 2023, The Labour-led Government allocated NZ$6 billion a National Resilience Plan to build back better. Alongside ongoing plans and submissions for a redesigned Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), MfE published the Report of the Expert Working Group on Managed Retreat and Parliament’s Environment Committee opened an inquiry into community-led retreat and adaptation funding. Submissions flooded in, but with a change of government in May 2024 the National MP Simon Watts redirected the inquiry from the Environment Select Committee to the Finance and Expenditure Committee (see p3). The Environment Committee summarised the submissions to that point. A more detailed look at many submissions reveals that councils sought clarity and funding from Govt. to implement flexible adaptation strategies, and financial support for iwi, hapū and Māori communities must be part of any system. Some cited examples of successful projects and progress.

250. Several submitters noted successful collaborations between iwi, hapū, and central or local government that could serve as a model. – p51 of the summary report

In September 2024, the Finance and Expenditures Committee released its Inquiry into climate adaptation. The National-led Coalition Government subsequently scrapped multiple climate mitigation and adaptation strategies needed to underpin and enable this roadmap. This included slashing the National Resiliency Plan in 2024 and returning ~$3.2 billion unused to Treasury.

In 2025 the Government decoupled the ETS from our Paris Accord commitments to protect the agricultural industry.

In 2026 the 2nd National Climate Change Risk Assessment revealed that of the 37 domains assessed at risk from climate change, all but 5 have ‘major’ to ‘extreme’ shortfalls in policy readiness (Fig. 5). This was hardly noticed as the ‘Simplifying Local Government’ policy forced local and regional councils to develop an amalgamation plan. This effectively hobbled their ability to develop much less implement local or regional adaptation plans and strategies. They were further crippled by the Government placing a cap on rates.

List of some but not all relevant Acts & Policies 

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