There's nothing quite like an Act of Parliament to put a bit of concrete around good intentions. Our new Government is clearly intent on passing a Climate Change Act modelled to a degree on the UK's legislation, which is just celebrating its 10th birthday.
Our new Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment published a report in March this year on the options that are available for designing this legislation. Simon Upton, the new commissioner, is a seriously impressive man with a bulletproof understanding of climate change and the ways in which we might moderate it (mitigation) and/or live with it (adaptation).
He is a former head of Young Nationals and the youngest minister ever, when he was appointed Minister for the Environment in 1990. A decade later he moved to Paris and jobs at the OECD, chairing the OECD Roundtable on Sustainable Development and later head of the OECD Environment Directorate. This is someone who has deep international experience and competency in the politics and policies required to take on the multi-headed hydra being set loose by our bondage to carbon.
With assets like these lined up behind this crucial step towards a carbon-free future, New Zealand is at last starting to take its responsibilities seriously. In broad outline, a Climate Change Act of the kind operating in the UK would bind future governments to meeting a succession of targets for emission reductions, cumulating in the UK to an 80% reduction by 2050. Targets are set by an independent Climate Change Committee of experts that recommends a maximum budget for emissions over a five-year period beginning 12 years in the future, this to allow time for planning transitions and new investment. The committee also monitors and reports on progress towards meeting targets and publishes analyses of the effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation strategies.
The UK Act is designed in ways that ours need not follow. It is focused on climate change, rather than a more compromised commitment to sustainable development. It considers only what the UK can do domestically. It does not specify how governments should pursue targets, leaving scope for both direct initiatives, such as subsidies for clean energy, and also market mechanisms, such as emissions trading schemes. Responsibility for meeting targets is sheeted home to the national-level government, with no explicit mechanism to involve regional bodies. Emissions are measured where they are produced, and not by adding up the emissions required to produce all the goods and services consumed in the UK, many of which are imported.
Fortuitously, The Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics has just published a review of the first 10 years of the UK's Climate Change Act, from which we can learn. By many measures it has motivated considerable progress. Emission reductions have so far exceeded targets. By 2016, the UK's emissions had fallen by 41% from 1990 levels, while its economy grew more than 65%, a striking achievement. The UK has won a global reputation as a leader in climate change action. Domestically, the Act has enabled a more informed and productive debate in an area that is charged with economic and political dangers. Cross-party commitment to the Act has held.
Of course, progress could be better. Emission reductions have been uneven across sectors of the economy: strongest in energy and less successful in for buildings and agriculture. The Act's influence has also varied across government departments: stronger in energy market reform, but negligible on shale gas and fracking. The Climate Change Committee has focused on mitigation and has been slower to consider adaptation, which still receives less attention.
Simon Upton cautions that the context in which a Climate Change Act will be developed here is different in many ways to the UK in 2008. In the UK it was a Conservative government that initiated the legislation. (The serious money in London's global financial market - perhaps prompted by their proximity to the flood-prone Thames - apparently became concerned sooner than most). The UK legislation also developed in the context of its membership of the EU, where emission-reduction targets were already being developed.
The run up to the introduction of the Act was also very different in the UK to what will happen here. In 2008, the UK had been reducing its emissions for the previous two decades, as coal was phased out in favour of gas. As a result, the first 10 years of targets in the UK have been relatively easy to meet. For us in New Zealand, net emissions have been going the other way, rising by 64% since 1990 - a trend exacerbated by a 25% reduction in carbon-absorption from forestry. So for us, the decisions on how to reduce our emissions will be tough right from the start. Measuring emissions where they are produced also gives a distorted view of the UK's appetite for carbon. The carbon content of the goods and services consumed in the UK, including imports, has continued to rise.
Authors of the report on the UK Act conclude that further reductions in emissions will get harder to achieve, putting increasing strain on a political consensus that has held well for the past decade. For us, the challenge is to build that consensus in the first place, for it will face, right from the start, tougher choices than the relatively easy wins initially enjoyed in the UK.
The present Government has made its commitment clear. All eyes should now turn to the other side of the house, and their sources of political support. The mantra there has always been to be fast followers on climate change. Well, there is quite a gap to close, so let us hope they have the legs for it after all.
Colin Campbell-Hunt is an emeritus professor at the CSAFE Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago. Each week in this column, one of a panel of writers addresses issues of sustainability.
