NZ climate minister sued over “risky and cavalier approach” to emissions reduction

New Zealand’s leading environment lawyers are suing their government over a plan to deal with its greenhouse gas emissions by mass planting non-native pine trees and a “slash and burn” approach to existing climate policies that may have actually helped.

Lawyers for Climate Action NZ and the Environmental Law Initiative, which represents more than 300 lawyers, filed an application for judicial review on Tuesday alleging that the government’s current plan to address climate change does not follow the country’s climate laws.

Jessica Palairet, Lawyers for Climate Action NZ executive director, said the government had been “taking a risky and cavalier approach” to climate policy in the 18 months since it was elected and that its actions do not “align with the law”.

“The law is one of the most powerful times to deal with climate change. It’s all well and good to have laws on the books, but unless they’re enforced they don’t mean a lot,” Palairet said.

Under legislation passed in 2019, New Zealand’s government must set an emissions reduction plan every five years. These plans outline the concrete steps it will take to reach its interim and  2050 net-zero targets.

When the current National Party government was elected, Palairet says it quickly moved to end 35 policies and actions – policies such as EV clean-car discounts, renewable investments and emissions requirements for transport infrastructure  – without following proper legal processes.

The legal filing also alleges that the government’s own emissions plan fails to meaningfully outline how it will address the problem.

Under the plan the New Zealand government will encourage the forestry sector using carbon credits to mass-plant trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and offset the country’s emissions without the need to actively drive down fossil fuel consumption.

The trees are mostly pine, a species not native to New Zealand, and will be grown as plantations, meaning they could potentially be harvested later for timber.

The plan has been described as “a massive gamble” by the parliamentary commissioner for the environment and is underpinned by modelling that offers an “emissions baseline” laying out a glide path for how the country will reach net zero by 2050.  Palairet says this model is a “black box” of assumptions without clear, tangible “policies and strategies”.

“There was a real slash and burn taken to our climate policies,” Palairet said. “What they’ve replaced it with is an idea that relies on tree planting. The idea that we can plant our way out of the climate crisis is not sustainable. It’s absurd.”

NZ Climate Change Minister Simon Watts and the Department of Environment were contacted for comment.

The application is seeking a decision from the court that the government’s climate policies have not followed proper procedure, are illegal and need to be revisited.

New Zealand’s novel approach to climate change comes against the backdrop of a broader embrace of oil and gas exploration. The National Party has set aside $200m to help encourage gas exploration and has introduced a controversial bill that would fast-track major infrastructure projects.

The Lawyers for Climate Action NZ application comes after a busy few weeks within climate litigation.

A landmark decision in the German courts in late May ruled that individual fossil fuel companies can be held legally liable for their contribution to climate harms. The case was brought by Peruvian farmer Saul Lucian Lliuya against German energy giant RWE.

In April, a peer reviewed paper in the journal Nature used historical emissions data for the biggest five fossil fuel producers in the world to assess their contribution to extreme heat and found the cumulative liability that climate harm alone ran into the trillions.