By James Renwick*
The government’s decision to shrink a legislated target for cutting agricultural methane emissions is the latest in a string of announcements signalling a lack of ambition to meet climate targets.
It represents a major step backwards and could threaten New Zealand’s trade relationships.
The methane reductions mandated under the Zero Carbon Act, passed in a cross-party agreement in 2019, called for cuts in the range of 24-47% below 2017 levels by 2050. This is in line with the findings of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report that focused on what the world needs to do to keep warming at 1.5°C.
The government’s revised target aims to reduce methane emissions from farm animals by 14-24% by 2050. This means the minimum of the current range will be the highest possible ambition in the new one.
The government has also scrapped an election pledge to tax agricultural emissions, and it has pushed back a legal obligation to respond to the independent Climate Change Commission’s advice on future emissions budgets by two years.
The commission’s recommendation is to strengthen the country’s climate targets, both for long-lived greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide) and the short-lived but more potent methane because:
Evidence shows that the world is not on track to limit warming to 1.5°C, climate impacts are more severe and happening sooner than expected, and other countries are already doing more and expecting more.
For biogenic methane, the commission calls for more ambitious cuts to reach at least 35–47% by 2050. However, the government says achieving the upper end of the current range (47%) is “unrealistic” and would create “economic uncertainty, risks exacerbating land use change, and could increase food production costs”.
Pressure from the agriculture sector
The government appointed a review panel to assess how much methane emissions would need to be reduced to achieve “no additional warming” on 2017 levels – the idea being that it is enough for methane’s contribution to warming to remain at current levels.
This approach was promoted by industry lobby groups such as Groundswell but rejected by the Climate Change Commission. And it does not represent the “highest possible ambition”, as laid out in the Paris Agreement, to which New Zealand is a signatory.
It also goes against the 1.5°C goal, entrenched in New Zealand’s legislation and recently upheld by a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice, which found even countries that leave the Paris Agreement are not exempt from international legal requirements to act in a manner consistent with 1.5°C.
Our trading partners are unlikely to smile on this lack of ambition. The New Zealand-European Union Free Trade Agreement includes the obligation to “refrain from any action or omission that materially defeats the object and purpose of the Paris Agreement”. It also includes the provision that parties may take “appropriate measures” in the event of such acts or omissions.
On top of the weaker ambition on methane reductions, the government recently reopened the country to oil and gas prospecting, removed a subsidy for electric vehicles, and disestablished a fund meant to help decarbonise industry. All moves are counter to the free trade agreement with the EU.
Despite the changes to the 2050 methane target, the 2030 target to reduce agricultural methane emissions by 10% has not changed. However, this will be harder to achieve as no price will be put on agricultural emissions, and the revised 2050 target takes the pressure off farmers.
The revised methane target represents a challenge for other sectors. The Climate Change Commission’s analysis shows that for every percentage point decrease in the ambition of the methane target, up to 44 million tonnes of carbon emissions would need to be offset. This would be either through more offshore credits, more tree plantings, or emissions cuts in other sectors such as transport or energy.
Partnerships and technology
To back the new target, the government says it is investing to speed up the development and rollout of methane-cutting tools. These include innovations such as the EcoPond, which cuts emissions from effluent ponds by more than 90%.
However, emissions from effluent ponds represent only about 10% of New Zealand’s total agricultural emissions because only dairy farms use them. Other possible solutions – including advances in breeding genetics and methane inhibitors – show promise but are not guaranteed to be rolled out in the near future.
Meanwhile, the climate is changing rapidly. We must do all we can to slow warming and avoid impacts from extremes and crossed tipping points.
Yes, cutting carbon dioxide emissions remains a priority, and we must get to zero emissions as soon as possible. But methane emissions are the next most important, and cuts should translate quickly into reductions in atmospheric concentrations (because of the short lifetime of methane), providing a cooling effect in the short to medium term.
The government’s announcement came on the eve of a major international conference on climate change adaptation taking place in New Zealand. This meeting is providing clear evidence of the effects of climate change in New Zealand and across the Pacific and the world, today.
We can currently adapt to climate change pressures, in most places, most of the time. But every tenth of a degree of warming makes that adaptation harder, and at some point we will no longer be able to do so.
There is urgency around reducing emissions of all greenhouse gases, in every sector and every country. New Zealand’s weakened methane target raises the risk of unmanageable consequences from climate change.
*James Renwick, Professor of Physical Geography (Climate Science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
13 Comments
The last sentence is correct.
Trade-relationships between dead parties tend not to be of importance.
Ho Hum. Another academic climate alarmist.
Meanwhile, one of NZ's biggest dairy customers...
LONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Food group Nestle (NESN.S), opens new tab said on Wednesday it had withdrawn from a global alliance for cutting methane emissions
We'll always have Paris.
"A comparison of the 30 countries that emit more than 0.5% of global greenhouse (GHG) emissions (see the European Commission’s emissions databasei) with the UN’s Nationally Determined Contributions Registryii reveals that 21 of them failed to register updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as required by Article 3 of the 2015 Paris Agreementiii, even after the deadline had been extended from February to September 2025. Yet these countries account for 57% of global emissions, while the 9 countries that did register an updated NDC account for just 25%. What’s more, with the United States (accounting for 11% of emissions) now withdrawing from the Paris Agreementiv, that figure falls to only 14%, leaving 71% of emissions effectively uncommitted. This undermines one of the raisons d’être of the ‘landmark’ Paris Agreement."
https://www.iied.org/only-13-countries-submitted-2035-climate-targets-t…
Shows the level of selfishness of humans. We could cut back slightly and give the next generations a chance, but that doesn't sound like much fun.
?????????
We need to CEASE carbon emissions by 2027 (some say '25, others '30') to have a chance of avoiding feed-back loops (like wildfires generating CO2-release, generating wildfires...).
To give them a resource-chance (this isn't just about carbon) we need to be drastically cutting back EVERY draw-down.
btw - to make a comment like that, you really didn't read those links, eh?
Chat GPT suggest NZ contributes around 0.17% of all global emissions.
We are a fart in a hurricane. Should we wreck our primary economic engine for what amounts to a snip on the edges. Shouldn't the climate bandwagon focus the majors like China, US, India, Brazil, Russia etc?
Wreck, or get ahead of the of the inevitable change?
Averageman - try living up to your name.
Per head, we are one of the worst.
Which I'm very sure you know.
Got grandkids? Think they'd be impressed with your comment? Your 'primary economic engine' is the process of turning many fossil-energy calories into fewer food calories. It's therefore temporary (because fossil) and therefore pointless. Given exponential growth, pointless even in the medium term.
So many of us argue from our self-service angle.
We are indeed a high per human output. While close to 10m bovine animals in NZ, the impact in real terms is lower than most because of the small (globally) number of humans in NZ. If we magically went back to pre human arrival in NZ, all Moas and birds and trees etc, the impact on the global emissions is more or less nothing. Ergo the focus is wrong - target the real change makers. My point is shutting down every emission source in NZ will have stuff all impact globally if nothing else changes. It would have a devastating impact on our economy, so seems futile unless the goal is to just destroy NZ.
Not saying we shouldn't change/improve, just commenting on the reality of the global bigger picture.
Published literature suggests we are a massive carbon sink - without taking into account our 170,000,000 ha continental shelf carbon sink.
"...using two approaches: bottom-up methods that integrate flux estimates from land-surface models, data-driven models, and inventory estimates; and top-down atmospheric inversions based on satellite and in situ measurements. ...New Zealand was a net CO2 sink of −38.6 ± 13.4 million tonne C yr−1."
A Comprehensive Assessment of Anthropogenic and Natural Sources and Sinks of Australasia's Carbon Budget
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GB007845
Time that was debunked.
It's very simple. Before humans arrived, the place was covered in carbon-containing growth. We have more than halved that cover. So until 'regeneration' re-establishes that base-line, we're in deficit. You cannot spend the same dollar twice.
After that, we introduce and burn fossil carbon, which was stored underground somewhere else. And we've established there is no valid sequestration, until we've regenerated.
So for all the fancy footwork, this is a crock. As was 1989 as a starting-point (same time-line avoidance).
It's all pretty simple. And Mother Nature - the chemistry of it all - doesn't give a s--t about fancy accounting.
Bury your head policy.
The social licence for all farmers is endangered by this, the lack of responsibility by forestry landowners, the absurd free market upside pricing of products, and socialising of support when the commodity market swings the other direction.
We are all in this together. As a former farmer, I know lots of farmers who try to be responsible, to leave their property better than they found it.
This is National and Act competing for the votes from farmers, populist policies aimed at the lowest level.
Leadership, not so much.
No plan b? We can see where that has driven our economy, put off the hard issues until it is impossible to reverse our decline. Let’s fight over the scraps.
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