Assessing New Zealand's climate target ambition: Catherine Leining, Brian Fallows and James Renwick provide perspectives on New Zealand's climate change approach, as revealed at a recent seminar.

• Author: Leining, Catherine
• Position: New Zealand at Paris Climate Talks: Leader, Follower or ... Laggard?' - Conference notes

On 4 December a panel discussion was held at VUW on 'New Zealand at Paris Climate Talks: Leader, Follower or ... Laggard?' NZIIA President Hon Sir Douglas Kidd chaired it, and the speakers were Dr Tim Naish, director of Victoria University of Wellington's Antarctic Research Centre, Dr James Renwick, professor of physical geography at the same university, Catherine Leining, policy fellow, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, Brian Fallows, a former economics editor for the New Zealand Herald and Paul Young, researcher and campaigner, Generation Zero. The following are several of the presentations made during the discussion.

CATHERINE LEINING

Leading up to the 2015 Paris climate change conference, countries tabled proposed climate change mitigation targets for 2021-30, called intended nationally determined contributions. In July 2015 the global Climate Action Tracker (CAT) published an assessment of New Zealand's intended contributions--a reduction of 11 per cent below 1990 levels--and gave it the lowest rating of 'inadequate'. What was the basis for this determination, and how should we judge whether New Zealand's 2030 target is fair and ambitious enough?

Throughout the climate change negotiations, countries have struggled to define what constitutes fair and ambitious targets for reducing emissions. The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change enshrined the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities' and countries have been arguing about how to apply it ever since. There is no agreed international standard for assessing target fairness and ambition. The approach used by CAT is one of many produced internationally to support the negotiations.

Based on an analysis of New Zealand's emission projections and mitigation policies, CAT's assessment highlighted three findings:

* New Zealand's intended nationally determined contribution is not in line with global pathways to achieve the 2[degrees] Celsius temperature goal or its own 2050 target.

* New Zealand does not have effective domestic policies in place to meet its target, and will instead be relying heavily on credits from the forestry sector and the carry-over of surplus Kyoto units.

* New Zealand's intended nationally determined contribution is conditional on future international rules for forestry and use of carbon markets, which creates uncertainty.

Three judgments

In rating New Zealand's target as 'inadequate', CAT makes three debatable judgments in particular. First, CAT is critical of using forest sinks to offset rising carbon dioxide emissions in other sectors; CAT would prefer a focus on reducing key drivers of emissions. However, the international community has broadly accepted that forest carbon sequestration constitutes a legitimate contribution to global mitigation effort provided it is subject to appropriate monitoring, reporting and verification, and New Zealand's methodology aligns with established norms.

Second, CAT does not evaluate New Zealand's cost of mitigation relative to that of other countries due to a lack of data. In my view, this is a legitimate consideration in target setting.

Third, CAT focuses on projected...