NEW ZEALAND

LIFE ON EARTH IS A PRECIOUS THING TO MARVEL AT AND PROTECT

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New Zealand (known as Aotearoa in the Māori language) is an island country in Oceania. It is a sovereign state in the south-western part of the Pacific Ocean. It is made up of two large islands (the North Island and the South Island) and many smaller islands. These islands are located to the southeast of Australia. New Zealand was one of the last places in the world that humans discovered, because it is a long way away from most of the world. During its time without humans, New Zealand was a great place for an unusual range of plants and animals to develop.

The current capital city of the country is Wellington, and the largest city is Auckland. Both of these cities are on the North Island. The largest city on the South Island is Christchurch.

The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand sign language. English has never been granted official language status in the NZ laws, but it is used as a default official language due to its wide usage.

In 2010, a newspaper in NZ said that New Zealand was the 8th happiest country in the world.

GEOLOGY

New Zealand sits at the boundary between the Australian and Pacific continental plates. When these two plates bumped into each other ('collided'), the Pacific plate moved under the Australian plate, north of the South Island. As a result, there has been lots of volcanic activity. South of the South Island, the Australian plate moves under the Pacific plate instead. The plates slide past each other in the South Island, where they have pushed up the Southern Alps. Because of these two colliding plates, New Zealand often has earthquakes. One of the best known is the 2010-2011 group of earthquakes that hit the Christchurch area.

The diagram shows that the North Island is on the Australian plate, but most of the South Island is on the Pacific plate. New Zealand is still geologically active, and will remain so as long as the islands are sitting above the plate boundary.

NATURAL HISTORY

New Zealand was isolated from the rest of the world for a long time. It split from Australia 83 million years ago. Because of this, there are many plants and animals that only live in New Zealand. Before humans came to New Zealand, there were no mammals, except three species of bat and marine mammals such as seals, dolphins, and whales. Instead, New Zealand has many different kinds of bird. New Zealand has several species of flightless bird, including the kiwi and Kakapo. For the lizards, especially important is the Tuatara, the only living member of a whole order of reptiles.

New Zealand used to have more rare species, but some, mostly birds, were hunted to extinction early in its history. The giant Moa, Dinornis, is a famous example. The group of birds which the moa belongs to had been in existence since the Cretaceous period. Humans arrived in New Zealand about a thousand years ago, when many moa were living, especially on the South Island. Archaeological sites with evidence of moa hunting are all over New Zealand. The moa became extinct about five hundred years ago. Extinctions closer to today have been caused by habitat change and introduced species like rats, dogs, cats, and possums, which kill the native birds and lizards, or eat their eggs. 

BLUE CHARTER

New Zealand champions the Ocean Acidification Action Group. The Action Group held its first meeting in February 2019 with a three-day workshop led by the government of New Zealand.

More than forty-five participants, including experts, scientists and Commonwealth marine officials met to explore the impacts of ocean acidification and strategies that policymakers can to use to address the growing issue.

New Zealand is also a member of the Commonwealth Clean Ocean Alliance – the Blue Charter Action Group on tackling marine plastic pollution.

The underlying principles of the Blue Charter come from the Charter of the Commonwealth, which was signed by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013.

So far 16 countries have stepped forward to be Champions on 10 topics. Action Groups will unlock the power of 56 nations and guide the development of tools and training.

OCEAN MINISTERS MEETING

The inaugural Commonwealth Ocean Ministers Meeting was held on 19 April 2024 in Cyprus, under the theme ‘Our Resilient Common Ocean: from Cyprus to Samoa’.

Commonwealth ministers responsible for ocean affairs met to establish the principles, priorities and actions for a Commonwealth Ocean Declaration, and to agree a roadmap which will pave the way for the adoption of the declaration at CHOGM 2024 in Samoa.

IMMIGRATION - APRIL 2024

New Zealand will tighten its visa rules for some migrants as the coalition government moves to overhaul the immigration system it says has led to “unsustainable” levels of migration.

Last year (2023), annual net migration to New Zealand hit a near record high of more than 173,000 non-New Zealand citizens in the year to December, Stats NZ reported.

Immigration minister Erica Stanford announced on Sunday changes to the accredited employer worker visa (AEWV), the main temporary work visa, which was introduced in mid-2022 to help fill workforce shortages after the pandemic.

The government’s changes to the scheme would include introducing English-language requirements for low-skilled jobs and setting a minimum skills and work experience threshold for most employer work visas. The maximum continuous stay for most low-skilled roles will also be reduced to three years from five years.

“By having an English-language requirement migrants will be better able to understand their rights or raise concerns about an employer early,” Stanford said.

The government had scrapped plans to add 11 new roles to the Green List – a list of highly skilled roles that New Zealand is struggling to fill – including welders, and fitters and turners.

Neighbouring Australia, which has also seen a big increase in migration, has said it would halve its migrant intake over the next two years.

PLANNING LAW CHANGE TO REMOVE RIGHTS OF APPEAL - APRIL 2024

New Zealand’s parliament is considering a law that would allow major development projects to bypass environmental approvals – and that should be a cause for extreme alarm.

The proposed Fast-track Approvals Bill emerged from the coalition agreements that enabled a centre-right government to form after last year’s election.

The bill allows projects deemed of national or regional significance to bypass existing environmental law. A group of three ministers – the ministers of regional development, transport, and infrastructure – will get to decide both which projects meet this “significance” test and whether any given project ultimately should go ahead.

Projects that can be considered under the new law include those that now are not allowed, and may even have been specifically rejected by the courts, for environmental reasons. These include activities that are prohibited because they do not promote sustainable management, as well as activities on public conservation land that will not preserve and protect that land. Activities in parts of internationally recognised world heritage sites can be considered for approval, along with activities that harm endangered species.

Even projects that already have been rejected by the courts for environmental reasons could be fast-tracked. Potential developments previously denied approval are the Te Kuha coalmine on conservation land, the Ruataniwha Dam, and a proposed motorway in Auckland. In expectation of the law’s passage, two deep-sea mining companies have expressed confidence that their projects will receive fast-track approval.

Under the proposed fast-track process, existing requirements for public participation and some appeal rights will be removed. Timeframes for giving and receiving expert advice and recommendations will be truncated. Officials will be required to hurry along when processing applications.

Perhaps most concerning, the ministers deciding whether or not to approve projects must consider first and foremost the objective of providing a process that “facilitates the delivery” of fast-tracked projects. This objective will replace or trump the current principles that guide environmental decision-making for such projects: sustainable management and conservation.

However, ministerial approvals granted under the fast-track law can be used in place of those required under the existing environmental law – and environmental objectives – that would usually apply. This creates a kind of legal fiction, where the decision to allow a project because of its deemed economic and development benefits also is treated as being a decision that it meets the tests of sustainable management and conservation.

This bill will give government ministers power over environmental decision-making in a way not seen since the 1980s. Significantly, none of the ministers who will make these decisions have any statutory responsibility for the environment. One of them, Shane Jones, told parliament that “if there is a mining opportunity and it’s impeded by a blind frog, goodbye, Freddy.”

The decisions these ministers will get to make usually are made by expert, apolitical bodies such as the Environment Court and the Environmental Protection Authority. This is true even under previous instances of fast-tracking, such as legislation introduced in 2020 designed to promote economic and social recovery from the Covid pandemic. It left final decision on fast-track development proposals with an expert panel convened by an Environment Judge.

A further serious constitutional concern is that the proposed law places no duty on the ministers (or others) in relation to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. It will be the first New Zealand enactment dealing with environmental matters since 1975 to fail to do so.

THE GUARDIAN 8 DECEMBER 2023 - NEW ZEALAND'S ENVIRONMENTAL CREDENTIALS ON THE LINE AS COALITION TAKES POWER

The National party had solid, if vague, policies to tackle pollution and fight the climate crisis, but coalition talks have seen those pledges unwound.

The idea of protecting the natural world and keeping it in good health is something New Zealanders generally agree on.

Both of the country’s major parties, Labour and National, have passed significant environmental protection legislation while in power. National presided over the creation of the world’s first marine reserve in 1975, and in 2014, created the world’s first law conferring legal personhood to a landscape. Labour banned nuclear arms in 1987 and offshore oil and gas exploration in 2018. In 2019, it created the Zero Carbon Act, enshrining in law the country’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Overall, the country’s trajectory towards greater environmental protections and reduced emissions has been steady, if slow. That’s set to change with the newly formed coalition government.

Leading into the election, National’s environmental policy was solid, if a little vague, says Nicola Toki, chief executive of non-profit Forest and Bird. Toki had been waiting to examine it: the policy was published the day before voting closed.

But National did not win enough votes to govern alone and spent six weeks in coalition negotiations. There, the party’s environmental goals were unwound.

“They said they wanted to focus on cleaning up freshwater, boosting biodiversity, delivering for the climate, celebrating oceans, reducing waste, fixing planning laws,” says Toki. “What they’ve done is they are promulgating policy that will essentially do the opposite of all of those things.”

The government plans to repeal legislation protecting natural habitats and improving freshwater health. It will reclassify pests such as deer, which prevent forests from regenerating, as non-pests. It will revisit emissions reduction targets for agriculture – the country’s largest source of emissions – and ditch plans for a renewable energy storage system designed to end reliance on fossil fuels.

“I think National has traded off its environmental policies, or a lot of them, to the minor parties to build the coalition,” says Gary Taylor, chief executive of the Environmental Defence Society. “And so they’ve shifted from being compassionate conservatives, to being much more radical – repudiating the blue-green tradition that National’s had for for many years.”

Taylor, who’s worked with governments since 1980, has never seen a set of policies so antagonistic to the environment. “Our trajectory over the last several terms of several governments has been progressive,” says Taylor. “And now we’re going to go backwards.”

RELYING ON ‘MAGIC BEANS’

The rollback of freshwater protections is particularly concerning to both Toki and Taylor. An initiative introduced by National in 2011, then continued by successive governments, it prioritises the health of waterways above usage of them.

Those waterways are in dire condition: three-quarters of all land is leaching more E.coli into rivers than health standards allow. A government survey in 2018 found that 82% of New Zealanders felt it was “very or extremely important” to improve water quality.

The freshwater policy was also set to reduce emissions by further limiting the number of livestock that could occupy farmland. Instead, to reduce agricultural emissions, the government is counting on new technologies yet to be developed – “magic beans”, in the words of climate analyst Paul Winton – rather than tools that already exist.

While on the campaign trail, National party leader Christopher Luxon promised to one-up Labour’s poor climate record by seating his climate minister in cabinet. That pledge has fallen by the wayside. Not only does the climate minister remain outside cabinet, but the environment minister has been booted out, too. The newly created minister for hunting and fishing has a seat.

Luxon has repeatedly restated National’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, but the party does not have a pathway to meet New Zealand’s targets, says Winton. It plans to use funds from its carbon auction to pay for tax cuts.

If the country overshoots its emissions, it must buy offsets. In September 2023, Treasury estimated that purchasing offsets would cost New Zealand between NZ$3bn and NZ$23bn, depending on carbon prices, which has not been acknowledged by either Labour or National’s planned budgets.

Defaulting on the Paris Agreement – which is the preferred approach of National’s coalition partner Act – would have implications for trade relationships, such as New Zealand’s new free-trade deal with Europe, which requires all participants to adhere to their Paris targets.

“What we’re now seeing is that it is international markets, and other countries, that are going to hold us to account,” says Winton.

Increasingly, adds Winton, export partners have more stringent environmental conditions than required by New Zealand legislation. “It shows that we’re a long way out of step.”

Luxon hopes to soak up emissions domestically, perhaps by using ocean-based methods yet to be developed. This isn’t realistic, says Winton, especially alongside a policy suite devoid of mechanisms to reduce emissions.

Gone are financial incentives for electric-car buyers, and funding for cycleways and public transport. In their place: a loosening of regulations permitting urban sprawl, which is known to increase emissions, and a reversal of the ban on oil and gas exploration, announced last week. This earned New Zealand criticism from its Pacific neighbours and the first Fossil of the Day dishonour at the United Nations COP28.

The cost of this reversal to New Zealand’s reputation outweighs the potential benefits, says Winton. “It will have negligible meaningful impact for New Zealand, because we’ve got more than enough oil and gas here for the needs of a declining market over the next decade or so.”

The oil and gas sector was in decline before the ban, having decreased from $300m in 2010 to $10m in 2015. Oil multinational OMV has been looking to sell its New Zealand assets since the start of 2023.

Toki points out that environmental protections aren’t enacted solely for the benefit of “people in Goretex who like to walk around and look at stuff”, but also to safeguard New Zealand’s economy. Healthy forests provide flood control and carbon sequestration; landscapes make money. Before the pandemic, New Zealand’s biggest export industry was tourism. Today, more than 80% of export goods are produced by the country’s primary industries, dependent on its natural resources.

“National would say that they are the government of business, right?” says Toki. “And business is predicated on understanding that if you have an asset that delivers your income, then you invest strategically in that asset to ensure a sustainable return over time.”

By Rebekah White - editor at NZ Geographic Magazine and a science journalist

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/22/new-zealand-plans-to-put-big-developments-before-the-environment-thats-dangerous
https://thecommonwealth.org/bluecharter

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/22/new-zealand-plans-to-put-big-developments-before-the-environment-thats-dangerous
https://thecommonwealth.org/bluecharter

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