Good COP, bad COP and where to from here...
A round up of environmental integrity pieces, links, perspective and insights
My head is spinning. Is yours?
New Zealand was on board with the reasonably strong language coming out of COP28, but the news at home feels like some serious backtracking on commitments related to climate and other sustainability issues.
My intent here is to highlight (not compete with) good journalism, and also take it a bit further with insights and analysis. Let’s start with pieces on COP28. A good NZ-focussed piece covering the key points is not out from
in NZ Geographic.A succinct summary
COP28 produced the strongest result yet on terminology, clearly signalling a transition away from fossil fuels and a strengthening of language on coal. The lack of a phase out and concern there remains the littany of loopholes as well as voluntary or optional measures will remain problems. However, the bad parts can’t be seen as unexpected given the COP represents a global consensus with all nations on board.
Probably one of the top global commentators describing what this means is Andrew Jones from Climate Interactive. He’s been an advisor to US Climate Envoy John Kerry and produces the En-ROADS global simulator that everyone can use to see what’s required to get to back to 1.5°C, or close to it. Have you tried it?
The language that was agreed remains a significant turning point, but needs to strengthen over time to enable anything close to 1.5°C (or even 2°C) to be achieved.
Good Cop, Bad Cop
The COP produced (good) progress on some areas like just transitions, emissions of methane from oil and gas infrastructure, as well as actually funding for the loss and damage mechanism. All are mostly words but produce the right direction of travel.
An area where progress was not achieved is in carbon markets, pricing and the sort of mechanisms that would allow New Zealand to buy itself out of not reducing net emissions within our nations through actions taken elsewhere. You spot this topic tagged simply with Article 6 (or particularly Articles 6.2 and 6.4), signifying where it sits in the Paris Agreement.
Many would say “no deal is better than a bad deal” likely meaning one that enables ongoing leaks. This is the area where the term environmental integrity has genuine meaning. Loss of integrity within voluntary carbon markets has been an area of serious concern, and I understand made some COP28 progress on repairs. One notable point is that there seems to be agreement that avoided emissions count, but should be included in reductions or removals rather than creating a new category.
But more broadly, some nations, particularly those in the EU, want to avoid language or rules that make it too easy for nations like New Zealand to use markets to avoid emissions reductions at home. Will this area be resolved next year?
Back in NZ
I was prepared to be more disappointed my COP28, but I wasn’t prepared for the degree to which my head is spinning from NZ news.
Did the Grinch just steal all the cycleways? Apparently, or at least those nationally funded that are not already contracted? There’s also been a deal to separate the parts of Let's Get Wellington Moving into the parts the new Government wants, and the part Wellington City wants. The light rail won’t be funded under the present government.
In each of these cases, we don’t yet know the full consequences – economically or how much of the planned emissions reductions will be lost. That’s the result of suspending regulatory impact analyses, a seemingly cynical move that flies in the face of integrity in decision-making. The most vexing case has been the repeal of the Clean Car Discount, where the analysis was apparently already done but has not been released.
We’ll be in Dire Straits?
Perhaps the item item leading to the most insight is the cancellation of the new Kiwirail InterIsland Ferries (pictured below).
The standard commentariat line has been that the Finance Minister is right: the costs have truly blown out. But cost blow outs are the nature of the Regional Economic Development and COVID era funding packages when operating at this scale. One wonders if we could keep the fit-for-purpose ferries and rejig construction to build the terminals for less? Either way, when projects represent needed infrastructure, we’d be far better to rebuild the capability of Government and SOEs to work at scale to deliver major infrastructure, wouldn’t we? Do we have an alternative? (Simon Wilson also has a useful perspective)
Recall that the future-proofed ferries were designed for rail and the capacity of the coming century. Although the multibillion cost is eyewatering, Craig Renney has led a CTU analysis showing current estimates come out at less than a $20 note for each of us. It also is a fraction of what he terms as the tax cut for landlords.
As far as anyone can tell, this means we’ll be scraping together ferries from elsewhere – not really suitable for Cook Straight for years to come. We can now expect road freight companies to be gleefully cheering the destruction of the estimated 40% emissions reductions associated with a good rail link between Wellington and the South Island.
How can we take these insights from watching our long-term pathways to a better nations get ripped to shreds, and figure out what to do? Does reanalysing or protesting the decisions help? Or should we back up and do something else first?
Trust - where will we get it?
Trust is often recognised as the most important ingredient in all the recipes that allow communities and societies able to sort through their differences in ways that cultivate justice and minimise conflict. We live in times when trust is under threat.
We often have to look to larger nations for reports that give us a compass direction providing insights on key trends, so let’s start with two. The final review provided the UK’s Chief Science Advisor highlighted a loss of trust between researchers, their institutions and the policy agencies in government. And global newsrooms like the Washington Post and The Economist have been highlighting that changing subscription and readership models are making the conventional journalism more polarised.
In short, the sense of trust we place in the relationships between policy agencies in government, researchers in universities and other institutions and media is changing. In some cases it is being diminished.
Right now we’re seeing an extra challenge to the rapid onslaught of policy announcements is coming period when popular publicly funded current affairs journalism, like Newhub’s Nation and Q&A with Jack Tame, is offline. Other journalism in halfway into summer staffing. This increases the likelihood that important information, representing the integrity of environmental and economic data, or the integrity of our legal frameworks could be lost or damaged.
Frameworks and institutions at risk
One example of a risk to our constitutional framework has emerged in the last 24 hours, with the inclusion of a so-called Henry VIII clause in the bill repealing the Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms, due to be passed with urgency in Parliament today. The bill Repeals the Natural and Built Environment’s Act and reinstates the RMA, except it includes some parts of the replacement legislation. The Henry VIII clause, which allows Ministers to effectively modify the legislation itself is a threat to our constitutional framework, as noted by Dean Knight the leading scholar on the topic. Some such clauses do exist, and the use in the Natural and Built Environment Act, now being repealed, was carefully tested through during the lengthy submission and full Parliamentary process.
In another example that apparently didn’t appear in any party platforms at the election, Parliament is scheduled today to repeal recent legislation requiring IRD to report on the efficiency of the tax system evaluation against principles. Bernard Hickey reports that the repeal bill includes a particularly disturbing element – deletion of the requirement for the riches families to inform IRD about their wealth. This is a fundamental data source needed to develop any significant change to taxation, such as a wealth tax.
Doesn’t the threat to data and the evaluation of tax policy is a deeply concerning loss of integrity from my perspective.
Science, climate change and freshwater
The Climate Change Commission’s advice to government for 2026–2030 contained a chapter on Research, Science, Innovation and Technology that didn’t get much notice or reporting. Maybe it comes as no surprise that we lack a clear and coherent research strategy or roadmap around climate change and we have very low funding levels for research relative to comparable nations. Worse, data related to climate is often not open and freely available. At least reporting on emissions, following international processes governed by the UNFCCC, is part of the process and freely available.
By comparison, there has been a huge effort to improve our understanding and management of freshwater, and considerable conflict as multiple versions of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM) became political footballs through the last decade. That culminated with what seemed to be robust compromise on the NPS-FM 2020 after three years of consultation. That’s now much of the way through its implementation by Regional Councils. The new governmental also plans to rip that up and start again, and I’ve joined fifty other researchers and leaders in expressing concern that would be seriously problematic – a step backward. After seeing how this debate looks on social media, my view is reinforced that it is important we improve our frameworks, rather than ripping them to shreds every few years. One important reason for that is that the frameworks traverse both Te Tiriti The Treaty of Waitangi and the interactions of central and local government.
Taking a wider view, no one has a plan to save our nation’s research system, which is in crisis. You’ve probably heard that the university sector has been losing hundreds of staff – some institutions will never be the same. At the same time, National Science Challenges hit a fiscal cliff on June 30, next year. If we presume they fund many of the researchers working on what were originally seen as the highest priority topics, that should be concerning. What we learn is that no one understands the system, and most attempts to fix it make it worse.
“No one believes the system is fit for purpose and sustainable”
Travis Glare - Deputy Vice Chancellor Research - Lincoln University
We need solutions to a lot of big problems facing our society, and I think we take for granted that institutions exist and are funded in society to address these problems.
One idea I’ve had a lot traction with:
The research university was the comprehensive solution to the problems of the 20th century. We need to develop differentsolutions to the grand challenges of the 21st century. Climate change will be the pivotal challenge that tests our ability to find the solutions we need.
As we head into today’s mini-budget and continue to ponder where Aotearoa, our society and our planet are headed as 2023 ends, we’re all asking what next (or soon will be once we get past some immediacy of deadlines and the holidays).
I’ll continue to be here looking for insights and points where it may be possible to develop better solutions that build or rebuild the integrity of how we evaluate and solve our challenges around environmental issues.
I’m keen to hear what you think and how this project can evolve.
Richard Prebble has weighed in on the ferries, coming down strongly that the situation must be sorted. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/why-regulation-is-the-real-problem-behind-the-high-cost-of-the-interisland-rail-ferries-richard-prebble/ATLO657SSVG7THNHGF6KYDKJQM/Interisland rail ferries: Regulation is the problem behind the high cost - Richard Prebble