The government of New Zealand has been labelled a “disgrace” after it released a new climate plan which barely requires it to reduce emissions between 2030 and 2035.

Under the previous Labour government of Jacinda Ardern, the country committed to cut net emissions by 50% by 2030, compared to gross 2005 levels.

The new climate plan, which is known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) towards global climate goals, was announced by the right-wing government of Christopher Luxon on Thursday. It says the country will reduce emissions by 51-55% by 2035 against the same 2005 baseline.

Climate campaigners in the Pacific nation immediately slammed the poor ambition. Alva Feldmeir, co-director of 350.org Aotearoa, said the government’s “relentless dismantling of climate policies, expansion of fossil fuel extraction, and now this pathetic NDC signal a catastrophic future”.

“How do we, as Pacific Islanders living in Aotearoa New Zealand, reconcile our government’s decisions with the survival of our island homes?” asked Pacific Climate Warriors Council Elder Inagaro Vakaafi.

Rosemary Harris, a campaigner at Oil Change International, said New Zealand was “retreating on ambition and shirking responsibility, raising their emission reductions by a pathetic 1%”.

Since coming to power in 2023, Luxon’s government has attempted to reverse its predecessor’s ban on offshore oil and gas exploration, despite advice from civil servants that doing so would breach the COP28 climate agreement reached in Dubai and could endanger trade deals. The plan doesn’t mention fossil fuels, nor the need to transition away from oil and gas.

In addition, the government has removed incentives for electric vehicles, promised to postpone putting a price on farming emissions and scrapped other climate programmes.

The new 51-55% target compares favourably with Canada’s 45-50% but is less than Brazil’s 59-67% and the 61-66% target set by Joe Biden’s administration before Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to again pull the United States out of the landmark Paris Agreement.

Other nations like the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates have set 2035 targets using different baseline years, making comparisons with New Zealand difficult.

Signatories to the Paris Agreement are supposed to submit a plan for how they intend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions every five years, with each update supposed to be more ambitious than the last.

This year marks 10 years since the Paris Agreement was adopted and countries are expected to submit 2035 emission reduction targets by a UN deadline of February 10. But most countries are expected to miss the deadline. New Zealand is the seventh nation to have submitted its plan to the UN so far.

(Reporting Joe Loe; editing Chloé Farand) 

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“Pathetic” – New Zealand plans to barely cut emissions between 2030 and 2035