See CAN-International’s full media release here.
New Zealand finally won a well-deserved Fossil award and comes in second place
The draft text, quite rightly, calls on parties to revisit their NDCs and give their 2030 targets some real bite and backbone to haul them into line with Paris temperature goals by the end of next year. Given that we’re at the eleventh hour of negotiations, we assume this to be a reasonable request – clearly not when New Zealand’s Climate Minister, James Shaw, is involved.
We nearly fell off our chair when Mr Shaw (who also chairs the transparency negotiations and is co-leader of the NZ Green Party btw) quite literally said that just because a refreshing of the NDC has been asked of countries “it doesn’t mean we have to.” This comes from a country that gives off the ‘greener than thou’ vibe at the drop of a hobbits hat.
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised when it was brought to our attention that he’s also the guy who put out a revised NDC the night before COP. That one wasn’t worth the wait, unfortunately. Civil society commentators widely regarded it as a Grade A hatchet job, inconsistent with Paris temperature goals, wholly unambitious 2030 target and relying heavily on carbon markets.
And there’s more to make them truly deserve this Fossil of the Day award. Good old Aotearoa also stood in the way of setting limits on carbon offsetting in Article 6 and recently issued two new fossil fuel exploration permits. They were severely burned today, and it’s no surprise given the evidence above when they were awarded the humiliating title of “Associate Member” for the signature statement on climate ambition for BOGA—not the things up your nose—but the Beyond Oil And Gas Alliance.
There is precious little time left and we need to turn up the heat on countries not taking their domestic emissions reduction roles seriously. Lead by example Kiwis, do the right thing and stop the greenwash – and skip the spin cycle while you’re at it.