New Zealand reduced its gross greenhouse gas emissions by 2 per cent in 2023, the Ministry for the Environment has revealed, with drops in every sector, but has it come at a cost? Continue →

Research from the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Te Waihanga shows how insurance can help us to manage natural hazard risks and choose how to prepare infrastructure for a changing climate “New Zealand has experienced some significant natural events in recent years,” says the Commission’s General Manager Strategy, Peter Nunns. Continue →

Legislation came into force on 1 January 2024 creating the Climate-related Disclosures Register. Continue →

Switching up our building materials could store more than 16 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, according to a new study in Science   A team of US researchers calculated that fully replacing conventional building materials in new infrastructure with CO2-storing alternatives could store as much as 16.6 billion tonnes of CO2 each year—roughly half of human-caused CO2 emissions in 2021. Continue →

Core to meeting countries’ emissions budgets and 2050 targets, and often conveniently ignored, is the inevitable shift from a linear to a circular economy, writes Greenbox Chief Executive Ross Thompson Global efforts against climate change have the flaky feel of a personal fitness programme – lots of good intentions and promises but at the crunch, low resolve and missed targets. Continue →

Despite there being a focus on mainly cutting CO2 emissions, international researchers say methane emissions were responsible for about half of global warming between the preindustrial period and the 2010s, and have laid out three steps to get this under control An international team of climate researchers writing in Frontiers in Science set out three imperatives to cut methane emissions and share a new tool to help us find the most cost-effective ways of doing so. Continue →

The impact of New Zealand’s main tool to reduce emissions could be improved if five sectors were better regulated, according to a new study University of Auckland researchers say New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is being let down by five critical sectors. Continue →

Investment in marine and coastal conservation has traditionally been looked after by taxpayers, ratepayers, or community groups – but a changing climate and ongoing biodiversity decline have led to a financing gap, where there is simply not enough money to protect or restore marine ecosystems and maintain their economic return, Sustainable Seas says That’s why different pathways for funding are needed to support and scale business and restorative activities that are environmentally sustainable and align with community and iwi needs. Continue →

Experts have concerns about the government’s plans to introduce a standalone Act which will allow major infrastructure projects to bypass lengthy resource consenting processes, whilst it works on a full replacement for the Resource Management Act Cabinet has agreed that its new fast-track consenting regime will consist of: A new fast-track process contained in a standalone Act, with its own purpose statement focused on economic development; A priority for regionally and nationally significant infrastructure and development projects; A process for projects to be referred by Ministers into the fast-track process if it meets appropriate criteria; A list of projects that will be first to have their consents approved and conditions set by an Expert Panel; A process where referred projects will go to an Expert Panel which will apply any necessary conditions to ensure adverse effects of the project to the environment are managed appropriately, and where the panel will have only a limited ability to decline a project once referred. Continue →

The 2015 Paris Agreement aimed to limit temperature rises to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, but a recent study involving sea sponges suggests we may have already failed Global mean surface temperatures may have already passed 1.5 °C of warming and could exceed 2 °C by the end of the decade, a paper published in Nature Climate Change suggests. Continue →

Instead of fossil fuel emissions dropping sharply and rapidly this year, which was needed to ease climate change, the latest Global Carbon Budget is calling 2023 the worst year yet Global emissions from fossil use in 2023 are projected to hit a record high of 36.8 billion tonnes, rising 1.1%. Continue →

A major earthquake is likely to occur on the South Island’s Alpine Fault in the next 50 years – predicting when or where is not currently possible, but a recent study suggests large earthquakes can give off seismic signals months to years beforehand Unique seismic signals may be detected months to years before some large earthquakes, such as those preceding the 2023 magnitude 7.8 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake in Türkiye and also strongly felt in Syria, suggests a Nature Communications paper. Continue →

The world is heading toward six risk tipping points past which systems are no longer able to cope and there are risks of catastrophic impacts or collapse, a UN University report warns The Interconnected Disaster Risks Report 2023 published by the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) finds that the following drastic changes are approaching if risks to our fundamental socioecological systems are not addressed. Continue →

The window is fast closing for us to cut carbon emissions and reduce the severity of global warming, a new study finds The amount of carbon that humans can still emit, while also limiting warming to 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, may be exhausted within the next 6 years, suggests a study published in Nature Climate Change. Continue →

A new report on infrastructure vulnerabilities and resilience has been released by the New Zealand Lifelines Council, focusing particularly on the interdependencies between infrastructure sectors This iteration of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Critical Infrastructure: A National Vulnerability Assessment broadens its scope from earlier releases (2017, 2020), to include Flood Protection, Solid Waste, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, and Financial Payments infrastructure sectors. Continue →

These new investments will accelerate our efforts to increase New Zealand’s ability to respond to and prepare for future extreme weather events, says NIWA Chief Executive John Morgan NIWA has launched a $5 million per year package of new projects aiming to tackle some of New Zealand’s most pressing challenges, including responding to and preparing for extreme weather events. Continue →

The loss of fossil fuel assets would have a minimal impact on the general populace, with most financial losses being borne by the most wealthy, researchers report in the journal Joule One common rationale against climate action is that the resulting fossil fuel investment losses could impact people’s retirement or long-term savings.  Continue →

The Government is consulting on four options for a better Emissions Trading Scheme, yet University of Otago Dr Sebastian Gehricke points out two of them will not even achieve New Zealand’s climate goals while the other two are not much better Four options for ETS reform are on the table, to avoid scenarios where it is cheaper for polluters to buy carbon credits – encouraging excessive tree planting – than to reduce their emissions. Continue →

Rebuilding some flood-damaged homes makes no sense, given the high risk of flooding in the future, some experts say Simply put, managed retreat represents land use change; relocating people, assets, activities, and taonga, where appropriate, from dangerous locations. Continue →

Roughly a week after clean-up efforts began from a record-smashing deluge across the North Island, a second storm in the form of Cyclone Gabrielle is raising questions around community resilience, water infrastructure, and our wider environment Cascading natural hazard events fuelled by climate change are the new norm for Auckland, Massey University Professor Christine Kenney says. Continue →