Article – RNZ
New Zealand faces its first climate complaint under EU trade rules, but the government rejects claims climate promises have been broken.
Amanda Gillies The Detail
The climate battle is heating up, with the government facing a landmark legal challenge over its climate commitments.
A Dutch environmental group claims New Zealand has broken its climate change promises in the free trade agreement with the EU and has lodged the first complaint of its kind through the European Commission.
Trade Minister Todd McClay maintains New Zealand is compliant with the deal.
And questions are now being raised about the timing of the complaint, just five weeks out from the election, and the Green Party’s involvement.
Newsroom Pro’s managing editor Jonathan Milne broke the complaint story and has the details for The Detail.
“This probably ultimately comes down to fundamental disagreement about whether protecting jobs and industry now, or protecting the climate long term, is actually going to get us the best outcomes for New Zealanders and the world,” he says.
Dutch environmental organisation Both ENDS filed a complaint with the European Commission against New Zealand over alleged violations of the free trade agreement with the EU.
The complaint alleges New Zealand has weakened environmental and climate laws, breaching commitments under the trade agreement, intended to ensure that trade and investment supported the overarching goal of sustainable development.
Kiwi environmentalists have a long list of transgressions they see as having taken us backwards, including reopening offshore oil and gas exploration, weakening the biogenic methane target, removing the requirement to price agricultural emissions, stopping Mike Smith’s climate liability lawsuits against major emitters, and failure to set sufficiently ambitious Paris agreement targets.
The Commission will now examine the case.
“What is alleged is that New Zealand made commitments in its Europe free trade deal around sticking to the Paris climate accord and around kind of not backsliding, not backsliding on climate action, on mitigation, on adaptation, particularly not cynically backsliding in order to enhance our trade,” says Milne.
“So, we said we’re not going to do that. And if we do do that, that’s potentially a breach and it can trigger a whole process.
“So, what these non-governmental organisations have now done is trigger a complaints process. And it’s a new process that the European Commission set in place. It’s called the Single Entry Point.
“And it allows civil society organisations in Europe – they have to be European organisations – to lodge complaints and force the European Commission to look into it to see if there has been a breach.
“If they think they’re prima facie, there has been a breach, then they will ask the two governments, the European government and the New Zealand government to consult, to talk. If it still can’t be resolved, then there are more serious sort of cascading outcomes that can happen.”
This includes, he says, suspending free trade benefits.
“Now, these benefits are worth an estimated $1.8 billion a year, according to MFAT projections,” Milne says. “So it’s not small change, you know, it’s nothing to sniff at.”
Milne spoke to Trade Minister Todd McClay and says he “was pretty emphatic – he said, ‘we haven’t breached any rules, we’re absolutely committed to climate action, to climate mitigation, we’re committed to the Paris Accord’.
“And because it’s election season, of course, he pointed the finger at the Green Party and accused them of… colluding with foreign actors, by which we mean a climate justice group in Europe, to essentially sabotage New Zealand exports and primary industry.
“So he came back pretty hard on it.”
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick denied any involvement in an interview on NewstalkZB.
“Look, there’s no question whatsoever that the Green Party are fellow travellers with the organisations that back this complaint in New Zealand and the organisation that lodged the complaint in Europe; they’re on the same page,” Milne says.
“They’re working alongside Greenpeace, which, of course, is led by Russel Norman, a former co-leader of the Green Party; Jane Kelsey; Mike Smith, the climate activist who took the Fonterra case – these guys are on the same page. Doesn’t quite mean that they’re colluding.
“And I do think Todd McClay, the Trade Minister, overstepped the line on that.”
Milne says NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones has waded into the environmental blame game and hasn’t held back, “name-calling the various sorts of activists who are supporting this complaint.
“He called them New Zealand quislings, committing traitorous acts. New Zealand has sovereign responsibilities, he said, to keep its economy growing.
“[Jones said] we are doing nothing that is undermining the planet. And he said, I think it’s extraordinarily destructive. They have absolutely no mandate.
“[He said] it’s further evidence of how climate change activism has turned into a cult, which is a threat to Kiwi jobs, etc. You get the idea.
“What it says to me, what the responses from Todd McClay, from David Seymour, from Shane Jones say to me, and the reaction from the NGOs backing this complaint, it just illustrates how vast the divide is.”
Milne says the complaint has been covered by international media, and academics here are concerned that New Zealand is no longer seen as a “leading climate change actor that it once was”.
Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
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