The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has slammed the Government’s second Emissions Reduction Plan, describing it as ‘95 pages of magical thinking’ and ‘woefully inadequate’.

The Government has published the final version of its second Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP2), which sets out a roadmap for reducing Aotearoa’s emissions between 2026-2030.

WWF-New Zealand’s CEO, Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, says the utter lack of ambition in the plan shows the Government is not serious about tackling emissions in line with New Zealand’s international commitments and the Prime Minister’s own ‘performance targets’.

“Aotearoa’s second Emissions Reduction Plan provides no clear pathway to meeting the long-term climate targets that are supposedly a priority for this Government.”

Dr Kingdon-Bebb says the plan’s focus on controversial, unproven solutions like carbon capture and storage in place of policies that were actually driving down emissions - such as the Clean Car discount - means the Government is effectively relying on ‘a handful of magical beans’ to achieve New Zealand’s emissions reduction targets.

“With Ministers’ ridiculous fantasy that ‘the market’ will solve the climate crisis along with these unproven or yet-to-be developed technologies, we’re setting up future generations of Kiwis for enormous hardship. It’s a tragic excuse for a ‘plan’.

Dr Kingdon-Bebb welcomes the Government’s interest in nature-based solutions, but says attempting to blanket the South Island in exotic forests of radiata pine is not the answer - and nor is it a ‘nature-based solution’ in the proper sense of the term.

“Along with steps to actually reduce gross emissions, we should be investing in nature-positive climate actions such as restoring coastal wetlands and planting and restoring native forests to meet our climate goals - not farming exotic tree species on public conservation land, which ultimately will saddle taxpayers with heightened risk of wildfires and wilding conifer spread - and do nothing to aid the recovery of our threatened native species.”

WWF-New Zealand’s recent report, A Nature Positive Aotearoa, showed that nature-based solutions to climate change, such as native forest restoration and rewetting wetlands and peatlands, could sequester an additional 13.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year from 2030 and save the country more than $50 billion by 2080.

“There is an immense array of good options the Government could be exploring to put Aotearoa on track to a net zero future. But unfortunately the 95 pages of magical thinking released today falls far short of the credible plan we need,” says Dr Kingdon-Bebb.

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