New Zealand and climate change: what are the stakes and what can New Zealand do?

Following the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015, governments around the world now face the task of developing strategies to meet their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – UN terminology for emissions reduction goals to 2030 – and their broader contributions to the Paris Agreement’s goal of maintaining global average temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC, 2015a, article 2.1(a)). Paris represented a crucial starting point, but the decisions by Paula Bennett, New Zealand’s new minister for climate change issues, and her international counterparts will determine whether COP21 produced just warm words or genuinely charted a course to avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change.