Report
19.292
Date
8 August 2019
File
CCHSTR-5-64
Committee
Council
Author
Andrea Brandon, Programme Lead Climate Change
Jake Roos, Climate Change Advisor
What is a Climate Emergency? (Information Paper)
1.
Purpose
To present background information to the Environment Committee in
considering the ‘Climate Emergency’ movement. This will help inform elected
members prior to making a decision on this issue at the 21 August Council
meeting.
2.
Background
At their meeting on 20 May, the Greater Wellington Regional Council
(GWRC) Climate Change Working Group unanimously agreed that GWRC
should join other councils in declaring a climate emergency. On 20 June the
Environment Committee considered the recommendation, prepared by Cr Sue
Kedgley, Chair of the Environment Committee and Cr Roger Blakeley, Chair
of the GWRC Climate Change Working Group. Staff were asked to bring more
information to the 8 August Environment Committee meeting.
At the GWRC Climate Change Working Group on 21 June it was agreed that
the paper to the Environment Committee would focus on background
information related to the climate emergency movement, with a further paper
with issues and options presented to the 21 August Council meeting.
3.
Climate Change
Climate change is arguably the biggest environmental challenge we have ever
faced and it affects everyone in the region. It is widely acknowledged that
climate change is already impacting ecosystems and communities around the
world, with increasingly frequent and severe storms, floods and droughts;
melting polar ice sheets; sea level rise and coastal inundation and erosion; and
impacts on biodiversity including species loss and extinction.
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The 2018 Special Report on the impacts of 1.5
degrees Celsius (°C) of global
warming above pre-industrial levels prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes: limiting global warming to 1.5°C would
require ‘rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and
infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems.
Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall
by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around
2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by
removing CO2 from the air’1.
The world is currently on course to be approximately 4°C warmer than it was
in preindustrial times by the year 2100, a situation that would regularly make
outdoor conditions across large areas of the tropics lethal to humans without
the protection of air-conditioning, severely reduce global food production and
cause multi-metre sea level rise that would inundate large areas of human
settlement. This scale of climate disruption is likely to lead to dramatic
reductions in human population and eco-system collapse.2 The probability of
this outcome will increase as long as net emissions of greenhouse gases
continue.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
was established to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to
a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.
Despite a near universal membership of 196 Parties to the UNFCCC, global
emissions of human induced greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. The
New Zealand Government’s response to climate change has ramped up over
the last 18 months3 in order to drive a whole of government transition to a low
greenhouse gas emissions economy and ensure a climate resilient future.
While these actions are important, there is mounting concern that the urgency
required to address climate change, identified in the 2018 IPCC Special Report,
requires a more rapid response than either the international or national process
will deliver. Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are now
higher than any time in the last 3 million years4, and annual global greenhouse
emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane, continue to increase as a
result of human activities.56
4.
How climate change is impacting the Wellington region
Greater Wellington Regional Council has commissioned research to analyse
tide gauge records in the region in order to understand the trends in local sea
level. The research shows that since records began in 1890, sea level has been
rising at an average rate of 2.2 mm/yr. That sums up to an increase of nearly
1 https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/
2 https://www.ipbes.net/news/ipbes-global-assessment-summary-policymakers-pdf
3 Initiatives include the proposed Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, currently before the House, which sets a new
emissions reduction target for 2050 and establishes a Climate Change Commission, along with amendments to existing climate change policies to
strengthen the national response.
4 https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/carbon-dioxide-hits-level-not-seen-3-million-years-here-ncna1005231
5 https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/
6 https://climatenexus.org/climate-change-news/methane-surge/
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30cm over this period and represents over 30% of the tide range. In addition,
records of vertical land motion measured by continuous GPS, show that the
region is currently subsiding tectonically at rates equal to that which sea level
is rising, ie, around 2 mm/yr. Thus, at present, the relative sea level trend is
effectively double the long term annual average.
This sea-level rise is already having impacts on our activities and infrastructure
in coastal areas. The Cook Strait/Wellington areas and the east coast of the
region are more vulnerable to storm inundation and rates of coastal erosion due
to their smaller tidal range when compared to other parts of New Zealand. We
are also seeing an upward trend in temperature across the Wellington Region.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions are stabilised globally, sea-level and average
daily temperatures will continue to rise. Rainfall is projected to increase in the
west of the Wellington Region and decrease in the east of the region. Heavy
rainfall events are projected to increase across the region while inland
Wairarapa is likely to become more drought prone. Extreme weather events are
predicted to occur more frequently across the region. Changes in ocean acidity
may have significant impacts on New Zealand fisheries and aquaculture into
the future.
As sea levels rise, total storm inundation levels will threaten low-lying areas of
Wellington central city, potentially large areas of Petone and Seaview, and to a
limited extent Evans Bay and smaller areas of the Miramar Peninsula. Along
the Kapiti Coast, sea level rise and total storm inundation levels will threaten
Otaki Beach, low-lying areas of Waikanae and Paraparaumu Beach, and
narrow margins of the Porirua Harbour, especially the CBD.
More importantly, these changes will all impact on our core business. Changes
to the climate will exacerbate the impacts and risks on Wellington Region’s
indigenous biodiversity, primary industries, biosecurity, fresh water security
and wildfire incidence. Our coastal, low lying and flood prone communities
and infrastructure will become more vulnerable. In fact, no one will be
immune, as both rural and urban economies and communities in the Wellington
region are being and will be more adversely affected as time goes on.
5.
What is a Climate Emergency?
The concept of a ‘Climate Emergency’ and the ‘Climate Mobilisation
Movement’ were first described in a paper Published in April 2016 by United
States-based psychologist Dr Margaret Klein Salamon.7 She and the activist
groups that form the broad ‘climate mobilisation movement’, such as the
Extinction Rebellion, School Strike 4 Climate and the Sunrise Movement
define their objectives as:
‘…for governments to declare a climate emergency and mobilise society-wide
resources at sufficient scale and speed to protect civilisation, the economy,
people, species, and ecosystems (from the climate crisis).’
7 https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/emergency-mode
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The goals of the movement are:
To build public awareness that we are in a climate emergency which
threatens life as we know it
To demand that governments declare a climate emergency as a public
signal indicating that governments and society will be mobilised in
emergency mode until the emergency passes; and
To demand a climate mobilisation of sufficient scale and speed to protect
everything we want to protect8
Proponents of declaring a climate emergency explicitly cite the USA’s society-
wide mobilisation to defeat the Axis powers during World War II as the
example of the scale, speed and competency which is required to successfully
address the climate crisis. They characterise an emergency response as being
starkly different from ‘business as usual’, in that addressing the emergency
becomes the affected societies’ number one priority, rather than just one of
many competing priorities.
Recently Prof Joseph Stiglitz, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics in
2001, voiced his support for a WWII-style climate emergency mobilisation,
saying ‘the climate emergency is our third world war’.9
In more recent work, Klein Salamon (2019)10 examines the theoretical
discussion of what emergency mode is, compared with the normal business-as-
usual mode, to illuminate what actions would look like if a climate emergency
is declared (see Table 1).
Table 1 - Characterisation of ‘normal mode’ versus ‘emergency mode’
Normal mode
Emergency mode
Priorities
Many balanced priorities
Solving the crisis = One top
priority
Resources
Distributed across priorities Huge allocation of resources
and saved for future
towards solution
Focus
Distributed across priorities Laser-like focus
Self-esteem source
Individual accomplishment
Contributing to the solution
5.1
What are the legal implications of declaring a climate emergency?
There is no legal definition of the term ‘climate emergency’ in New Zealand
legislation (eg, under the Civil Defence and Emergency Management Act
2002). As the declaration has no legal status, there is no precise definition of
what constitutes action to meet such an emergency.
8 https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/about/
9 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/04/climate-change-world-war-iii-green-new-deal
10 https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/emergency-mode
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As far as we are aware, declaring a climate emergency does not carry any legal
obligations on the organisation declaring it. However, legal liability regarding
climate change is a very complex issue.
In March this year, Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) commissioned
Jack Hodder QC to look at the legal risks that councils faced by either
recognising or ignoring the threat of climate change in their decision-making.
He found a growing number of cases brought by frustrated communities and
individuals around the world, and concluded it was only a matter of time before
similar actions were taken here.11 It has just been announced that the Thames-
Coromandel District Council is being taken to court over its decision in April
not to sign a declaration on climate change.12
5.2
The reaction to the declarations
There have been positive and negative reactions to governments and councils
declaring climate emergencies. Key themes are that it is a symbolic, political,
but empty gesture on the negative side through to being seen as an important
step in increasing action for climate change. Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a
Lead Author of the 2018 IPCC Special Report, warned that the use of alarmist
language can induce paralysis and panic rather than action. Links have been
made to a decline in mental health as people feel hopeless about the enormity
of the problem, a condition that has been called ‘climate grief’. Some
communities are more vulnerable than others, and contributing to their grief
could have negative consequences for mobilising action. There will equally be
consequences for communities where no action is taken to adapt to the impacts
of climate change. Declaring a climate emergency does serve a purpose as a
'call to action' that has moral and leadership force. The current surge in
declarations has certainly raised the profile of climate change and brought the
issue into focus in the media.
6.
Who has declared?
The first government body to declare a ‘climate emergency’ was the
municipality of Darebin in Melbourne, Australia in December 2016. As of 1
July 2019, 717 jurisdictions in 16 countries have declared a climate emergency.
Populations covered by jurisdictions that have declared climate emergencies
amount to over 135 million citizens, with 40 million of these living in the
United Kingdom13 14. Cities making declarations include London, Bristol,
Vancouver and Basel.
At the time of writing this paper, eleven councils in New Zealand had declared,
including four in the Wellington region (ie, the Kāpiti Coast District Council,
Wellington City Council, Hutt City Council and Porirua City Council) and
three regional government organisations (ie, Environment Canterbury,
11 https://www.lgnz.co.nz/assets/Uploads/f488365773/Climate-change-litigation-Whos-afraid-of-creative-judges.pdf
12 https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/council-taken-to-court-over-lack-of-action-on-climate-change/ar-AADMuKE?ocid=spartandhp
13 http://www.caceonline.org/councils-that-have-declared.html
14 These statistics are increasing on a daily basis and are likely underreporting the true numbers taking this action
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Auckland Council and Hawkes Bay Regional Council). Many other councils
across New Zealand are also considering making declarations.
On 28 May 2019 Green Party Member of Parliament (MP) Chloe Swarbrick
attempted to pass a motion to declare a national climate emergency in
Parliament, but this was defeated by opposition MPs.
6.1
What additional actions have been taken by those declaring
climate emergencies? Have they switched into emergency mode?
The level of increased ambition announced by the New Zealand councils that
have declared a climate emergency to date has been variable. Some have
announced new and additional actions while others have referred to their
existing work programmes upon declaring their emergencies. The most
common additional action has been decisions to set targets for reducing
emissions.
Beyond New Zealand’s shores, we see a similar range of responses to the
climate emergency declarations by various national and sub-national
jurisdictions. The most common additional action has been to announce an
emissions reduction target of some sort at the same time as the declaration.
None of the actions taken following these declarations could be considered as
reflective of an emergency mode (Table 1). We have not seen a single response
that has elevated climate change to its government’s or council’s top priority,
or mobilised ‘huge’ resources, with a laser-like focus.
Announcing a climate emergency, therefore, has no precedent set that would
require unprecedented action, the reprioritising of resources and/or decisions to
stop funding projects to be taken.
GWRC is taking considerable action on the climate crisis (see
Attachment 1)
when compared with most other councils around the country, as shown in a
recent stocktake of climate change mitigation activities taken by LGNZ15. One
exception is that GWRC does not have any formal emissions reductions goals,
either for the organisation or for the region. A carbon neutrality target for the
organisation is however being considered.
7.
Next steps
GWRC is holding an emissions reduction target workshop on 9 August to
agree a target for the organisation.
Following the workshop, officers will prepare a paper for the 21 August
Council meeting that will take a regional view of the actions GWRC could
take, including:
1. Internal actions, the organisation’s carbon neutral target and cost
implications (largely on mitigation)
15 https://www.lgnz.co.nz/assets/Uploads/f4cafb5ec0/46628-LGNZ-Summary-of-Emission-Reduction-7-Proof-FINAL.pdf
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2. Regional actions, influence and collaboration (which also includes
adaptation)
3. Our role in Central government advocacy (mitigation and adaptation); and
4. Tabling any recommendations from the 8 August Environment Committee
meeting including whether to declare a climate emergency or not
8.
Recommendations
That the Environment Committee:
1. Receives the report
2. Notes the content of the report
3. Notes that GWRC is holding an emissions reduction target workshop on 9
August
4. Notes that a full paper will be prepared to go to Council on 21 August
Report prepared by:
Report prepared by:
Report approved by:
Report approved by:
Jake Roos
Andrea Brandon
Tracy Plane
Luke Troy
Consultant
Programme Lead
Manager, Strategic &
General Manager,
Climate Change
Corporate Planning
Strategy
Attachment 1: GWRC’s existing climate change work programme
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Attachment 1 GWRC’s existing climate change work programme
GWRC recognises the significant role we play in responding to climate change and the
challenges that brings to our region. The effects of climate change carry tough economic
and social implications for our communities, with increased risks to settlements,
infrastructure and ecosystems from rising seas, storms and flooding.
GWRC’s strategic approach to climate change is to align and coordinate climate change
actions across GW’s responsibilities and operations. We have created a climate change
strategy for the region. Our strategy is to build on work programmes already underway,
raise awareness of climate change drivers and impacts, and help to co-ordinate regional
effort through collaboration and partnerships. Actions that have been implemented or
are in progress are summarised below within three key strategic areas:
1. Cleaning up our own act
2. Working with others in the region to influence emissions reductions and
improve our resilience
3. Advocating for action
Cleaning up our own act
GWRC is acting to reduce GHG emissions across all its areas of influence, including its
own operations. The following actions have been taken or are underway:
Climate change effects must be considered in all council and committee reports, and
officers are provided with guidance and training on how to carry this out
GWRC’s treasury risk management policy has been amended to drive the
divestment from any direct investment in fossil fuel extraction industries and
investigate existing non-direct investment, with a view to prevent future investment
where practical
Establishing a GWRC Climate Change Working Group
GWRC has an electric-first vehicle policy for all corporate fleet renewals
Planning for substantial reforestation on its land as a part of the One Billion Trees
programme
Setting a target date for achieving carbon neutral status as an organisation
Taking the opportunities to minimise emissions of its new central Wellington
offices, joining the CEMARS emissions management and reduction scheme and
disclosing its climate relating risks through the Carbon Disclosure Project, and to be
included in the Annual Report recognising Council's fiduciary duty
Announcing its ambition to be the first region in New Zealand with an all-electric
bus fleet, and through the recent procurement process, has facilitated the
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introduction of 10 electric double-decker buses to Wellington, with a commitment
to introduce another 10 in 2020 and a further 12 in 2021
Influencing the procurement process for the new bus operating contracts, resulting
in over 50% of the region’s oldest buses being replaced with modern low emission
buses delivering improvements in both environmental and customer experience
outcomes
Developing of a pathway to transition to a fully electric bus fleet
Working with others to reduce emissions and improve regional resilience
GWRC understands the importance of working alongside others to achieve resilience
and ease the transition to a low emissions economy for our region. We are actively
pursuing opportunities to build climate action by working with others through the
following projects:
Commissioned NIWA to prepare a "Wellington Region climate change projections
and impacts" report in 2017. Convening the Wellington Region Climate Change
Working Group, made up of elected representatives of the nine Wellington Councils
Supporting various collaborative projects that have emerged from this group on both
mitigation and adaptation, including the coastal adaptation subgroup, the draft EV
Support Strategy and the 2050 Emissions Calculator
Leading the Regional Natural Hazards Strategy and since 2010 has included climate
change considerations in its flood hazard assessments (ie, increased rainfall intensity
and sea level rise)
Providing data and research on projected regional climate impacts across the region
including:
o Publishing seasonal climate updates on the website
o Providing a regional sea level rise and storm surge impact modelling tool
Investing in high quality public transport services throughout the region
Partnering in the Lets Get Wellington Moving programme, the transformation of the
transport network in Wellington City, including a substantial shift to public
transport, walking and cycling
Developing a coastal erosion plan for Queen Elizabeth Park
Influencing its CCOs and investments to manage their greenhouse gas emissions
Convening the Wellington Region Erosion Control Initiative, running the Warm
Greater Wellington home insulation scheme and the Take Charge business pollution
prevention programme, participating in the Permanent Forests Sink Initiative and
undertaking riparian and wetland protection and planting programmes
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Advocating for action
GWRC regularly takes part in advocacy (for example to central government, and via
proposed remits to LGNZ) to encourage others to increase their efforts in addressing the
climate crisis.
Specific actions include:
submitting to the Environment Select Committee on the proposed Climate
Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill
submitting to Local Government New Zealand’s Climate Change Mitigation
Reference Group on the stocktake of Council’s actions related to climate change
mitigation, and the sector’s position on the topic
submitting to the Ministry for the Environment on amendments proposed to the
Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) and PFSI settings
the submission of Remit to 2018 AGM of Local Government New Zealand
(LGNZ): "GWRC asks that LGNZ, consistent with the Local Government
Position Statement on Climate Change 2017 and the Local Government Leaders'
Climate Change Declaration 2017, advocate to all major banks that they
transition away from investments in fossil fuel industries, and consider
opportunities for long-term investments in low- or zero-carbon energy systems."
The Remit was lost by 5% of vote
the submission of Remit to 2019 AGM of LGNZ: "That LGNZ recommends to
Government that they establish an independent experts group to develop a new
funding policy framework for adapting to climate change impacts as
recommended by the Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working
Group (CCATWG). This new experts group would be supported by a secretariat
and stakeholder advisory group." The Remit was passed by 95% of vote
GWRC has five staff who effectively work on climate change-related matters. These are
the Programme Lead – Climate Change (1.0 FTE), Climate Change Advisor (0.8 FTE),
Senior Environmental Scientist (Climate Change) (1.0 FTE), Senior Policy Advisor
(Hazards) (1.0 FTE) and Sustainability Coordinator (0.6 FTE). These staff work across
all of GWRC’s business to lead and advise on climate change opportunities and risks.
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