Communities for Climate Protection – New Zealand 2008 National Forum

Keynote address: Howard Fancy, Acting Secretary for the Environment

Thank you for the invitation to be here today.

The work you are all doing in the environmental area is very important to the future of regions and the country. I also appreciate how challenging the work can be and the degree of complexity that can be involved. The leadership of those here today is a real credit to you.

I would also like to acknowledge the work being done by ICLEI with local government. This is supporting the leadership roles of mayors and councils by assessing the level of local government green house gas emissions and helping to find ways to reduce them.

The CCP-NZ programme is a good example of New Zealand’s responses to climate change and the important role of local government in the overall response.

The 31 member councils involved in the CCP programme clearly show how seriously local government is taking the concerns about climate change.

The importance of a high quality environment

A high quality environment is central to New Zealand and being a New Zealander.

It is central to our identity and to the quality of life in this country.

It is integral to our international reputation and to our overall competitive advantage.

With New Zealand so heavily reliant on its natural environment for its economic wellbeing we will benefit from having one of the highest levels of environmental quality in the world.

As we get better at collecting a wider range of environmental indicators, New Zealand’s clean green image will come under increasing scrutiny and some of the key challenges will become more evident.

It will be important that these challenges are addressed in a coherent and strategic way because becoming a low carbon intensive and high environment outcomes country will require significant changes in the practices of communities, households, government and businesses.

Looking ahead from an environmental perspective I see three big challenges facing us.

Setting and sustaining high environmental standards

The first challenge centres on the need to set, meet, and sustain high environmental standards in areas such as air, water, and soil quality, the minimisation of waste, and maintaining high levels of bio-diversity and bio-security.

The State of the Environment 2007 report released this year is an important part of the evidence base relating to New Zealand’s environment.

It helps inform key areas for priority. For example it identifies that:

Ongoing growth of our population has contributed to more consumption of goods and services, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the rising use of transport and energy. The pressure on the environment has been increased by farming and urban intensification.
The amount of waste sent to landfill has gone down and recycling rates are growing.
More land is under management for pest weeds and animals. More land is being protected for conservation than ever before.
Air quality in most areas is getting better.
Soil quality from some land uses has become worse.
Discharges in our fresh water from single-point sources (such as wastewater treatment plants, meat works and farm effluent ponds) have gone down. But nutrient levels in our fresh waters have risen.
Some endangered species are recovering. But the range of some native species has decreased and some fish stocks have been over-exploited.

A more explicit policy focus on setting and meeting environmental standards is evidenced through the development of National Policy Statements and National Environmental Standards.

Meeting the challenge of Climate Change

The second area of challenge lies in the responses needed to reduce green house gas emissions and adapt to the physical impacts of climate changes.

Climate change requires two different kinds of response.

The first is highlighted by our need to meet our obligations under the Kyoto protocol.

These represent a big challenge to reduce our overall level of emissions to 1990 levels. The task of meeting our emission goals becomes bigger if the economic growth and social development increases emissions.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is one important part of the response.

This will require the economy as a whole to face a world price for carbon and in doing so encourage different sectors to limit and manage their emissions in the most cost effective way.

But the ETS is only one part of a much wider response to green house gas emissions.

But a wider and more integrated approach is also being put in place.

A range of polices are targeting the household, business, public, forestry, energy, transport and farming sectors in ways that are designed to encourage and support those sectors to adopt practices that will reduce the carbon intensity of the economy.

Examples of this can be seen in:

Information and measures that target the household sector
The development of long term energy and transport strategies
The work relating to housing and urban development.
The focus of agriculture policies
The work in local and central government to move towards carbon neutrality.

A key point here is that many small but early steps will add up over the next 20 years to a big difference.

The second response centres on how we position ourselves to respond to the unpredictable physical impacts of global climate change that might be manifested in terms of higher sea levels or more extreme climatic fluctuations and variations.

Responses here will include how we identify and manage different kinds of risks and uncertainties. It will include how we develop a greater resilience to potential wide fluctuations and ranges in rainfall and/or temperature patterns.

It will also include how we best manage and minimise risks to our bio-security and bio-diversity.

Successfully coping with Climate Change and adjusting to higher Environmental Standards

Meeting the goals of higher environmental standards and effective responses to the Kyoto protocol all add up to the third significant challenge facing New Zealand – successful coping by different sectors and by New Zealand as a whole.

A key goal therefore centres on how New Zealand over the next few decades can become a significantly lower carbon intensity/ high environment outcome country, while still continuing to experience strong economic growth and positive social development.

To do this well requires significant changes in behaviours and economic relationships.

Effective responses will require the household, business, and government sectors to significantly reduce emissions and significantly moderate their impacts on the environment over the next few decades.

To achieve this and sustain strong growth, for example, will require a substantial decoupling from the historical relationships between energy use and economic growth.

It will require farmers to modify their practices in ways that not only reduce emissions of green house gases but also significantly reduce the leaching of nutrients into waterways. The adoption of nutrient budgets is one important response.

It will require different and more effective approaches to the management of waste.

It will require houses and households to become much more energy efficient.

It will require much greater investment in renewable energy and more energy efficient transport.

In the public and local government sectors moving to become carbon neutral represents a big shift.

This will not only require investing in offsets but also a major rethinking of how we do business, how we travel, how we use energy, and what we purchase.

The key to successfully transforming to a low emission economy will lie in changing the investment patterns and the development and the adoption of new technologies into the economy.

Thinking about change over several decades should not detract from the need for urgency and making every decision count.

We need to work at several levels. We should not make future problems bigger. We need to develop offsets and we need to invest in ways of coping with higher environmental standards.

Effective responses will require good strategic thinking and good front end design of processes and products and good system thinking.

It will require decisions to be framed within a timeframe that may extend over several decades.

The culmination of many good decisions taken over many years will help make the biggest difference with the least disruption.

Central to sustainable economic and social development will be the need to effectively and successfully embed and integrate environmental considerations into the decision making of individuals, households, businesses, government and farming.

For example, minimising waste will depend heavily on improving the design of many products and services.

Much higher energy efficient housing in the future will depend critically on improving the design of today’s new houses, towns and cities. It is likely to be more cost effective in many cases building environmental considerations into the front end design of houses than facing the cost of retrofitting in the future.

In the agricultural sector, substantial reductions in environmental impact will occur from the roll out of new technologies, like nitrification inhibitors.

Investment in research will be important. But so will investing in identifying understanding effective practices and extending these practices more widely.

Good investment and strategies create the potential for win/wins.

For example, good environmental practices can create economic value for businesses.

They can create new business and export opportunities for New Zealand firms.

Good environmental practices in households can mitigate the effects of higher energy costs by energy consumption and improving health.

This world of sustainable development has significant implications for the Ministry for the Environment and for local government.

For the Ministry for the Environment our focus has broadened enormously in the past few years.

We are expected asked to have a more explicit view of the future environmental outcomes that are important to New Zealand’s economic and social future.

This is being reflected not only in investments such as ENZ07 but also in a growing number of national policy statements and development of national environmental standards.

Five years ago we worked in relative isolation from the work of the major economic and social agencies.

Today we are heavily involved in a wide range of policy areas led by different Ministers.

We are now expected to have a strong focus on, and understanding of, the nature of the changes facing the different sectors, and different regions, and different communities of New Zealand and the best approaches to modifying their ways of operating over future years.

Our focus has become much more international with the international dimensions of our work having expanded substantially as New Zealand participates in many global environment fora.

Within the public sector we are taking a lead role in the development of a carbon neutral public service. We are also helping create an infrastructure that provides good information, test beds, good labelling, standards and procurement.

We are working with other agencies to help develop strategies and indentify effective practices that will help meet the goal of carbon neutrality.

As a small agency of around 300 staff that is being asked to make a big difference is requiring us to confront in quite a fundamental way how we work.

We need to be more strongly outcome driven.

We need to work increasingly in more highly networked ways.

We need to be much more strategic in terms of how we influence.

We need to develop wider understandings of the issues affecting different sectors and how we work with them to create win/wins.

While our perspective is national and international many of the issues we face are common to those being faced by you at local and regional government levels.

You need to address issues of responses and adaptation at a local level and build them into your decisions and your strategies.

The decisions you take in terms of the development of your local and regional authorities can have a big influence over time on environmental and climate change outcomes.

All of this highlights the importance of the relationship between local government and the Ministry for the Environment.

We need to understand the nature of regional and local differences in terms of the importance of moving to higher environmental standards or assessing the physical impacts of climate change.

We need to learn from each others experiences.

We have been pleased to have been able to support councils and their progression through the CCP programme – from measuring emissions to implementing reduction programmes to realising and quantifying the benefits.

Looking ahead it will continue to be important that we continue to work closely to together to ensure that our respective responsibilities and roles are focussed on the things that matter most.

And that we complement and reinforce each other’s work to the greatest extent possible.

Conclusion

Conferences like this are important to the future and to finding the most effective ways of coping with the future.

But more than this they highlight the active role of leadership.

We don’t have much choice but to position ourselves for a different future.

By taking the leadership role that so many councils are showing is really important.

This helps move people forward. It helps innovative responses to develop that will help find cost effective ways of moving to a lower carbon intensity world while at the same time supporting the ongoing development of your communities.

The work you are doing to reduce your carbon foot prints and reach higher environmental outcomes is great to see.

So is your willingness to share experiences and learn from each other - keep up the good work and best wishes for the future!