Climate change

I am not a climate change expert but have certainly seen the effects of climate change in my professional and private life. It is really worrying to see how little effective, practical action is being taken by many of the decision-makers in Aotearoa New Zealand. One of the key factors that I believe is holding people back from taking climate change seriously is that they are either confused between climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation, or focused primarily on adaptation because they think that we will be able to adapt to any degree of climate change, no matter how bad it is.

The first thing to point out is that climate change is here and is rapidly increasing. The consequences of climate change now include, amongst others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity. Aotearoa New Zealand is already experiencing the impacts of climate change as evidenced by the floods last year.

Climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation are two sides of the same coin. Mitigation involves reducing CO2, nitrous oxide, and methane emissions as soon and as rapidly as possible. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we need to reduce emissions by almost half by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. To achieve this, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels and invest in alternative sources of energy that are clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable. There needs to be much greater focus on shifting our methods of farming to healthier land use which will reduce emissions, increase sequestration of emissions, and make the land used for farming and agriculture more resilient under flood and drought conditions. We also need to increase carbon sequestration by planting the right sort of trees – not just pine trees.

Some level of climate change is already permanent due to historic global emissions, and we'll need to adapt to that. But the slower the world is at reducing emissions, the greater the adaptation burden becomes. Adaptation can take many forms, none of which is particularly easy. These include rezoning land and preventing development in flood prone areas, and central and/or local government acquiring properties and providing compensation. Another form of adaptation is managed retreat and relocating settlements. This can be particularly difficult and Pacific countries such as Fiji have already shown the practical, emotional and cultural toll resulting from relocation.

So, we all need to take climate change seriously and act individually, as a community, as a nation and as part of the Pacific. And we need to get on with it.

Janet Whiteside – March 2024